My Lai
1999 · Taxim TX 2038 · Germany: Unified
- Artist
- John York
- Title
- My Lai
- Release
- Claremont Dragon
- Year
- 1999
- Label
- Taxim TX # 2038
- Format
- CD · Album
- Language
- English
- Country
- Germany: Unified
- Genre
- Rock · Rock
- Primary theme
- Post-War
Annotation
The song "My Lai" (Taxim Records # TX 2038) by John York, a American singer/songwriter based in California, focused on the life of a Vietnamese child, called My Lai, born to an American serviceman who fought in Vietnam. The child lived in poverty, on the streets of Vietnam: "young girl dreaming under cardboard sheets". Meanwhile, her father watched the "sun...sinking over Palm Beach". The Vietnamese mother waited for a "letter from the States" to save them from destitution and provide then with a new life. But the father had "left you alone, My Lai, without a home". York named the child My Lai as a symbol of an American destroying, or abandoning, a child's life. The album notes said that this song "tells of a child born of the union between a Vietnamese woman and an American airman during the height of the war. As the child's hope of a better life in America proves forlorn, she is consigned to a life of poverty and despair. The girl's very name recalls the outrage in March 1968 that brought an end to the innocence in us all". (1) The music contained oriental instrumentation (sounding a cross between Vietnamese and Chinese music), such as a guzheng (an 18 strings or more zither)…
Annotation by Justin A. Brummer
About the artist
Unknown - the artist behind "My Lai" could not be identified, and the record could not be located on any admissible source. No release credited to a John York with this title appears in Discogs, and the song is absent from the Bear Family '...Next Stop Is Vietnam' box set. [Source: none admissible]