Trịnh Công Sơn and Phạm Duy weren't just legendary song writers, but poets. Thái Thanh and Khánh Ly are great singers. When I saw Thái Thanh in concert in Washington DC around 1983, the entire auditorium was sobbing. I have never seen more people cry in one place.
In Windhoek, Namibia, I would sing Trịnh Công Sơn or Phạm Duy lyrics to myself, even when I was walking around.
I'm bringing up Thị Nở, Trịnh Công Sơn and Khánh Ly, etc., to point out that every society has cultural resonances and layers of history outsiders have no clues about, but they can learn, bits by bits, if they're interested.
Walking around Vung Tau recently with an American expat, I realized he knew next to nothing about Vietnam, yet he probably would have married a Vietnamese woman, he said, if Covid hadn't chased him out of the country for two years. Several times, he even forgot he was in Vung Tau.
As with Biden and, frankly, every other American politician, Americans are quite comfortable lecturing or caricaturing other people, though they're clueless about foreign societies. It is astounding, the narcissism. In a recent YouTube video, Gonzalo Lira recounts how Americans portrayed themselves as central to the rescue of trapped Chilean miners in 2010, though they contributed nothing more than one drill bit!
A note about Khánh Ly: She began her career by performing in Da Lat nightclubs from 1962 to 1967. Before singing in Saigon for an audience of one thousand in 1968, Khánh Ly was so nervous, she grabbed Trịnh Công Sơn's shoulder, so he snapped, "Let go, stand properly and sing!" ["Bỏ tay ra và đứng hát cho nghiêm chỉnh!"]. Unsteady, she took off her high heels and sang barefoot, thus earning the nickname, "The Barefoot Queen."
Below is Khánh Ly singing a Trịnh Công Sơn song. Although the audio was recorded in Saigon in 1968, this video was actually filmed at a Buddhist temple in Santa Ana, CA, in 1991. To make it look old, it was done in black and white. The original guitarist was Trịnh Công Sơn, but since he wasn't in the US, someone else had to stand in.
6 comments:
“Americans are quite comfortable lecturing or caricaturing other people, though they're clueless about foreign societies. It is astounding, the narcissism. In a recent YouTube video, Gonzalo Lira recounts how Americans portrayed themselves as central to the rescue of trapped Chilean miners in 2010, though they contributed nothing more than one drill bit!“
I know absolutely nothing about moon landings, but the more I learn about America, the more those landings look like bullshit - because bullshit is Americas’ number one product.
Yo Biff,
You're just an anti-American Russian agent, that's all. Clearly you haven't watched these superhuman astronauts after their successful trip to the moon and back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI_ZehPOMwI
How can you not be moved by their exuberance?!
Linh
P.S. Love it or leave it, man, and if you have already left, you should move to the moon! It's an American earth.
P.P.S. And take your Putin standees with you. I'm sure you have several.
“It's an American earth.“
It used to have a good atmosphere, but I still would rather live in Russia.
there's a video of stanley kubrick telling you how the moon landings were fake and he knew cause the federalies enlisted him to make the fake videos. look up the van allen belt. can't get thru it with our current tech let along fifty years ago. and when did you ever see the feds stop a successful program which we're told the space game was.
as for the dc vietnamese scene, i was a short term bartender for a vietnamese friend who was involved with a viet night club in 77/78. during a break sitting with his wife watching the gorgeous vietnamese singer doing: don't that make my brown eyes blue, i asked his wife what were the chances of me meeting the singer. the reply was: for her (meaning the singer) you are same as nigger.
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