Artist Various Artists

Release Tiếng hát quê hương (Chants du Vietnam)

Year Unknown

Label Union des Intellectuels Vietnamiens en France # SF 5.70.146

Format LP · Album

Country France

Language Vietnamese

Songs here 11 in the archive

Unknown date · Album · Union des Intellectuels Vietnamiens en France # SF 5.70.146 · France

Released in France, by the "Union des Intellectuels Vietnamiens en France" ("Union of Vietnamese Intellectuals in France") (# SF 5.70.146), it contained multiple Vietnam War-related songs, in different genres, including Cải lương genre ("reformed theatre"), a form of music theatre that developed in the early 20th century, containing elements of Vietnamese Opera and southern Vietnamese Folk Music, and with colonial French influences. These song may be performed by people from the then South Vietnam, but are patriotic towards North Vietnam, and of course support unification, and reject US intervention. It also had songs in the Nhạc đỏ ("Red Music") - which developed at the beginning of the 20th century, containing elements of Western Classical Music, while lyrically focusing on socialism and independence, as well as containing anti-imperialist / colonialist sentiment. It's also influenced by revolutionary music from China and the USSR. Some also contained elements of Vietnamese Folk Music.

Several songs focused on South Vietnam, such as "Vi mien Nam" ("For the South") and "Saigon quat khoi" ("Saigon Rise"). The track "Ho Chi Minh dep nhat ten nguoi" ("Ho Chi Minh, Our Dear Uncle") of course focused on the North Vietnamese leader Hồ Chí Minh. The title track "Bài ca Đồng Tháp gửi anh chiến sĩ giải phóng" ("Dong Thap Song of the Liberation Soldier") - Dong Thap is a southern Vietnamese province in the Mekong Delta, bordering Cambodia - performed in the Cải lương genre ("reformed theatre"). The narrator noted "to the soldier of the East... his hometown is the central fields". It contained many references to combat: "on the way to liberation... his footsteps were all over the battlefield... enemies fall". It notes the difficult conditions for the soldiers "passing... over many mountains, hungry for rice without salt". It encouraged the soldier to remain positive: "In the midst of hardship and danger, remain optimistic". It included scenes of victory: "American invaders lost badly, downing planes, shelling tanks... broke the heads of the aggressive Americans".

The songs