This video footage was taken from my rooftop garden looking down into the hem a short while ago. The lady playing guitar and singing is blind or visually impaired and is being led along by a young guy selling lottery tickets.

There is some debate about whether this current form of blind street music/begging is descended from the traditional blind street theatre known as “hat xam” and could be called “nhac xam”, perhaps meant to mean something like “minstrel music” or “nhac vang”, yellow music - the colour of sorrow. Personally, I feel that this current form of blind street music must have evolved from hat xam in some way.

You can find an article about hat xam here and Michael Gray has written a good article about this here

Also, there are 2 more video clips that I shot back in 2004 of another example of this current blind street theatre located here and here.