Don’t Despair, Dear I
As much as I worship the ground he spitted on, I am fucking done with Trinh Cong Son’s albums. Seven LPs (“Tinh Khuc Trinh Cong Son”) released in Viet Nam within the last couple of months: two instrumentals from Lang Van production, two from Hong Nhung, one from Lo Thuy, Thai Hoa, and Khanh Ngoc, and let not include an array of albums in which three or four of his songs slipped in. How ridiculous is that? I am sure singers have many respect for Trinh, but they are abusing his work for their own good even if they don’t intend to. And they all have legitimate reasons for singing his music: I am in the stage of my life where I need Trinh’s music; I could feel his lyrics; I get a strong connection with his words, like telekinesis; Everytime I sing his music, I could feel what he was saying and what he had been through. Last year, the trend was how to make Trinh’s music sounds difference by throwing in some jazz and semi-classical elements or screaming their lungs out. This year, they want to stay with the original context and sing his music the way he intended. What a bunch of bullshit. It’s sad to witness his work being desecrated to the point of no control. I am sure Trinh Cong Son’s timeless work will never die, but right now it is becoming diegetic music. It’s really a damn shame.
here’s a new interview of your Velvet Rose :) indeed it’s a good one. She also said a bit about her relationship with TCS.
http://www.vnexpress.net/Vietnam/Van-hoa/2006/06/3B9EA6B4/
I have been initiated by my parents to TCS’s music since I was baby, when we used to sleep all together in the same bed of the tiny appartment we got when arriving in Europe after “Giai Phong” of 1975. My parents and I since ever are used to listen to TCS’s songs and, even when “cheap mi` an lien`” music was successful in VN, we never stopped enjoying Trinh’s work. TCS was first blamed to be “phan quoc” in VN, his music was forbidden after 1975, for a while.
And of course, it’s when he died that his music really started to be promoted there. And like you say Donny, strangely, it’s all the sudden all singers in VN start to have “strong connection with [Trinh's] words (…)” and “feel his lyrics”…
Well, well…
Luat, she likes intelligent men. I am mad intelligence that only nerdy chicks wanna get with me :)
Funny how she talks about TCS and his love for skinny women. As the girl leaves, he looks after her and decribes her shoulderd as “Vai em gay guoc nho nhu canh vac ve chon xa xoi.” I guess, only TCS looks at girls’ shoulders while most of men’s eyes will glue to her butt, “Mong em day do nhu canh vat mo.” :)
haha you’re funny dude. I never thought of that. Damn your mind is in the gutter, get it out now :)
Dude, you’re a guy or what? Don’t tell me you don’t check out girls’ ass. I am sure the ladies do the same, right? Rabit? :)
As you can see, TCS was very good at his wordplay. Maybe he was looking at her ass but wrote about her shoulder instead. Who knows!
How dare you drag me out of the closet ?!?!!! Now my true identity is revealed. You keep calling yourself a friend but instead you give out insidious misinformation about me from time to time. Double-crosser… Emperor Palpatine… Master… I shall destroy you ! Lol.
I found this Khanh Ly’s old album: Doi Cho Ta The and it’s quite refreshing from all the pop ballads that all the singers singing these days. It contains couple of well known ones like Uot Mi, Thuo Bong La Nguoi… but other tracks are ones that you rarely heard anyone else sing. Like Ngay Xua Khi Con Be, Hom Nay Toi Nghe, Em Den Tu Nghin Xua, Rung Xanh Xanh Mai.. etc. And to make this album even better, it wasn’t mix in the typical TCS’s mix… but it was all just accoustic guitar and other accoustic instrument.
But beware, Khanh Ly’s CD are like $12-15 a pop.. it doesn’t come cheap. Here’s the link to her website , http://www.khanhly.com/doi_cho_ta_the.htm.
Hey donny,
a friend gave me this website to check it out, gotta say your views on Vietnamese singers overseas are quite spot on. good 2 see some real opinions, coz i went to viet forums and all they do is praise singers, no matter how shiet and predictable their songs r…especially Minh Tuyet, cant get anymore unoriginal than what she does to her song choices and outfit.
