Đàn bầu
Vietnamese stringed instrument
The đàn bầu (Vietnamese: [ɗàːn.ɓə̀w]; "gourd zither"; Chữ Nôm: 彈匏), also called độc huyền cầm (獨絃琴, "one-string zither"; the name is only used by the Jing ethnicity in China) is a Vietnamese stringed instrument, in the form of a monochord (one-string) zither.
History
While the earliest written records of the đàn bầu date its origin to 1770, scholars estimate its age to be up to one thousand years older than that. A popular legend of its beginning tells of a blind woman playing it in the market to earn a living for her family while her husband was at war. Whether this tale is based in fact or not, it remains true that the đàn bầu has historically been played by blind musicians. Until recent times, its soft volume limited the musical contexts in which it could be used. The đàn bầu, played solo, is central to Vietnamese folk music, a genre still popular today in the country. Its other traditional application is as an accompaniment to poetry readings. With the invention of the magnetic pickup, the usage of the đàn bầu spread to ensembles and also to contemporary Asian pop and rock music. Now, electronics designed for the electric guitar are sometimes employed with the đàn bầu to further expand its tonal palette.
Construction
Originally, the đàn bầu was a tube zither, made of just four parts: a bamboo tube, a wooden rod, a coconut shell half, and a silk string.
The public source identifies “Đàn bầu” as vietnamese stringed instrument. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Vietnamese, stringed and instrument.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q342244. The Library of Congress control number is sh2003010663. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1770.
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This entry incorporates text from “Đàn bầu” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.