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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
   asian languages are, but has
   even more tones to it than
   usual.
      
   (2) The country Viet Nam has been    
   occupied/influenced by many other    
   countries, even before it was used           And further, there are
   as a chessboard by the US and "red"          substantial
   China.  E.g. it was a French colony          Vietnamese-American
   for a long time.                             communities, e.g.
                                                Westminster in Socal,
   (3) When we talk about vietnamese            and a lot of the
   culture, we usually mean the dominant        music I hear comes
   culture in the coastal region, but           from record labels
   there are also a diverse range of            down there.
   "hill tribes" with odd musical
   characteristics of their own.


        So, there are many different things you
        might mean when 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 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 is a little like 
           resonance (as with a mouth harp),         a violin but it's held
           and you can put a flutter on top of       horizontally at around
           the sound by changing the tension         waist height, with    
           (as with a wah-wah peddle).               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".  I have the               EXO
                  impression that Vietnamese
                  singing style owes a lot  
                  to the French colonial    
                  period.                   
                         
                                            
                  But I've seen some live performances
                  from the younger generation of
                  Vietnamese-Americans that don't
                  impress me:  it would be nice to
                  to think that there's a Vietnamese
                  rapper out there creating a
                  break through in hip-hop and
                  about to appear on the cover of
                  Giant Robot any day now... but
                  the guys I've seen in action are
                  just Backstreet wannabees.
                  And then there's Trish,
                  a two-bit version of Britney
                  (which makes her worth more
                  than the "original", but
                  still not much).


                         So as far as my own tastes go,
                         perhaps there's a balance point
                         that I like on the tradition-
                         modernity axis?





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