Musical Suggestions for French Colonialism Class
Dear colleagues,
I have been tinkering with my Comparative French Colonialism: Haiti,
Algeria, Vietnam (which I published about in the special issue of the
World History Bulletin that Mike Vann and I co-edited a few years ago:
http://www.thewha.org/bulletins/spring_2010.pdf, pp. 18-24). I have been
trying to deepen students' understanding of the colonial experience by
moving beyond texts and images, including by beginning each session with
a germane musical clip that gets at the theme for the day.
For the intro to the class and the Saint-Domingue unit, I had a lot of
musical ideas this semester. To complicate what "being French" means at
the start of the class, I showed YouTube clips from Tet in Perpignan and
a French rap video by Baccarat about the conflict between the idea of
droits de l'homme and the economic realities of many children of
immigrants. That helped the students understand that 21^st C.
postcolonial France is multiethnic and multicultural. When we did a
quick overview of the empire, I played some Manu Dibango and Les
Princesses Nubians so students could hear music from Francophone
Africans and their descendants. (I looked for something analogous from
the South Pacific, but didn't seem to be looking in the right places).
Students also told me about the Algerian pop star Zaho.
For Saint-Domingue, I had a great range of choices. I picked some songs
from Elizabeth McAlister's album Rhythms of Rapture: Sacred Songs of
Haitian Vodou when we looked at slave resistance; then switched to 18^th
C. French minuets to accompany reading Moreau de Saint-Méry and
discussing colonists' efforts to recreate French society on the island.
As we moved into slave resistance and the Haitian Revolution, I played
Wyclef's performance from the 2010 Hope for Haiti telethon (one of the
most moving moments of cultural resistance and affirmation that I have
ever seen), some carnival clips from Rara Fanm, and then Arcade Fire's
Haiti, which parallels some of the imagery in Patrick Chamoiseau's
Creole Folktales.
Soon I'll be turning to the Algerian and Vietnamese sections of my
syllabus, and I have much less of a musical knowledge base from which to
draw. I would very much welcome musical suggestions (from the conquest
of Algeria through decolonization worldwide). An older copy of the
syllabus is at www.thewha.org/bulletins/spring_2010.pdf
<http://www.thewha.org/bulletins/spring_2010.pdf>, pp. 21-3; you can see
the themes and readings I have, if that will help spur ideas.
You are welcome to post suggestions to H-France or send them straight to
me; if I receive a lot off-list, I'll compile them and post afterwards.
I'm particularly interested in music that I can access in class on YouTube.
Best regards,
Alyssa Sepinwall
Josephine Baker singing Ma Petite Tonkinoise is available on Youtube. She also sang another colonial-era song, J'ai Deux Amours (mon pays et Paris).
Hue Tam Ho Tai
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Dear Alyssa, An excellent place to go for music concerning French colonialism is Alain Ruscio's Que la France était belle au temps des colonies, with its accompanying CD and lyrics! Recently, two other collections came out that may also help: Longing for the Past: 78rpm era in Southeast Asia and Opika Pende: Africa at 78rpm. There's much to work with in these three collections. Best wishes, David
Dear Alyssa,
The cultural presence of French popular music in Vietnam was greatly amplified in the 1930s by the advent of radio. In particular, Tino Rossi, a sweet-voiced tenor from Corsica, enjoyed wild popularity; it was the dream of many young Vietnamese men of that era to become Tino Rossi—many of the first professional male singers in Vietnam added the element "Tino" to their stage names. Starting around 1937, French popular songs (e.g. "Guitarre d'Amour") began to be performed with Vietnamese lyrics substituted for the French ones; but less than a year after that Vietnamese musicians began creating their own songs. Oddly enough, these indigenously created songs were utterly different in style from the French songs that were so popular. For example "Thuy?n không B?n" ("A Boat With no Mooring Place") by �ng Th? Son of Nam �nh, a very early (cosmically morose) Vietnamese song, stands in complete contrast to anything that might have been sung by Tino Rossi or his French colleagues.
