Born in Saigon, Viêt-Nam, Hương Thanh comes from a family of renowned traditional musicians. At the age of 10 Hương Thanh began to learn Cai Luong and traditional singing in the family context - her parents house was always full of visiting singers and musicians, who also acted as her teachers. At 13 she perfected her skills in studying intensively in Saigon music and theater schools, and at 16 she performed on stage for the first time. In Vietnamese singing there is a special and very strong relation between melody and words: there are six linguistic tones, and the same syllable can have different meanings depending on the pronounced pitch. The poetry of the text has its internal melody, and the singer has to convey the emotions of both. Hương Thanh embodies the particularities of the Vietnamese traditional singing, full of detailed inflections, ornaments, finesse and diversity of expression and timbres. Since her move to Paris in 1977, she has taken part in several shows of Cai Luong theatre with great traditional artists -including her father- in the Vietnamese community in Europe (France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium). Each time Hương Thanh returned to Viêt-Nam she has worked for several recordings which include the best musicians of the country. In 1995 she met Nguyên Lê who brought her to the world of jazz, a music she had never performed before. The adventure of Tales from Viêt-Nam began: the band has toured in the most important festivals of France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, England, Switzerland. She performed as a singer, as usual, but also as a dancer (the traditional sword dance of Trung Trac Trung Nhi, two sisters heroines of Viêt-Nam, training their troops for battle). The same year Hương Thanh was invited to sing for the celebration of the anniversary of the declaration of human rights at the UNESCO. In 1997 she recorded in Los Angeles, USA, with her sister Hương Lan. In 1998 she appeared on Maghreb & Friends (ACT 9261-2), Nguyên Lês last CD, on Louanges, a song by Algerian musician Karim Ziad. After translating the words from Arabic to Vietnamese, she sings the replica to the North African singers. After several months of work, she presented Moon and Wind, her first CD for ACT, produced, written and engineered by Nguyên Lê. A peaceful celebration of all the aspects of love: child love, with lullabies from different regions of Viêt-Nam, parents love, love of the one who will share our life, love of the far away homeland. In 2001 Hương Thanh followed up with her next ACT album Dragonfly, also produced in close cooperation with Nguyên Lê. As in the case of Moon and Wind she is accompanied by musicians from widely varied backgrounds as Paolo Fresu and Tino di Geraldo. Renaud Garcia-Fons, Etienne Mbappé, as well as Richard Bona, with whom she sings a duet, join the band for this production. In 2004 her album Mangustao was released, a world music highlight with Nguyên Lê, Paul McCandless, Paolo Fresu, Dhafer Youssef, etc. In 2007 she received the France Musique des Musiques du Monde award andreleased the album Fragile Beauty, produced by Nguyên Lê. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.