Reform and Tradition in Early Vietnamese Popular Songs

Jason Gibbs



One of the early participants of the foxtrot, tango, waltz school in the late 1930s and early 1940s was Dương Thiệu Tước (1915-1995) . He played guitar and Hawaiian guitar in the "Orchestre Myosotis", perhaps the first Vietnamese band that played their own original material . They performed at first in private homes and salons, but in time also performed in public at movie theatres and cafes . Tước wrote his earliest songs to French lyrics with titles like "Souvenance" or (Memories) and "Ton doux sourire" or (Your sweet smile) . After that he composed a number of successful songs in Vietnamese such as: "Tâm hồn anh tìm em" (My Soul is Looking for You), "Kỷ niệm một buổi chiều" (An Afternoon's Memory) and "Thuyền mơ" (The Boat of Dreams) .

All of this popular song activity belies his background . He came from an upper-class literate family, educated in the older Chinese-derived “hán” script and in Confucian values . His grandfather Dương Khuê was a mandarin and respected poet (see note 5) . His father, also a mandarin, enjoyed playing chamber music and encouraged his son's early musical studies, buying him a smaller-sized đàn nguyệt, the traditional 2-string lute, which he began studying at age 7 . For the next several years he continued studying the đàn nguyệt as well as the đàn tranh, the 16-string zither, with a variety of teachers from the Southern and Huế chamber music traditions who taught him their repertory and playing techniques .

At the age of 14 he began to study Western music, learning the piano with a French teacher . Then at 16 (in 1931) he began his study of the classical guitar, the instrument that became the enduring musical love of his life . He became very proficient and remained a respected guitar teacher up until his death . Like other youth, he became smitten with Western songs that he heard through phonograph records and talking films . He was especially bewitched by the Hawaiian guitar, an instrument that he also learned to play skillfully .

He continued to write successful, well-crafted songs to dance rhythms throughout the 1940s . Toward the end of the decade his outlook developed and he consciously returned to the traditional music he grew up with as an inspiration for his song writing . In a memoir he later wrote:

”It's my point of view that new Vietnamese music must have compositions that when performed express the Vietnamese national character . In order for that to be possible, we composers should know our national music through the study of an instrument, or through singing this kind of music; only from there can there be development (see note 6) .

He goes on to discuss a trilogy of songs he had written, each song reflecting the music of Vietnam's three principal regions: "Tiếng xưa" (Sounds of the Past) from the South; "Đêm tàn Bến Ngự" (Night's End at the Royal Docks) from the Center; "Thề non nước" (Prayer for the Fatherland, a setting of a poem by Tản Đà) from the North .

"Đêm tàn Bến Ngự" or "Night's End at the Royal Docks" is a composition dating from around 1951 that is based upon the modality of Huế traditional music . Dương Thiệu Tước would have been very familiar with this repertoire from his youth . Around the time this song was composed, he was also spending time in Huế courting his second wife, Minh Trang, a famous singer of the time and a Huế native . He is reputed to have spent time seeking out the folk music of the region and transcribing it into western notation (Lê Hoàng Long 1996: 129-130) .

The song itself is about the encounter of a man with a former love, who sings traditional Huế music, or ca Huế in a boat upon the Hương river . The lyrics themselves refer to two melodic patterns of this repertoire, the Nam bình and the Nam ai . Example 3 couples three passages from the song with excerpts from Nam bình and Nam ai transcribed by Trần Văn Khê from a 78 rpm record on Columbia Records (see note 7) .

The Nam bình figure in example 3.1 is a transposition of a portion of Trần Văn Khê 's example 87, and prominently features a Bb-C-F trichord . This trichord appears in measures 1-2, 7-8, and 9-10 of "Đêm tàn Bến Ngự". The C-D-C-Bb-C of the Nam bình example is found in the song with the text "cho ta nhắn" .

Example 3.1 / Nam bình (after ex. 87, Trần Văn Khê 1962) & Đêm tàn Bến Ngự, mm. 1-9

Đêm tàn Bến Ngự - Night's End at the Royal Docks

Ai về bến Ngự
Cho ta nhắn cùng
Nhớ chăng non nước Hương Bình

translation:

Whoever goes back to Ben Ngu docks,
allow us to send along out message
Surely you remember the huong fatherland

Trần Văn Khê designates the passage presented in example 3.2 as a metabole within Nam bình. The G-F-Eb-F figure in the center of this passage is like measures of 32-33 of "Đêm tàn Bến Ngự" . This figure is also framed by a Bb-C-F trichord in measures 30-31 and 35-36 .

Example 3.2 / Nam bình "metabole" (after ex. 87, Trần Văn Khê) & Đêm tàn Bến Ngự, mm. 30-36

Như nức nở khóc duyên bẽ bàng
Thấp thoáng trăng mờ
Ai than ai thở

translation:

Like sobs crying for a love tinged with shame
The glimmering moon dims
Who 's grieving, who 's sighing?

