Rice Grows Again in Vietnam

Annotation

Scott Ainslie, a blues and country singer based in Brattleboro, Vermont, also taught music history and published a music notation book on the delta blues guitarist Robert Johnson (Robert Johnson - Guitar Signature Tricks). He self-released a bunch of albums on his website, including "The Feral Crow".1 In the song "Don't Obey" he mentioned the Kent State shootings, as well as the 1968 Chicago Demonstrations. The song warned against blindly following Uncle Sam when "they speak to you of glory" and use "words like good and evil". He used Hitler and Stalin as examples of the "horror of obedience". Therefore, he called on people not to obey a country's call for war, remembering that at "Kent State...we cry out, we bleed". In the song "Rice Grows Again in Vietnam", Ainslie reflected on the land of Vietnam decades after the war, where "new life has begun". The song featured Vietnamese vocals from Nguyen Dinh Nghia, who fled Saigon in 1975, and immigrated to Washington DC in 1984. The song was dedicated to him, see note below the lyrics.Sources1Cattail Music: Scott Ainslie↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Annotation — 1968 Chicago Seven / Eight Songs

Scott Ainslie, a blues and country singer based in Brattleboro, Vermont, also taught music history and published a music notation book on the delta blues guitarist Robert Johnson (Robert Johnson - Guitar Signature Tricks). He self-released a bunch of albums on his website, including "The Feral Crow", which contained the Vietnam War song "Rice Grows Again in Vietnam".1 It also had the song "Don't Obey" which mentioned the Kent State shootings. The song warned against blindly following Uncle Sam when "they speak to you of glory" and use "words like good and evil". He used Hitler and Stalin as examples of the "horror of obedience". Therefore, he called on people not to obey a country's call for war, remembering that at "Kent State...we cry out, we bleed". The song also mentioned Tiananmen Square, Selma, and "Chicago" - is this a reference to the Chicago 1968 demonstrations?Sources1Cattail Music: Scott Ainslie↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

Lyrics

English: A family working in the sun / Food must be grown for everyone / So green, new life has begun / Rice Grows Again In Vietnam / Our fathers met here long ago / And with their blood these fields are sown / So silent now, where many fell / So many stories they can’t tell / Receive the weak, receive the strong / And prayers of ours for those who’ve gone / Forgive me for the wrongs I’ve done / Give me the strength to carry on / There will be days when rain must fall / Upon these fields, upon the wall / But may the harvest of these tears / Bring peace to our remaining years / Lift up your tools, lay down your gun / Once peace is lost, nothing is won / Harvest a thousand grains from one / Rice grows again in Vietnam / There will be days when rain must fall / Upon these fields, upon the wall / But may the harvest of these tears / Bring peace to our remaining years / And though the war’s pain is not gone / Rice grows again in Vietnam This song is dedicated to Nguyen Dinh Nghia, a master of traditional Vietnamese flute and composition who taught at the National Conservatory of Music and at Van Hanh University in Saigon in the 1960s, and to his friend and mine, Larry Bohnert. Nghia fled Saigon when the Communists took over in 1975, fearful that his talent might be used in their cause. It took him almost ten years to escape South East Asia, and he landed in the Washington, DC area with his family in 1984. At first uneasy about the expatriate community’s response to a song of…

About the artist

American acoustic blues guitarist, singer-songwriter and blues historian, born 1952 in Rochester, New York, and raised in Alexandria, Virginia; took up guitar in 1967 after hearing Virginia bluesman John Jackson, transcribed all of Robert Johnson's recorded songs for 'Robert Johnson/At The Crossroads' (Hal Leonard, 1992), and is based in Brattleboro, Vermont. 'Don't Obey' appears on his 2004 album 'The Feral Crow'; 'Rice Grows Again in Vietnam' is his song of healing dedicated to Vietnamese flute master Nguyen Dinh Nghia. [Source: Blues.gr interview / Bandcamp / cattailmusic.com]

Themes

Soldier's Perspective · Anti-War · Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall

In collections

1968 Chicago Seven / Eight Songs · Kent / Jackson State Songs · Veterans Memorial Wall Songs