tuannyriver

Twenty Vietnamese songs on war and refugees

Bài lời Việt theo sau bài tiếng Anh. Hai bài hao hao nội dung nhưng không giống hẳn. The Vietnamese portion follows the English. I cater each language to different readers and they aren’t entirely the same.

April 30 was of course the climax of the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and the beginning of mass Vietnamese migration to the U.S. But there’s still a lot of the anniversary year left.

11188332_10101652019521487_5536541487843968518_n — April 30, 2015 in Little Saigon, Orange County

Tomorrow is the first day of classes at my institution, and I will continue to honor this anniversary by posting about Vietnamese music related to war and refugees throughout the fall semester and into the spring semester.

KEEP READING!

August 30, 2015 6

Video: Great Books in Fall 2014

It’s New Student Orientation, and earlier today I had the pleasure of meeting students assigned to my Great Book I sections, plus their parents in a separate meeting. I showed both groups the following video about the same class a year ago.

I hope you’ll get a kick watching even though (or because) it highlights activities other than discussion, which constituted the bulk of class time. “I love the discussion that occurs in this class,” wrote a student in the course evaluation, “This class is essentially many intelligent people gathering to discuss ideas and perspectives.”

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August 26, 2015 0

Viola the refugee

GB II Twelfth Night — *APRIL 2015. Neal Kelley assists students staging Act 4 Scene 1 to a Coachella Music Festival setting.*

Continue reading “Viola the refugee” →

August 23, 2015 0

Starting point for a literary history of Vietnamese in the U.S.

What did the first waves of Vietnamese refugees in America think about themselves? What was their mindset regarding their place in the world? Is it possible to write a coherent literary history of their experience?

164871-VHNT-130417-VienLinh-400 — *Cover of the book under discussion, next to a collection by Thái Tú Hạp published three years later ~ Source: nguoi-viet.com*

The search for answers can take different directions and have different starting points. In my opinion, it isn’t a bad idea to begin with a collection of poetry, essays, memoirs, and fiction entitled Tuyển Tập Thơ Văn 90 Tác Giả Việt Nam Hải Ngoại 1975-1981: Selected Poetry and Prose from Ninety Vietnamese Writers Abroad, 1975-1981 (Missouri City, TX: Văn Hữu, 1982). KEEP READING!

August 5, 2015 1

The perfect Beatles love song

Here’s my first blog post ever from ten years ago this week, when I was in grad school. How time flies! It’s slightly edited with added links and photos.

One of my fondest memories of last year was getting together every now and then with two grad friends to strum acoustic guitars and sing Beatles songs. Frequently enough, we did “Here, There and Everywhere,” with art historian Jen in lead vocal, fellow Americanist Matt in solo guitar, and me on rhythm guitar and backing vocal.

We rendered the song as close to the original recording as possible, and at the end of one such rendition, the normally low-key and quiet Matt let out, “It’s the best Beatles song ever!” KEEP READING!

August 2, 2015 0

Bài giới thiệu sách về đệ nhị VNCH

BÀI GIỚI THIỆU: HỒI TƯỞNG CỦA NHỮNG NGƯỜI ĐÓNG GÓP XÂY DỰNG NỀN ĐỆ NHỊ CỘNG HÒA CỦA MIỀN NAM VIỆT NAM (1967-1975)

We have the first guest blog post, of a sort. Tuong Vu asks to post his Vietnamese translation of the introduction to the recent volume Voices from the Second Republic of South Vietnam (1967-1975), and I am most happy to oblige.

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July 26, 2015 15

Please, more Romeo and Juliet in college!

WP_002903 — Spring 2015, finals week ~ My class read *Twelfth Night*, not *Romeo and Juliet,* but it didn’t keep two students from returning to eighth grade to recreate the balcony scene.

Continue reading “Please, more Romeo and Juliet in college!” →

July 12, 2015 1

Family and nation in a Khánh Ly song

To reiterate a point from the last post, nationalism appears here and there in South Vietnamese music, not in one place. Strong arguments will necessarily come from a broad survey of songs, not a few. For now, however, I will zoom in on just one song in the hope of illustrating certain aspects of nationalism in the Republican South.

bannhacViDan — The band Vì Dân (For the People) in 1959, with Hoài Linh holding the accordion (source: khanhly.net)

What is Ba Lần Mẹ Khóc, whose title I have Englished as Thrice Mother Wept, opting for old-style “thrice” over “three times” in order to cut down on syllables? Like Tuổi Trẻ Chúng Tôi, it was recorded only once in South Vietnam. KEEP READING!

July 8, 2015 2

My first time at the AAS

This is the first of two posts on music in South Vietnam. Here is the second post.

The first time at the Association of Asian Studies (AAS), I presented a paper on ethnic nationalism in South Vietnamese music. Thanks to a nice line-up that I put together (including the Australian anthropologist Philip Taylor as chair and discussant) and auspicious scheduling (right after lunch time on Friday and without another panel on Vietnam at the same time), a lot of people in the field showed up to this panel. It seemed, indeed, as if Keith Taylor was the only big name from the U.S. that was missing. (I did see him a few days later at Cornell.) The sizable room was nearly packed: a most desirable outcome for a conference panel anywhere.

Alas, it was a successful outing in most respects but for me. KEEP READING!