Sentimental and
Socially Oriented Folk Songs
RIDDLES
(Saigon-1954)
Who can count the rice stalks in the field
The meanderings of the river
The layers in the clouds.
Who can sweep clean the leaves in the forest
So that I can ask the wind
To stop shaking the trees.
Who knows where lives the wind
And when it will stop its wanderings
To come home.
Who knows how old is the moon
So that I can say tender words
Tender words of love for you.
Who can sleep without dreaming
I know I always dream
When moonlight descends in the night
I will wait for you on the veranda
Then you come in the night
Like a boat arriving to the land of love.
Who can find the heart of another
I know you have found mine.
Here is a song to bring poetry to life
A gift I offer to the girl of my dreams.
With ÐỐ AI, I transformed the ''hát du'' tune of traditional Ả Ðào (Songstress) singing into a love song with a folk flavor. Following this, I used the Huế pentatonic scale to tell a sad love story, similar to the tale of Ngưu Lang Chức Nữ (the Buffalo Boy and the Heavenly Princess):
PROMISES
(1954)
She sat by the river listening to the flowing water
He sat on the other side gazing at flowers floating down the current
Endlessly it rained and rained, the spring gushing with pain
They had promised to cross the river soon and stop the autumn rain
Life had put an ocean between they who once vowed
To be together with the passing of seasons.
Love never dies, they pledged they'd be happy together
But rain kept falling and they were still apart.
Water kept flowing, their eyes were misted up
Their souls floated down the pallid water
Was that what fate wants? A bridge was not allowed
They prayed to the river to bring them together
They walked to the river and into the swift flowing current
Engulfing water... the autumn rain suddenly stopped
Down the stream a love unfulfilled gently floated
In Eternity they pledged to meet, their love enriching the life of humanity
It was not until after the Geneva Agreement was signed that my reformed folk song style truly found its place. NGÀY TRỞ VỀ (THE DAY HE COMES HOME) and NGƯỜI VỀ (THE MAN COMING HOME) were written during my study tour in France.
THE DAY HE COMES HOME
(Indian Ocean-1954)
Today he returns, walking on the dyke,
Limping towards the bamboo grove.
Under the golden sunlight, the vegetable garden smiles
To welcome the returning man.
Mother feels her way to the pond
Holding his shirt she thinks she's dreaming.
What a pity my sight is gone from all the waiting.
Today he returns, in the kitchen full of joy
He tells his story, the story of a soldier
Who lived passionately but thought often of his village.
The sun is setting, he comes out
To look at the garden in the dim light, the untended field.
Choking back tears, he promises to come out early tomorrow.
Coming home... a farmer on his crutch tills the field
Coming home... a loving buffalo helps him with all his heart
Coming home. The rice and the corn sing outside the village.
In the cool breeze, in the blue moonlight,
A disabled returned soldier lives a life of peace.
Coming home... The flowers have missed you for well on ten years
How quickly they fade when they miss tender love.
Children play by the buffalo herd
Their songs echoing in the dawn.
Feeling sorry a wistful breeze sings in a sad voice
A song that tells the story of a young woman
Whose dreams of family have been destroyed by war.
Stop the anger, stop the pain,
Spring has come back all over our homeland
Don't be shy when I say hello to you in the field.
Coming home... a disabled soldier takes a sweet bride
When the day's chores are done
Side by side, they study
Day after day, a happy wife carries rice and cooks dinner.
So sweet the rice
Cold may be the weather
The loving couple enjoys conjugal life...
THE DAY HE COMES HOME was the second time I wrote about the disabled soldier. In 1947, I talked about a Vietnamese who fought on the frontiers (chàng ra lính, nơi biên khu tung hoành), lost his arm, and received the gratitude of the whole people... A decade later, when peace arrived at Geneva, another wounded soldier came home. However, this one has to plough leaning on his crutches and only had a buffalo to help him... But has there ever been peace in our country? Fifteen years later, we again saw the image of the returned soldier on his wooden crutches or in the wreathed coffin in my song entitled KỶ VẬT CHO EM...
After the song NGÀY TRỞ VỀ (THE DAY HE COMES HOME), I felt I had to write one more song about the end of the war: NGƯỜI VỀ (The Man Who Comes Home). I wrote this song one night when I was wandering in the streets of Paris. This song is about the joy of the mother, the wife and the children mentioned in NHỚ NGƯỜI RA ÐI (Thinking Of The One Who Left) that I had written during the Resistance:
THE MAN WHO COMES HOME
(Paris-1954)
Mother, do you know I have come back?
