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True, the pickings are slim because there haven’t been many Christmas albums in modern Vietnamese history. But Sơn Ca 3 isn’t only the greatest Christmas album. It also ranks among the greatest albums of Vietnamese popular music. Personally, I’d rate it among the top twenty albums produced and released in the Republic of Vietnam (1955-1975). Even, possibly, a top-ten selection.

There are a number of reasons for my judgment, including the following two reasons. First is thematic coherence. As indicated by an inside cover, the twin subjects of national peace and romantic love are coherently presented and juxtaposed to the context of Christmas. Peace was a national matter; romantic love, a personal one. The weaving between the national and the personal was common enough in many albums released in the 1960s and 1970s. In this case, however, they were tied to the growing popularity of celebrating Christmas among Vietnamese. Especially among urban people, including non-Christian Vietnamese who transcended its religious aspects by joining in the festive atmosphere on the streets on Christmas Eve. The hopes and prayers for peace among the lyrics of many songs were echoes of the intense desire for peace since the 1950s. Lyrics about the experiences of romantic, some happy and some unhappy, reflect evolving sensibilities regarding first love and marriage. (See the first four paragraphs in this post of mine.) Well woven are the national and the personal, revealing two very different concerns that were nonetheless very significant to Vietnamese during this era.

In addition, the album showcases very well-matched assignments of singers to songs. The singers were a strong mix of established and rising stars in the urban musical scene. Which in turn reflect a variety of rhythms and contents. There are nine songs on each side of its cassette tape. Some are slow in pace, some faster, some slower. While most singers were specialists on tình ca [love music], four tunes are bolero. Three are Western songs, including two hymns and one popular winter tune. A third hymn is Vietnamese.

Some background on the cassette tape’s impact on recordings in South Vietnam. Introduced by the Dutch company Philips in 1963, the cassette tape was gaining enormous traction in the Saigon-based republic by the early 1970s. In Western countries at the time, cassette tapes of pre-recorded albums actually cost more to produce, as the length of an album had to match, more or less, the length of the album. Therefore, LP records continued to dominate the marketplace, and it wasn’t until the early 1980s that cassette tapes outsold LPs in the U.S. In South Vietnam, however, producers would purchase blank cassette tapes of 45 minutes on each side then fill each side with music and other contents (e.g., a spoken introduction or farewell). Length had always dictated contents, but the shift to cassette tapes translated to the fact that a typical Vietnamese album was now 90 minutes: a good deal longer than LP records. Producers now needed to find enough contents to keep listeners entertained for an hour and a half.

In the early 1970s, the musician Nguyễn Văn Đông (pen name Phượng Linh) began the album series Sơn Ca, which means the Oriental skylark. The series perfectly illustrated the overlaps between the technological shift and a modified organization to accommodate longer contents. It released ten albums between 1971 and 1975. The last album, in fact, was brought out during the last month of the existence of the Republic of Vietnam. (There was an assigned number to the title of each album, but there was no number 4 and the last album was Sơn Ca 11.) After the initial album in 1971, the following year saw the releases of two albums: one near the beginning of the year to celebrate the Year of the Rat (Nhâm Tý); one near the end to celebrate Christmas. All three albums were collections of many singers.

After a spoken introduction, Side A of the album includes the following recordings.

In other words, Side A navigates among four Christian tunes (two Western hymns; one Vietnamese hymn, and one Western winter tune turned into lyrics with religious meaning); two songs squarely on war and peace; two songs squarely on romantic love; and one song about national peace and romantic love.

Unlike Side A, Side B includes no Western tunes and all Vietnamese. As a result, there are more references about war and peace.

The spoken closing is even shorter than the spoken opening, wishing listeners a season of peace ahead, followed by an excerpt that had ended Giao Linh’s first song on Side B. Indeed, one of my complaints is that the producer didn’t move one of her songs to Side A–and, conversely, one of Thái Thanh’s songs to Side B. But it’s a minor complaint that doesn’t take away the merits of this well-performed and well-produced album.