Uh oh, looks like the snake is sneaking out to bite again. Didn’t even mentioned your name. So I am not sure where you get the inside info from. Who would believe someone with a heart of a lion is a rabit? :)
TTBlue, yeah man, that old thang ain’t cheap.
peej, gotta tell it like it is man. That’s why this is not the average-musical-forum kind of site :)
Hey Donny did I tell you I am recording an all TCS cd as my first project? :) Just kidding ! Hey may be I will so Donny can poke fun at me !! Trinh’s music with just a piano or guitar in the background sounds like a good combo to me may be with a black and white minimalist CD cover? :)
hey donny don’t get me wrong. I’m a guy 100% certified :) I just find it’s funny when reading your comment ’bout asses when we’re talking a beautiful line like “Vai em gay guoc nho nhu canh vac ve chon xa xoi” :)
Miyo, now thanks to donny we all know your nickname is Rabbit (donny mispelled again). Do you mind telling us why you’re called that? :)
Well, if you go to his other blog, you can see the explanation. Both rabbit & snake. :)
Well Luat, she is as cute as a rabit, and bite like a snake. You can tell if you read her comments :)
TCS is being romanticized too much. My family lived near him, and he often got really drunk. I agree with you though, his music is being exploited.
No no no no no… What I meant was, check out my chomping device. Incisors (rabbit) & canines (snake). :P
Hung, there’s a difference between loving the art and loving the artist that produces it.
Ye^u nghe^. thua^.t cho*’ ddu*`ng ye^u ta’c gia?. Ye^u nha.c TCS cho*’ ddu*`ng ye^u TCS. Ye^u tho* Nguye^~n Ta^’t Nhie^n cho*’ ddu*`ng ye^u con ngu*o*`i NTN. Ye^u website visualgui cho*’ ddu*`ng ye^u Donny (hahaha… got to throw this in…)
Miyo, do you rent out your chomping devices? ;-)
Hahaha… Phong Lan, good one ! :) If I can rent it out, I would, but contemplating very seriously on braces… :(
maybe its time to listen to other writers?
Who do you suggest, Tannie ? Pham. Duy, Du*o*ng Thie^u. Tu*o*c’, -Doan` Chua^n? Tu*` Linh, Va(n Cao… Ooh, is Va(n Cao good ? Heard TCS was his rival writer but don’t know what that was all about.
I think TCS tried but couldn’t see her butt because she was wearing ao dai trang.
To me, TCS lyrics are full of sex. Did he describe how his girl masturbated in Ru em tung ngon xuan nong? :-)
You’ve got quite a list going on there Miyo, I really just have to add Tu Cong Phung and Le Uyen Phuong to your list (although skip Tran Thai Hoa’s Le Uyen Phuong CD, its CRAP). Le Uyen Phuong is often overlooked- they’ve got a great songbook.
My tastes in Viet Music is varried, so this is probably going to be a unpopular opinion, but Lam Phuong and Anh Bang are worth a mention. Dissasociated teh term “sen”, and they have beautiful works like “Em Di Roi” and “Khuc Thuy Du”- probably not as artsy fartsy abstract, but nice songs- i mean, if Khanh Ha and Y Lan can find something from theem to sing and dedicate a whole album to, it couldn’t be that bad right? =D
Miyo, Van Cao is an older generation and the first writer-composer of modern Vietnamese music.
Ouch! That hurts, Phong Lan. It should be the other way around, love Donny but not Visualgui. Donny is the nicest playa you’ve ever known :)
Rob, your mind is as foggy as mine, but I have to disagree with you about not be able to see curves in ao dai. Check out girls in ao dai trang next time, dude. Hahahaha! As for “Ru Em Tung Ngon Xuan Nong,” are you refering to “Ban tay em trau chuot them cho ngan nam?” Hmmm! “trau chuot” is an interesting word. :)
Donny, you’re right about ao dai these days. I was thinking about the old ao dai.
I never could understand TCS lyrics. One day, I used my foggy mind to think; and things started to make sense. You picked the right line :-) Below are portions of my translation.
Ru mãi ngàn năm từng phiến môi mềm – Bàn tay em trau chuốt thêm cho ngàn năm (He performed oral with the help of her fingers).
Thôi ngủ đi em, mưa ru em ngủ – Tay em kết nụ, nuôi trọn một đời Nuôi một đời người – Mùa xuân vừa đến xin mãi ăn năn mà thôi… (He knew it’s so phien to get her pregnant)
Còn lời ru mãi vang vọng một trời – Mùa xanh lá vội ru em miệt mài (Loi ru is TCS way of saying moan. It’s spring time, mating season, hurry, get busy).
