An exhibition from the archive

Boats Without a Harbour

The war displaced millions of people inside South Vietnam. When Saigon fell in April 1975, around 130,000 Vietnamese were evacuated to the United States; from 1978 hundreds of thousands more left by sea, in small, overcrowded boats. Many never arrived.

This exhibition follows the refugees through the records made for them and about them, and in time by them: charity singles for the war’s children, benefit records for the rescue ships, songs of exile, and the songs of their children. It is drawn from the collection Vietnamese Refugees & Boat People.

Children of the war Luchtbrug naar het leven · Friedenshilfe Vietnam · Kidnapped?
Boats without a harbour Boote ohne Hafen · Reich mir die Hand · Cap Anamur
Songs of exile Les Vagues du Mékong · S.O.S. Boat People · Boat People
Afterwards Miss Saigon · Galveston Bay · 1975

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Beyond the gallery

Eighty-two records

The collection gathers 82 songs and spoken-word recordings about Vietnamese refugees, from the war years to the present, among them Tony Coe’s score for the film Mer de Chine, the songs of Miss Saigon, and records from Japan, Canada, Australia and the Vietnamese diaspora.

Explore the full collection →

Curated by Justin A. Brummer, PhD, from the Vietnam War Song Project archive. Record scans from the project collection; the Dick Maloney label from the Hugo Keesing Collection; the Miss Saigon and Toshiyuki Takahashi sleeves from Discogs; the Rie Asakura sleeve from Tokyo Collectors; the Ghost of Tom Joad sleeve from brucespringsteen.net; the No-No Boy cover from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.