That is, in Western-style music and not traditional music. There are many tragic stories in cải lương. For example, Chuyện Tình Lan và Điệp has been compared to the story of Shakespeare. Truth be told, I’ve never found the romance of Lan and Điệp to be like Romeo and Juliet at all (and vice versa), but it’s another discussion for another time.

A far better choice is the bolero song Đồi Thông Hai Mộ: The Two-Grave Pine Hill. It is a real location in the city of Đà Lạt, and the site of burial of two lovers who committed suicide eight months apart in 1956. There is a Vietnamese Wikipedia entry about it. The tourism website Vietnampeace has published a detailed description about site and legend.

Here is the portion about the lovers, Vũ Minh Tâm and Lê Thị Thảo:

Tâm, a son of a wealthy family in Go Cong, Tien Giang, came to Da Lat to study at the Vo Bi Da Lat School [for military officers]. Thảo, on the other hand, hailed from a poor civil servant family in the highland city of Lang Biang. They met and developed a deep connection, falling passionately in love. They vowed to be together in marriage in the future. After graduating, Tâm returned to his hometown to discuss marrying Thảo with his parents. However, things didn’t go as planned; Tâm’s family vehemently opposed the union because Thảo’s family did not meet their social standards. Tâm’s parents, in an attempt to make him forget his past love, insisted he marry a stranger. Tâm, desperate and unwilling, enlisted in the military to try and forget his heartbreak.

But once again, tragedy struck this love story. Thảo received news that Tâm had passed away. Overwhelmed with grief, she took her own life on March 15, 1956, at Two-Grave Pine Hill, where the couple had made promises to each other. Following Thảo’s wishes, her family buried her at the foot of the pine hill. Ironically, when the death announcement reached Tâm, he was not deceased. When he returned to Da Lat that year to visit his loved ones, he was devastated to hear that Thảo had taken her own life because of him. He wept bitterly in front of her grave, feeling guilty. Later, he followed his beloved in death, leaving a final letter to his family, expressing the desire to be buried next to Thảo so they could be together in the afterlife. This wish was fulfilled, leading to the creation of Two-Grave Pine Hill. The lake at the hill’s base was subsequently renamed Lake of Sighs, bearing witness to this tragic love.

However, after 1975, due to Tâm’s elderly parents being unable to visit the grave in Da Lat regularly, they exhumed his remains and brought them back to Tiền Giang. Meanwhile, Thảo’s family still maintains her grave out of sympathy for this faithful love. This poignant love story has become an endless source of inspiration for poets, writers, and musicians. Despite more than half a century passing, the echoes of this sorrowful tale continue to resonate deeply in the minds of travelers when they recall the lingering ambiance of this tragic love story.

In 1964, or eight years after the suicides, the musician Trần Công Quý (1938-2003) published a song under the pen name Hồng Vân. He gave the song the same name as the site of burial. Quý was a very productive composers who wrote dozens of songs under at least nine pseudonyms in addition to Hồng Vân. In various capacities, he worked at Radio Vietnam, TV Vietnam, and the music company Continental, all based in Saigon.

Trần Công Quý had some quality songs; one of my favorites is Chuyện Người Con Gái Hái Sim: The Tale of the Girl Who Picked Rose Myrtles. Click here to listen to a recording by Như Quỳnh. To this day, though, Đồi Thông Hai Mộ has been his best-known song by a mile. The popularity may have to do with the story of the lovers. In fact, it’s difficult to understand the lyrics without knowing the story above. But it also has to do with the crafting of the melody and the quality of the lyrics.

The song assumes a narrator walking outdoors and ends up at the burial site by the last verse. The narrator recollects the story about the doomed lovers.

Một chiều rừng gió lộng một chiều rừng, nhớ chuyện bên đồi thông,
Nàng năm ấy khi tuổi vừa đôi chín, tâm hồn đang trắng trong,
Như chim non khi ăn còn chưa no khi co còn chưa ấm,
Tuổi thơ ngây bao nhiêu chuyện mưa nắng, nắng mưa lo một mình.

A windy afternoon in the woods, remembering the story by the pine hill,
She was eighteen that year, with a purest soul there was,
Like a young bird that didn’t have enough food or warmth,
An age too innocent to have weathered the elements on her own.

The song is about both lovers, but you could see above that the song begins with the young woman and focuses on her alone for the entire verse. Why did Trần Công Quý go this route instead of bringing up both of them? Perhaps he felt that the focus on just one of them works best at evoking the empathy of the listeners–and it makes most sense to start with the young woman because she was the first to die.

Who knows for sure, but we know that Quý keeps the focus on her in the next verse as well. We hear about her decline then her death. The lyrics, however, doesn’t tell us how she died. There is no indication whatsoever that it was suicide. In fact, the wording of “robbing her life” suggests that it was sickness.

Rồi nàng buồn thơ thẩn chẳng còn ngồi trang điểm qua màu phấn,
Để phai úa đến tàn cả hương sắc, tháng ngày luôn héo hon,
Hoa không tươi khi hay nàng ít nói, chim muông ngừng tiếng hót,
Trời không thương nên đêm đổ giông tố cướp đi cuộc đời nàng.

She grew restless, not even caring about putting on makeup,
She let her beauty fade away, it fades over time,
Flowers grew stale as she spoke less, and birds stopped singing,
The heavens did not favor her, and robbed away her life in a stormy night.

