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THE SUMMER OF LOVE…ER, REVOLUTION
BY RICHARD SIKLOS |
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What draws more teenagers than Christina Aguilera or Justin Timberlake in Ho Chi Minh City? Old war songs, that’s what.
The Ben Thanh Audio Video store in central Ho Chi Minh City is teeming with young Vietnamese, many in school uniforms, perusing the shelves for the latest releases. The faded trinity of teen pop—the Backstreet Boys, ’N Sync, and Britney Spears—grins from a photo shrine on the wall behind the cash register. Compact discs of Western music (much of it pirated copies) are a predictably popular choice among these shoppers. But a new genre is gaining fans and ringing up sales among the Britney demographic: compilation CDs with titles that translate into Battalion 307 or Spring of ’68, for example, and feature local pop idols singing updated renditions of patriotic songs about the war with |
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the United States.
For much of the past quarter cent-ury, so-called red music, or nhac do, has been performed wearily but dutifully at school assemblies and public concerts on major holidays like February 3, the founding of Vietnam’s Communist Party. But in the past year or so, the music has undergone a revival in Hanoi karaoke bars and the concert halls of the former Saigon—known locally as HCM City.
Unlike Western music fans who turn to genres like punk and thrash metal to rebel against their parents, young Vietnamese are instead identifying with mom and dad’s music, through tunes like “Salutation to the Heroic Ma River” and “Uncle Ho Still Marches with Us,” which communist soldiers belted out on the battlefield. “It inspires me about history,” says Le Minh Thang, an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Law. Kelvin Hung To, a 22-year-old fashion |
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THANH HOA PROVINCE
NORTH VIETNAM, 1969
Militia girls being trained to fight
against the invading Americans.
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PHOTO BY MARC RIBOUD |
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editor, says his favorite song is “The Youth of the Ho Chi Minh Generation.” (Ho Chi Minh, the former president and spiritual leader of the current communist regime, died 35 years ago this Sep-tember.) “I listen to these songs to respect the time my people devoted their youth and blood,” says Hung To. “They remind me that living must have ideals.”
Still, the fact that red music is drawing a new generation of fans is a strange cultural development, considering that two-thirds of Vietnam’s population of 80 million is now under the age of 30, meaning most of the country is too young to have been directly touched by “the American War,” which ended in 1975. But rather than being born of anti-Americanism—on the contrary, most Vietnamese bear few ill feelings and yearn for closer ties with the United States—young fans are turning on to these battle tunes because they are bored with a steady diet of foreign pop and Vietnamese love songs. |
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| “I LISTEN TO THESE SONGS TO RESPECT THE TIME MY PEOPLE DEVOTED THEIR YOUTH AND BLOOD.”
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Some bands and artists play their red music straight, as the sorrowful or inspiring anthems their composers intended them to be. Others remix their renditions by setting them to pulsing dance beats or adding new lyrics. “The new versions are not as good as the old but they have a new style, and people like that,” says Tran Xuan Mai Tram, a 22-year-old piano teacher and coordinator at the government-run Cultural Youth House across the street from the Ben Thanh CD shop.
It was Tran’s notion to hold a special red-music event featuring only pop acts at the theater’s outdoor concert venue. Composer Pham Dang Khuong, the cultural center’s deputy director, agreed it would be a nice idea “to remind the youth about this kind of music”—but based on similar efforts in the past, “we thought no one would come.” Instead, the first red-music concert, in March 2003, sold out, and the showcase has now become a much-anticipated event, |
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THE VIETNAMESE
Girl band May Trang. |
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The pop princesses of May Trang disagree. The foursome stand on an HCM City street corner at nightfall in impossibly tight matching gold pleather outfits with low waistlines and tiny spaghetti-strap tops. Hair and makeup are garishly model-perfect. The four girls’ mothers are perched on the nearby mopeds that brought them to tonight’s concert performance. Between last-minute applications of blush and lip gloss, the girls acknowledge that they can’t possibly know what it was like to live through the times these songs were written for. But that’s precisely why they are increasingly relevant. “These kinds of songs are eternal—they glorify the love of the country,” says the group’s leader, Thu Ngac, 21. “People can sing them anywhere and anytime.”
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