Rob, your interpretation of Ru Em Tung Ngon Xuan Nong is very interesting, I have to do research about this. No wonder it is one of my all time favorite song.
Donny,
I have to agree that it is no way you can see the shoulder of the crane when it flight away from you! But then, if that was what he really meant, the whole line of lyric painted an unattractive picture!:)
Miyo,
Man, you are cute!
Now I understand why you like to use this sign :P! :))
Sorry to rub it in but I just cannot resist!:)
All kidding aside, unless you plan to advertise for Colgate, they look fine! If you did not point it out I couldn’t even tell.
let me put phong lan’s words more frankly (perhaps crassly):
love the sugar mama’s milk not the mama.
“although skip Tran Thai Hoa’s Le Uyen Phuong CD, its CRAP.” Word up, Tannie. You know exactly what you like and dislike. Why do you worry so much about what people consider something “sen” or not? Who care what they think. As long as the music speaks to you, it’s all good. Call me “sen” all you want but I love Anh Bang’s “Chuyen Mot Dem,” in which he witnessed the death of a child in his/her mother’s arms. That was some real experience, and he has recreated that image with his song. As for Lam Phuong, his “Biet bao gio tro ve Viet Nam, tham dong lua vang tham con do chieu hoang” cuts like open heart surgery. So it doesn’t matter to me what people label the music. I like it, I like it. I don’t, I don’t.
Robbie, Robbie, if TCS knows the way you interpreted his work, I am sure he’ll be rolling out of his grave. How about “Dang em troi dai troi mai troi tren ngan nam?” Does that mean she’s squirming her body as she’s pleasuring herself? Hahahaha! Keep floating, baby!
I had enough of TCS…period! when I heard Phuong Thanh start to do her version of TCS’s songs, I knew TCS will come back from the dead and scream, ‘leave me alone you idiots.’
enough enough!
Tran Thai Hoa has no soul, let him sing Duc Huy-it suits him best.
heres a goodie
” Một người thợ săn âm thầm mang súng lang thang vào rừng .
Bầu trời bình minh muôn ngàn tia nắng sớm xuyên màn sương.
Một vài cụm mây như chùm hoa trắng bay trong trời xanh,
Rất xinh và rất xinh.
Kìa một bầy nai vương sừng ngơ ngác phóng nhanh vào rừng .
Còn một bầy chim vô tình vẫn hót líu lo đùa chơi.
Nào ngờ thợ săn đang cầm cây súng bắn lên cành cây.
Chim chết chim lạc bầy
Ngay hôm sau cũng nơi này
Chim đang kêu vang gọi bầy .
Nào ngờ bên góc cây
Người thợ săn hôm trước
Núp thân sau lùm cây.
Chim yên tâm sống vô tình,
Yêu thương nhau trên đầu cành .
Đạn vụt bay đến nhanh
Cả bầy chưa tung cánh
Xác rơi trên đất lành .
Rồi người thợ săn âm thầm mang súng mang chim trở về .
Lề đường bầy chim không thù không oán hót cho người nghe .
Rượu nồng thịt thơm bao người nâng chén no say đùa vui
Đâu biết chim ngậm ngùi .”
there are only a few people i absolutely love with TCS songs. Khanh Ly, well the younger Khanh Ly who doesn’t get filtered through bad producers (that means you tung chau), and Ngoc Lan especially love Loi Buon Thanh. =D
Tannie,
Everybody live in peace and harmony sounds pretty good to me.
I hope the author of the lyric is a vegetarian!:)
However as A. Whitney Brown once said: “I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.”, there is no guaranty there either!
On the same note, what should we do with Pooh Bear? No more honey for Pooh from now on then unless he can get it from the store!:(
BTW, I don’t believe the phrase “Lề đường bầy chim không thù không oán hót cho người nghe” is true! We, human, tend to humanize the things we love. Come on, you know better than this, the birds do not sing for us!
Have you ever heard Dam Vinh Hung (Dam Khac Nho)with TCS’s songs? Never know who could sing TCS’s songs worst than this guy?