Best wishes,
EH
The musician's name is *Ã?ng Th? Phong, *not Ã?ng Th? Son.
http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90%E1%BA%B7ng_Th%E1%BA%BF_Phong:
�ng Th? Phong (1918 <http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918> –
1942<http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/1942>)
là nh?c si <http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nh%E1%BA%A1c_s%C4%A9> thu?c th? h?
tiên phong c?a tân nh?c Vi?t
Nam<http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A2n_nh%E1%BA%A1c_Vi%E1%BB%87t_Nam>,
m?t trong nh?ng guong m?t tiêu bi?u nh?t cho giai do?n âm nh?c ti?n
chi?n<http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nh%E1%BA%A1c_ti%E1%BB%81n_chi%E1%BA%BFn>.
Ông m?t nam 24 tu?i và ch? d? l?i ba nh?c ph?m: *Ãêm thu
<http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90%C3%AAm_thu>*, *Con thuy?n không b?n
<http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con_thuy%E1%BB%81n_kh%C3%B4ng_b%E1%BA%BFn>*
và *Gi?t mua thu <http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gi%E1%BB%8Dt_m%C6%B0a_thu>*.
Nguy?n Ãi?n
Canberra
Yes, of course, thanks. Typing too fast. �ng Thé Phong.
Eric Henry, PhD
Senior Lecturer (retired)
Asian Studies Department, CB 3267
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3267
tel. (919) 360-6895 (cell)
henryhme at bellsouth.net
Apropos of �ng Th? Phong, here's a translation (mine) of the lyrics of "Con Thuy?n Không B?n," Vietnamese on the left, English on the right:
“Con Thuy?n Không B?nâ€
“A Boat With No Mooring Placeâ€
�ng Th? Phuong (1918 – 1942)
Ãêm nay thu sang cùng heo mây, The dying autumn comes this night and wilts all things
Ãêm nay suong lam m? chân mây. The mist this night obscures the edges of the clouds
Thuy?n ai l? l?ng trôi xu?i dòng Some person’s boat drifts idly with the sluggish current
Nhu nh? thuong ai chùng to lòng. As if in sad remembrance of the ties of love.
Trong cây hoi thu cùng heo mây, Amid trees touched by autumn, it too wilts and dies;
Vi vu qua muôn cà nh mo say. Gliding past the thousand dreaming, drunken branches.
Mi?n xa l?i gió vang thông ngà n, Far off the wind’s speech echoes in the pine-strewn hills;
Ai oán thuong ai tà n mo mà ng. Who sorrows bitterly; who, dreaming, fades away?
Lu?t theo chi?u gió Gliding, following the wind,
M?t con thuy?n, theo trang trong. A boat, pursuing the clear moon—
Trôi trên sông thuong, It floats upon the river Love
Nu?c ch?y dôi dòng. Whose double current flows divided.
Bi?t dâu b? b?n, Who knows where the landing is?
Thuy?n oi thuy?n trôi noi dâu Oh boat, to what place are you drifting
Trên con sông thuong, Afloat upon the river Love,
Nà o ai bi?t nông sâu? Who knows its shallowness or depth?
Nh? khi chi?u suong, Remembering a misty close of day,
Cùng ai tr?c ?n t?m lòng. When pity made two hearts grow close,
Bi?t bao bu?n thuong, Who knows its depth of tender sorrow
Thuy?n mo bu?n trôi xuôi dòng. As the dreaming boat floats down the stream?
B?n mo dù thi?t tha, However deep the yearning of the landing,
Thuy?n oi, d?ng ch? mong. Do not, oh boat, indulge in dreamy expectation.
Ãnh trang m? chi?u, Amid the moon’s dim radiance there floats
M?t con thuy?n trong dêm thâu. A single boat enshrouded in the night.
Trên sông bao la, Abandoned to the river’s endless current,
Thuy?n mo b?n noi dâu. A dreaming boat, its mooring place unknown.
Best wishes,
Eric Henry
Dear Eric,
Con thuy?n không b?n is written with a Vietnamese pentatonic scale of
cung oán (now used in most poetry reciting). Lê Thuong, such as in Hòn
V?ng Phu and others, used a popular Vietnamese pentatonic scale of
cung b?c (mostly in the north folk songs). They put their songs into
the European measures -- new and different from Vietnamese traditional
music which is based on "phrases" and "sentences".
This song was more popular without the lyrics.
Cheers,
Nhan
Dear all:
I sense a certain reluctance on the part my distinguished colleagues to accept the idea that "existential sorrow" was a widespread trait in early Vietnamese tân nh?c. I prize all of your comments, even though my subjective impression concerning this matter is (I confess) not altered.