Tonight time stands still to listen
To the wind of joy in our heart
Your wrinkled smiling face suddenly fills with tears.
Mother dear, you look so old
Things must have been hard at home in the last few years
You sat by your shadow
Until your hair turn white.
Mother, mother, a pagoda bell is ringing
Do you remember all these missing souls?
White rings of smoke re rise from the incense
Our hearts fill with loving memories
Of the soldiers who died in the mist far away...
My beloved, do you know I have come back?
Looking at you I still think I'm dreaming
Never hoped spring would come again
Never suspected I would be near my sweet rose.
I remember all the pains I went through
When sadness seemed to block every step of the way
But the country was not at peace
And we had to put our love aside...
Darling, darling, come closer to me
Remember our years of deprivation
When love was like the leaves of willows
Scattered by the violent storm
As lovers cried for lovers in the night
My children, do you know I have come back?
I can hear your innocent voices singing outside.
War has taken away many young years
Your childhood saw so much suffering.
But the separation is now over
The young shoots will grow in the arms of love
Like the autumn breeze coming after summer
Love will bring verdant rice to the scorched fields.
My children, laughter is filling the air
But think of the homeless children
Helpless young fledglings
In the wintery weather
Let's share a simple meal with them...
As early as 1954-55 during my stay in Paris I started work on the song cycle CON ÐƯỜNG CÁI QUAN (The Main Highway, more commonly known as The Mandarin Road) to protest against the division of the country by the Geneva agreement. Part One, comprising Hỡi Anh Ði Ðường Cái Quan (O Young Man On The Highway), Tôi Ði Từ Lúc Trăng Tơ (I Wtarted Out When The Moon Was Young), Ðồng Ðăng Có Phố Kỳ Lừa (Kỳ Lừa Street In Ðồng Ðăng), were completed during those days, but four more years of gestation were to pass before I finished the cycle. In my mind, Trường Ca (song cycles) are a step forward from folk songs. However, the new folk song TIẾNG HÒ MIỀN NAM (The Call Of The South) which was written soon after the wave of migration from the north already had the atmosphere of some of the pieces in the Mandarin Road.
THE CALL OF THE SOUTH
(Saigon-1956)
At Nhà Bè the river divides
You can go to Gia Ðịnh or to Ðồng Nai as you wish
Ai li hò lờ ! Ai li hò lờ !
The way is not that far to our friends' land
You cross the red earth region and arrive at Biên Hòa
Ai li hò lờ ! Ai li hò lớ !
Do you hear the song from all over
From the hearts of migrants stirring in the wind
Do you hear the voices of all those who strive
To look for freedom, to leave behind their prison.
The evening breeze sings on the road
The poor people's love bloom like a flower.
Do you hear the call from all over
The laughter of brothers from North and South.
Sweet mother is lullabying her baby
She loves the innocent young child
And she loves the country
Where her favorite songs echo.
At Nhà Bè the river divides
You can travel to the countryside with me if you wish
Ai li hò lờ ! Ai li hò lờ !
Along the way the stream runs fast
Carrying us all the way to Cà Mâu cape
Ai li hò lờ ! Ai li hò lờ !
My village is in Hà Tiên, far far away
A land with spicy pepper and loving folks.
Follow me to Cần Thơ
With its palm trees and sweet coconuts.
There rice grow fast in the fields
Fish teem in the streams
At night when the ocean breeze rises
Love awakens and conjugal bonds are formed
When the Dồng Nai runs dry
When the ocean empties
When the work songs falls silent
Then our vows will be forgotten...
We march forward in step on the road to freedom
. . . . . .
You have that gun
I have the smith's hand
You have this hoe
I have a guitar
You kill many invaders
I take many weapons
You have the golden ear of rice
I have a thousand songs !
THI NHAU CHĂM HỌC
COMPETING AT STUDIES
(Saigon-1955)
We schoolchildren always compete
Always work hard at school
We study enthusiastically
To build our life for the future
Elder brother, if you can write poems
I can read my alphabet
Dear mother stands and watches
Her children play with friends
Elder brother, you can tend the fields
I can go to school without fail
A wind is rising on the road
To celebrate my youth.