You guys should listen LeThu in HaTrang (before 1975). It is way way better than any singer on this song.
http://www.suutap.com/trinhcongson/default.asp?mucid=2
guess that makes me human then. heh. humanity is pretty cool.
btw thats “nguoi tho san va dan chim nho” from anh bang. i have no idea if he’s vegetarian.
htc: i guess thats one way to think of it. ho’t is differnt from ha’t (my vietnamese isn’t great correct me if i’m wrong). khong thu khong oan hot cho nguoi nghe, could mean that they are chirping freely and not specifically for us. but hey, guess what, the author writes that the birds ho’t, and you humanize them even further by saying that they sing =D. birds must sing for you!
actually reading it over, khong thu khong oan hot cho nguoi nghe, nguoi is the tho san. birds don’t know better haha. okay yeah… =P ignore me
One line in Diem Xua that really struck me is:
“ngay sau soi da cung can co nhau” Soi da cung can co nhau..vay thi tai sao nguoi thu ghet nguoi? We should all be at peace.
tannie,
I was just trying to find the message that Anh Bang, sorry I didn’t know this song is one of his, tried to deliver. There is an old thinking that in the society as the whole, our lives are intertwined. One’s happiness affects the other’s.
The last two lines of the song reflects just that:
“…Rượu nồng thịt thơm bao người nâng chén no say đùa vui
Đâu biết chim ngậm ngùi .”
However, using the image of the birds and the hunter here is wrong. What the hunter supposes to do? Hunting is his vocation, his job. He still has his family to feed.
Anyway, I already say more than I should here! It’s just some of my crazy thoughts! Ignore me! :)
“ru ma~i nga`n na(m tu+`ng phie^’n mo^i me^`m…”
i think TCS did want to mention about the… “holy lips” (mo^i tha’nh) :-)
OMG, I can’t believe that TCS lyrics’ can be translated to some weird thinkings. I would say something similar “I knew TCS will come back from the dead and scream, ‘leave me alone ….’”. At different times and regions, people have different views about the beauties. The Vietnamese women are mostly skinny and natually don’t have front and back…specially I think the songs are targeted to the young Vietnamese girls. BTW, Duyen Anh ( the famous writer before 1975) wrote the love story where he borrowed TCS’s Nhu Canh Vat Bay lyric. The lyric fits the story very well. In the story, the girl got cancer and she becomes weak and skinier, she even looses her hairs and died at the end. That’s why the song has the lines like: “vai em gay^` guo^c. nho? ….tu+` luc’ du+a em ve^`, la` biet^’ xa nghi`n trung`…”, this is when the girl says goodbye to her lover since she doesn’t want her lover to know that she got a cancer. The guy watched the girl and feel the sadness from her back and the skinnier she got.
Anyway, I respect TCS, I don’t think he is one of the musicians that put any kinds of hidden masty meanings in his songs even those meanings are part of the real life.
DTDT, I don’t think TCS’s lyrics contain nasty meaning either. It’s the nasty minds like mine that make them sound obscence. I respect TCS, too. Like the singers always say, particularly Tran Thu Ha, everyone sees something different in Trinh’s music. :)
But even if TCS meant to have hidden behind his lyrics, I don’t find anything wrong with them. After all, one our great poets Ho Xuan Huong was famous for this kind of playfulness. :)
Donny, I couldn’t agree with you more about Ho Xuan Huong. However, it’s playfull or not depends on the reader’s mind. I love her work and even more to know that she was the first woman to express herself so freely in such close confucius society like old time VN.
Back to TCS, I absolutely admire the man with beautiful mind and gentle words like him. For the first time, I thought it’s an interesting interpretation on Trinh’s words the way Rob thought. I couldn’t help myself but laughing to hard. And Rob, is it all you can think of TCS lyrics whenever you listen to them? Not sure if Trinh’s intention is to help you to get through the night there. Take a cold shower, would you!
Chau, I think “Diem Xua” is about an ex-lover that Trinh thought of her. Not sure if world peace is what he is talking about, though. Correct me, if I am wrong. Please.
Donny, I don’t have problem with hidden meanings behind the lyrics or poems either since most of the Vietnamese artists are very good at talking about those in the “nice” ways like in Ho Xuan Huong works, in the song “Cam on em” (not sure who is the writer), “Thang sau troi mua”, some of Pham Duy’s songs … Just never heard about TCS’s songs :-)
i thought diem xua was about thanh thuy =D Thanh thuy is very good with tcs songs too.