Example 3.3 presents a transposition of part of Trần Văn Khê 's example 88, a transcription of Nam ai . The succession Bb-C-(F)-D-C-F is very similar to measures 35-37 of "Đêm tàn Bến Ngự" . Additionally the F-G-Bb trichord of the Nam ai example is also found in measure 42-43 of the song .

Example 3.3 / Nam ai (after ex. 87, Trần Văn Khê 1962) & Đêm tàn Bến Ngự, mm. 35-43

Đời vui chi trong sương gió
Ai nhớ thương ai
Đây lúc đêm tàn
Tình đã lạt phai

translation:

What happiness is there in life's fog and wind
Who 's missing who ?
Here at night's waning
Feelings have faded

Performers of "Đêm tàn Bến Ngự" will sing the melody with additional ornamentation and try to reflect the intonation of Huế music . The note Bb of the song is usually sung sharp with extra vibrato, also reflected by the raised Bbs of Trần Văn Khê 's transcriptions in examples 3.2 and 3.3 . It would go too far to say that Dương Thiệu Tước composed his song in Nam ai or Nam bình, but the influence of these modes is unmistakable . Vietnamese audiences have no trouble in identifying this song as "Huế music" . (see note 8)

With such reverence and respect for their traditional music, why did men like Nguyễn Xuân Khoát and Dương Thiệu Tước feel compelled to create works that, however successful, were musical hybrids . Dương Thiệu Tước felt that traditional music was limited by its small repertory of compositions, thus there was a need for new compositions that "use Western techniques to write out musical gestures intensely filled with a national character" (Dương Thiệu Tước 1963, 93) . Nguyễn Xuân Khoát, inculcated with the internationalist outlook inherent in a classical music training, in a 1942 interview spoke of his hope to use what is beautiful from Western music to try to contribute something of value to the world's musical life . He insisted that such a goal was only possible for Vietnamese composers if they wrote a purely Vietnamese music that was informed by the study of traditional music (Nguyễn Xuân Khoát 1942: 28-29) .

Both composers remained advocates for traditional music throughout their lives . Nguyễn Xuân Khoát, later the Premier of the Musician's Association in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, encouraged further research into traditional music and served as an exemplar for many musicians; he has been called the "anh cả" or "elder brother" of modern Vietnamese music (Nguyen Thụy Kha 1996) . Many of his later works were written for traditional instruments . Dương Thiệu Tước, along with his guitar teaching at the National School of Music (Trường Quốc gia Âm nhạc) in South Vietnam, organized concerts which he called "Cổ kim hòa điệu", or "Melodies Harmonizing the Old and New", where traditional instruments played alongside Western instruments, performing a mixed repertoire including his songs .

The arrival of Western culture gave all aspects of Vietnamese life, including music, a strong jolt . A previously conservative culture now rushed to adapt to the changes brought to them from the West . The French occupation, the adoption of new learning and values all brought changes to the social activities and institutions that had previously nourished older musical forms . Some music disappeared; other music underwent changes and development . Still other new musical forms came into existence . New institutions also came into being: institutions very basic to Western musical culture like the conservatory, staff notation, music pedagogy, the concert stage, and, of course, the composer .

The title of this paper "Reform and Tradition in Early Vietnamese Popular Song" requires some explanation, because the Vietnamese do not use the term "popular song" . I have used it because the music I am concerned with corresponds to our Western understanding of popular music; it's a urban music, often market-based, performed with chordal progressions and a rhythm section, distributed through the mass media, etc... But I should emphasize that composers like Nguyễn Xuân Khoát and Dương Thiệu Tước were not trying to create "popular music" but to create Vietnamese music . They were concerned that if their country's music did not advance it might one day be lost . This first generation of Vietnamese composers were committed to the preservation and study of traditional music, but at the same time, as Dương Thiệu Tước put it, they "wished that Vietnam's music could progress and escape its restrictive ancient framework"; they wanted to "lay the first bricks to reconstruct and renovate the nation's music" (Dương Thiệu Tước 1948b: 4) . Simultaneously attracted to and apprehensive about the invasion of Western music, they saw themselves as modern Vietnamese creating Vietnamese music that derived its value from the traditional and met the demands of their changing world .

Notes:

5. Dương Khuê (1836-1898) is well known for the poem "Hồng Hồng Tuyết Tuyết" (Miss Pink, Miss Snow) a staple of the hát ả đào repertory . See the special issue of Nhạc Việt devoted to ca trù (Norton 1996, 34) .

6. Quoted from a hand-written memoir by the composer in a private collection (n.d.) .

7. Columbia records G. F. 568 . Item 73 in Trần Văn Khê 's discography (Trần Văn Khê 1962: 341) .

8. Singers of ca Huế performing on boats on the Hương river in Huế in August 1996 told me that they will include "Đêm tàn Bến Ngự" if it is requested by the audience .

Additional notes by the collector:

9. I attended 2 performances myself in June 2000 on the Hương river with my Vietnamese “bác gái” . In both evenings, the performers of "Đêm tàn Bến Ngự" sang the melody with additional ornamentation to reflect the intonation of Huế music, and every evening they came up with different ornamentation . When asked, they told me which version sung depended on their mood on the day !

Nguồn: Dactrung