Asia Times: Patriotic tunes fade out as Vietnam goes pop



	January 8, 2000	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Patriotic tunes fade out as Vietnam goes pop
By Nguyen Nam Phuong

HANOI - ''We earn far less money than the media has reported,'' says 31-year-old Quang Huy, one of Vietnam's most successful pop stars. ''Frankly speaking, many newspaper articles are totally wrong when they say 'singers have earned a lot of easy money' or are 'fabulously rich'.''

Elsewhere in the world, pop stars complaining of being misrepresented in the press is nothing new. In Vietnam, however, the phenomenon of pop culture is barely a decade old.

Vietnam's Communist Party has yet to feel comfortable about the fashionable songsters who are winning the souls of the young, and who often neglect to pay a fervent a tribute to the fatherland.

The party's Nhan Dan newspaper claimed in early October that pop stars made up to $700 for a single performance - not bad in a country where the average annual income hovers around $300 a year. ''The skyrocketing of fees is absurd,'' composer Nguyen Duc Toan said in the same article. ''It doesn't correspond to artistic quality.''

Following Toan's lambast, the Ministry of Finance made assurances that it would devise a special tax for singers while the Ministry of Culture and Information swore to keep a closer eye on the content of songs.

My Linh, at 24 years old, is among Vietnam's premiere divas. ''Asking singers to pay tax is reasonable, [however] I see that the media has not reflected a full and fair picture of singers' lives,'' she has been quoted as saying. ''I myself have paid as high as 20 percent of my earnings in tax after finishing shows.''

Earlier this year, Hong Nhung, another member of Vietnam's emerging pop aristocracy, donated $14,000 to a dengue fever charity, suggesting riches most Vietnamese can barely imagine.

Many Hanoi residents concede that comments such as Toan's may contain at least a grain of truth. A seat at a high-profile concert by one of the country's top performers ranges from around 80,000 to 180,000 dong ($6-13). ''Ticket prices are exorbitant,'' says Hanh, a 23-year-old journalist. ''I never go to concerts - they are just too expensive.''

Nevertheless, Hanh is still a huge fan of singers such as My Linh who, in the past 10 years have combined Western slickness with a heavy dose of romance to woo Vietnamese youngsters while leaving older generations wondering what all the fuss is about. ''Pop stars deserve the money they make,'' she says. ''Young people love their music because they sing about things close to the heart, about love and human relationships. How can you measure that?''

Before the opening up of the economy, or doi moi, in the late eighties, personal relationships and emotion between individuals were deemed deeply unsuitable themes for popular entertainment. Instead, bracing marches with titles like ''Youth Reunite'' and ''I Love my Fatherland'' fulfilled the patriotic role assigned to music, art and literature.

Ly, a 48-year-old businessman, recalls a confrontation he had with the authorities in the mid-eighties. He was walking down a street in the northeastern town of Hong Gai, singing a sad traditional song, when he received a slap on the face and a sharp rebuke from a policeman. ''Previously, nobody dared to sing songs that expressed sadness or the sorrow of life,'' he reflects. ''The authorities never told people not to sing these kinds of songs, but people understood that they would face trouble if they did.''

Things have since changed a lot. VTV, one of Vietnam's state television channels, now airs a lunchtime program teaching people to sing karaoke, including songs by a host of Western artists. Excerpts from MTV, or Music Television, are also screened, showing videos with lyrics and images far more provocative than the Vietnamese cultural commissars allow from domestic musicians.

Many believe that the government has acknowledged that the freeing up of the economy has to be accompanied by a loosening of the cultural reins. The appearance of satellite television and the Internet make the encroachment of Western cultural values inevitable. ''It is too late to go turn back,'' says a Hanoi journalist who has observed the changes over the last decade. ''Once the door is open, it cannot be shut.''

Today, more than half of Vietnam's population were born after the end of the ''American War'' in 1975. While their parents fought perceived US imperial aggression, they themselves are busy embracing that country's cultural imports.

The huge popularity of the Hollywood film ''Titanic'' - distributed entirely on pirated video - and the omnipresent theme song ''My Heart Will Go On'' by Celine Dion, attested to the Vietnamese appetite for well-packaged romance.

Many Hanoian youngsters are keen to stress, however, that they still feel some affinity with the songs of the past. Dung, a 22-year-old computer programmer, says: ''I like several songs that were written during the war time. They leave deep emotions in my heart and also make me feel more optimistic.''

However, he adds, ''It is impossible and unacceptable to force youths to listen to songs from the prior generation. Everyone has their own choice, especially in the spiritual life.''

(Posted Jan 7)

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