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VIETNAMESE_MUSIC


                                              December 11, 2005


If you know nothing of
Vietnamese music, read            If you know something
on.                               about it, proceed for
                                  laughs only.


   First, three key facts about
   Viet Nam:

   (1) The vietnamese spoken
   language is "tonal", as many          Or so I've been told.
   asian languages are, but has          A definitive count of
   even more tones than the others.      a language's tones
                                         seems ellusive.
   (2) The country Viet Nam has been
   occupied/influenced by many other
   countries. Before it was used as             And further, there are
   a chessboard by the US and "red"             substantial
   China it was a French colony.                Vietnamese-American
                                                communities, e.g.
   (3) When we talk about vietnamese            Westminster in Socal.
   culture, we usually mean the                 A lot of the
   dominant culture in the coastal              music I hear comes
   region, but there are also a                 from record labels
   diverse range of "hill tribes"               down there.
   with odd musical characteristics
   of their own.                                       According to the
                                                       Lonely Planet guide to
                                                       Vietnam most music CDs
        So, there are many different                   in Vietnam are imports
        things you might mean when                     from Westminster.
        talking about "vietnamese
        music".

        I think most of us regard the "hill tribes"
        as off on their own, completely isolated,        It would be
        with no effect on the main culture: so           very interesting
        they're a separate subject.                      to be proven
                                                         wrong about
                                                         that, though.
        That said, the way I think about
        vietnamese music is to arrange it
        on an axis of increasing western       There's also a
        influence: "traditional" to "pop".     geographic axis: as
                                               you go north there
                                               is increasing
        I like Vietnamese music                chinese influence.
        quite a bit. It's not
        easy to say much about                    By fiat, I tend to
        why a music appeals,                      ignore this: if it
        but I strongly suspect                    sounds "chinese"
        that in this case it                      it's chinese music,
        has a lot to do with                      and outside the
        the rich range of                         boundary of this
        tonality: it's                            discussion.
        difficult to sing a
        boring melodic line in
        Vietnamese, just
        because of the nature
        of the language.


           I think you can see the influence
           of the language on the design of the
           traditional instruments -- many of
           which are completly unique to my
           knowledge.

           For example:

           There's a stringed instrument with a
           tensioning string that goes from the
           lower bridge to a piece held in the
           mouth: you shape the tone of the
           instrument by changing your mouth's       This instrument is a
           resonance (as with a mouth harp), and     little like a violin
           you can put a flutter on top of the       but it's held
           sound by changing the tension (as         horizontally at around
           with a wah-wah peddle).                   waist height, with
                                                     base against your
                                                     body, and neck pointed
                                                     away from you.


             So the traditional music is
             pretty interesting, but my             ETHNICALLY_AUTHENTIC
             interest isn't limited to that.



                  I find that I often like
                  the forms with strong
                  influences of Western Pop.

                  A lot of the female vocal
                  pieces bear a strong
                  resemblence to "torch
                  singing", showing a clear           HETEROPHILLIA
                  influence of the French
                  colonial period.


                  But I've seen some live performances from the
                  younger generation of Vietnamese-Americans that
                  don't impress me.
                                                           My ideal is
                  It would be nice to to think             someone like
                  that there's a Vietnamese                Khan Ly, whose
                  rapper out there creating a              career stretches
                  breakthrough in hip-hop and              back to the
                  about to appear on the cover of          vietnamese
                  Giant Robot any day now... but           war era.
                  the guys I've seen in action
                  are just Backstreet wannabees.           As it happens,
                                                           she was one of
                  And then there's Trish: a                the first I
                  two-bit version of Britney               heard, on a CD
                  (which makes her worth more              from a label in
                  than the "original", but still           Westminster.
                  not much).
                                                           It turned up used
                                                           at Amoeba, which
                     So as far as my own                   originally was
                     tastes go, perhaps                    the only place I
                     there's a balance point               knew to find such
                     that I like on the                    things...  these
                     tradition-modernity                   days I look for
                     axis?                                 the small
                                                           Vietnamese record
                                                           stores that exist
                                                           hidden away in
                                                           odd neighborhoods.


                                                        These are more of them
                                                        down in the San Jose
                                                        area -- one of the few
                                                        things the South Bay
                                                        has over the North.



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