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website & blog of Tuan Hoang, Pepperdine University

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Nhật Ngân

The Vietnamese equivalent to the Beatles’ Yesterday

Comparisons of music in different languages and styles could be a hazardous affair.  Even at its best, a comparison could be pretty inexact because one could locate as many divergences and differences as parallels and similarities, if not more.  And the differences may be too strong to render similarities ineffectual.  With this caveat, I nonetheless wish to give this comparison a try.

toiduaemsangsong

A few months ago, I suggested that the Vietnamese equivalent to Where Do I Begin?, the theme song of the movie Love Story, is a ballad by Trần Thiện Thanh about a young couple in wartime.  The song was based on a true story, albeit the deceased at the end is the man rather than the woman as in the novel and movie.  There was also temporal proximity, as the Vietnamese song was written and produced two or three years after the release of the sentimental American movie.  In other words, both songs came out of the early Seventies.

Continue reading “The Vietnamese equivalent to the Beatles’ Yesterday”

Song of war #1 – Một Mai Giã Từ Vũ Khí (Farewell to Arms)

There are different ways to build a top-ten list.  The way I employed for this list is twofold: pick the top song, then poke around to see if I could build a sensible list leading to this song.  When I first thought of this list, I knew right away which song I’ll put at the top.  My decision was pretty firm. It grew firmer when I made an important discovery that, as far as I know, has never been made by anyone before.

Continue reading “Song of war #1 – Một Mai Giã Từ Vũ Khí (Farewell to Arms)”

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