In other words, tragedy strikes quickly, and Quý took it for granted that his listeners already knew the story about Thảo and Tâm. There is no need to reference her suicide in the lyrics, or even the fact that she and the young man were in love but they were kept apart. The lyrics doesn’t even name a reason for her restless state and death. It was, again, assumed that listeners knew the story and filled in the blank for themselves.

We haven’t even heard about the young man, and Trần Công Quý decided to show him only in the chorus. Unlike the second verse, however, the chorus does hint at suicide in the last line. When I first listened to the song decades ago, I didn’t know the story behind the song. I was moved but I also wondered why they both died. With knowledge of the story, I later felt the full effect of the pathos in the chorus, especially đời hợp tan, hợp rồi tan.

Sao người về đây để tìm nhưng thôi đã mất còn đâu.
Ôi! Buồn làm sao, đồi thông xưa nay vắng bóng người yêu,
Ôi! đời hợp tan, hợp rồi tan, như mây kia gặp gió,
Chàng tương tư bao đêm về bên ấy, vắng đi từ đấy!

He came here to find the love forever lost.
Alas, how heart-breaking, the old pine hill but without the beloved,
Alas, lives come together only to break apart, like clouds and winds,
He grew so lovesick, he went away in desire for the other world.

Now that both have died, the last verse tells of a resolution slightly similar to the ending of Shakespeare’s tragedy. “Slightly similar” rather than “similar” because the play shows the Capulets and the Montagues coming together as a unit at the end, but the lyrics of this song obscures and even misleads the fact that many people visited their tombs and in all likelihood left burnt incense in honor of their fated love. By describing the site as if it was abandoned, perhaps Quý intended to continue the sense of the tragic after their deaths.

Rồi mộ chàng đã được ở cạnh nàng như lời xưa thề ước,
Nằm hiu hắt đến ngàn thu an giấc dưới mộ sâu đất khô,
Qua bao năm rêu xanh phủ che kín, âm u chẳng nhang khói,
Trời xuôi chi trên cây còn lá úa, lá xanh kia rụng rồi.

His tomb was placed next to her to fulfill their vow back then,
They lay, sadly and together, in eternal rest under the dry land,
Moss has grown over the tombs over the years, and hardly any incense burnt,
Green leaves already fell off the tree, and all left are withered leaves.

There have been many recordings in the last sixty years, both before and after 1975. Among the first recordings in the Republic of Vietnam were Hoàng Oanh, Dạ Hương, and a duet of Ngọc Giàu and Hoài Vĩnh Phúc that the song as well as cải lương lyrics. The postwar diaspora has produced some recordings such as Hương Lan and Trường Vũ. The return of bolero music to Vietnam has led to many more. Among the most popular on YouTube are Lệ Quyên, Phương Anh, and a duet by Thu Hường and Quanh Lập.

These recordings carry their own charm, yet none is comparable to the recording by Phương Dung for the album Hương Quê 1: Tiếng Hát Phương Dung released in 1972. It is among the greatest albums of popular music produced in South Vietnam. Its release was possibly at the peak of Phương Dung’s long and illustrative career, and her singing of Đồi Thông Hai Mộ represented the peak of her vocal abilities to convey, interpret, and project bolero lyrics.

Listen, for instance, to her articulation at the start of the second line in the first verse at 0:37: Nàng năm ấy… Phương Dung sings it as if loudly declaring the significance of her age. Or at 1:52, the last line of the second verse, Trời không thương, as she drops her voice on the word thương to subtly convey the cruelty of fate.

Most outstanding is her interpretation of the chorus, which might be the top performance of a section in any song in her entire career. Her vocalization of the chorus (which she sings only once in this recording) displays several subtle variations. From a loud and declarative opening Sao... at 2:06, to a throat-crackling of the word đã and a sharpening of the word mất at 2:14. From lowering her voice in the first Ôi… to convey sorrow at 2:19, to a touch deeper lamentation of the second Ôi… at 2:31.

There is more to make this recording par excellence:

  • Trumpet. The recording opens with a dignified sound of a solo trumpet over a drumroll, as if it calls pilgrims and listeners to the site of burial for a ceremony commemorating the lovers. After this opening, the trumpet moves to the background for the most part. It occasionally shows up playing the main riff. At the end, it takes over the main riff, countering Phương Dung’s voice, as the recording fades away.
  • The main riff. The opening trumpet solo is followed a rhythmic riff that leads to Phương Dung’s lucid vocalization of the first verse. This riff is played mostly by the electric guitar, but also the sounds of other instruments appear at times (including the trumpet at the end as already noted). The riff fills in between the lines of lyrics and at the end of verses and chorus.
  • Electric guitar. Besides playing the main riff and the second half of the instrumental break, it is like an all-utility player, doing a small bit here then another little bit there.
  • Saxophone. It was wisely employed to play the first half of the instrumental break. It reappears in the background when Phương Dung sings the last verse for the second time.
  • Percussion. Three sounds travel together: the bongos in the forefront; the congas in the back; and the maracas, the real keeper of time and pace, shaking for most of the recording. (Thanks to Jason Gibbs for pointing them out.) The sound of a cymbal appears sparingly in the recording: once at 0:18 between the trumpet solo and the main riff; then for a few beats at 3:44 when the music moves to the instrumental break. Together, these sounds make up one of the best percussive performances in all pre-1975 recordings that I’ve ever listened to.

Lê Văn Thiện and Y Vân were the arrangers of this album, and the instrumentation is top-notched in this recording.

Check out my post on the Vietnamese equivalent to the Beatles song Yesterday; and the equivalent to the theme song of the movie Love Story. Plus my thoughts on Romeo and Juliet.