After Resistance folk songs, post-Resistance folk songs and folk songs about love, I turned to folk songs with a socially orientation. With my penchant for trilogies, after writing VỢ CHỒNG QUÊ (The Country Couple) about a northern couple, using the pentatonic scale of the north, I wrote another folk song bearing the sound of Huế, TÌNH NGHÈO (Love In Poverty), from a poem by Hồng Nam (Hồ Hán Sơn), which was about the conjugal love of a working couple from the infertile Central regions.
LOVE IN POVERTY
(from a poem by Hồng Nam)
(Saigon-1954)
Hò là hò lơ ! Hò là hò lờ !
Hò là hò lơ ! Hò là hò lờ !
Hò là hò lơ ! Hò là hò lơ !
Do you remember those days
When I was a hired ploughman
And you tended a buffalo.
We met under the bridge
So cool the shade under the bridge...
Do you remember those days
I was a laborer
And you were a pedlar
With betel and areca nuts we got married
We got married...
A shabby hut was our home
At the end of the village
But it kept the weather away.
Then good fortune brought a golden harvest of rice and corn
All through the night
You and I
Under the moon
We pounded the rice with our bamboo pestle
To a joyful rhythm.
Ho! From a thousand miles away
The water comes to our village
To share in its hardships
Hô là hò lơ !
Then the fields were broken
The gardens laid to waste
The houses abandoned
Lost children wandered
Ho! Fire and smoke filled the sky
Spreading over the countryside
Engulfing the poor people's lives
Hô là hò lơ.
The bandits came, we fought
They invaded the green fields
Love is so fragile
Do not separate the two of us.
The day of his return
Along the endless road he limps
Please do come back
The ricefields are still there
Still there are the bamboo groves
The sound of bamboo pestles is waiting for you
A tilting roof
A flickering lamp
Two loving hearts
Dreaming of double harvests
Rice and corn a-plenty...
Early in the morning
A rosy dawn rises
Everywhere echoes the gay rhythm
Of mechanized ploughs and pounding machines
Rhythm so gay...
Then I wrote HÒ LƠ (Heave Ho), a piece in the pentatonic Oán air, about a poor couple of the South. VỢ CHỒNG QUÊ, TÌNH NGHÈO and HÒ LƠ can all be termed socially oriented folk songs.
(Saigon-1957)
Hò lơ
Listen to the heave ho!
Hò Lơ! Hò lơ!
O beloved South Vietnam
Vast countryside, life living land
Love flowing in the nine rivers
That water the flagrant soil.
Comes harvest time
Waiting for you, I labor in the field.
In the South, the sun shines bright
From early morning until night
Bronzing, burning sun.
God gave me a fair complexion
But I have to work hard in the field
To harvest the good rice
Hò lơ! Hò lơ!
Listen to the heave ho!
I love her dark shining eyes
Her hair undone, her complexion
I love her rough sewn shirt
The sun and the rain
Cannot make my love fade.
The South's soil and waters are rich
Her countryside and her villages smell good.
Our life may lack in luxury
But faith is in our heart.
Love is the light of Freedom
Life is warm clothes and a full stomach.
I love her dark shining eyes
Her undone hair, her complexion
I love her roughsewn shirt
The sun and the rain
Cannot make my love fade.
Hò Lơ! Hò lơ!
Listen to the heave ho!
Hò Lơ! Hò lơ!
Among the socially oriented songs I wrote at the time there were some that were not in the folk style, such as PHỐ BUỒN (The Joyless Streets), about the slum dwelling workers in glittering Saigon city:
THE JOYLESS STREETS
(Saigon-1954)
Night after night the rain wets her feet
As she walks home.
Muddy nameless streets
Lightless slums
Silent roofs.
On the way home in a dark street
Through the window she sees him
Gaunt, coughing
Too tired after a hard day to enjoy the smells of the night.
She steps through the doorstep
The rain is still falling gently
Dreary streets
Raindrops keep falling
Ticking, ticking
Dripping through the doorblind
Dripping through the roof
Like a reproach
For those who run away.
Raindrops keep falling
Are they in love with tattered shirts
Or with the lovers?
Ticking, ticking
Singing a lullaby
A dream of good things to come.
She walks and dreams of wide streets
Filled with the city's lights.
The poor don't just dream of the coming of spring
But also of cheerful streets and comfortable brick houses.
But tonight no light is shining on the lonely shadow
The City stays silent
Listening to the joyless streets.
Walking in the dark night
She wakes up in the rain
And tell herself she has to wait.
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