Huê Tâm, I'm intrigued by what you say about "all-enveloping but causeless gloom" in 19th century French ballads—I don't know those ballads at all. So I need to get educated. (Know any leads on the subject? Are their singers who specialize in them?) As for gloominess and �ng Th? Phong, my enduring impression is that it was not just "gloominess" and not just �ng Th? Phong.
Ngô Thanh Nhà n: Thank you for your comment on the two scales, cung oán and cung b?c! Now we're getting less subjective! I must compare the melodic structure of those two songs, to see if I can detect the difference. I'm willing to entertain the hypothesis that my feeling that the songs are reflections of "existential sorrow" may be an artifact of my response, as a western musician, to two slightly exotic scales.
Nguyen Diên: Yes! Lucky pig! I see it! But hard to work into a translation, wouldn't you say? ^_^
Best wishes,
Eric
Hi Eric,
I do agree with you that there is a feeling of existential gloom in DTP's music, ehanced by his TB. it also resonates with traditional Virtnamese poetry (think, for example, of Ba Huyen Thanh Quan's melancholy poem, Qua Deo Ngang Tuc Canh). I just wanted to point out that gloom could also be found in French poetry, such as Baudelaire's Spleen and French chansons. Offhand, i cannot recall specific songs, but Dame Janet Baker did make an album of chansons. And some French children's song are downright macabre. But then, Ive never heard a Vietnamese lullaby that was not weepy.
Mahler's 9th symphony, based on Song dynasty poems, is also quite gloomy. But I suspect it would not have been familiar to Vietnamese in the 1930s or 1940s.
Hue Tam
Hi Hue Tam, and other list members interested in this discussion,
Is there any human culture devoid of artistic genres defined, in some measure, by existential sorrow? I should think such a culture would be hard to find. It would be odd in the extreme (it seems to me) if Vietnamese culture turned out to be the only one in the world in which such a genre was missing.
Take, for example, Japanese enka, a genre that concentrates fiercely on the expression of sorrow. Enka songs return again and again, obsessively, to certain motifs, such as: ofukurusan (mother), furusato (homeland), namida (tears), ame (rain), kokoro (heart), sakura (cherry blossoms), and sake (well, "sake"). The grief expressed in enka songs is so intense and so stylized that quite a few listeners (including, notably, Japanese listeners) profess to be nauseated by it. But I personally have no doubt that the finest examples of the genre, performed by the best singers, have much to offer the receptive listener. This genre, by the way, didn't come into full maturity until the late 1950s. In recent decades it has become commonplace to proclaim that enka is dead, but it keeps being revived, and keeps attracting younger generations of singers (including a very fine American black singer of partly Japanese ancestry, stage-name Jero, very popular in Japan).
Are there no recurring motifs in tân nh?c? Well, I would say there are quite a few, such as: m? (mother), quê huong (homeland), mua (rain), chi?u (close of day), thu (autumn), v? and di v? (to return), di ra and ra di (to go forth), luy tre (bamboo thicket fence), l?u tranh (thatched hut), and so on. Also certain adjectives recur again and again, such as: d?m say, dà i lâu, xót xa, bo vo, choi voi, bâng khuâng, lênh dênh, mong manh, ng?t ngây, and so on. But many thousands of other words, such as buu c?c (post office), ti?n b?o hi?m (insurance money), or b?n biu (busy), are almost not to be found in tân nh?c.
I don't know if this is strictly relevant to the theme, but there's a joke about American country western music: What happens if you play a country western song backwards? Well... you get your car back, you get your best friend back, you get your house back, you get your wife back, you get your dog back... and so on. And then there's the American genre known as the blues... (I think in this connection of Ellington's "Mood Indigo")
(aside to Ngô Thanh Nhà n: thanks for your magnificently informative latest communication, which I just saw. Obviously I need you at my side to teach me about traditional musical genres in VN. I like sad v?ng c? music, and have long known about Út B?ch Lan.)
Best wishes,
Eric
Hi Eric,
Japanese culture is gloom-laden. Think about The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon. Another gloomy musical genre is the Portuguese fado.
But I agree with you about the recurring motifs in Vietnamese music, at least in the South.
Hue Tam
Dear Eric,
I would say, as an impression, that cung oán "mourning scale"
(which is believed created by the Cham slaves in Vietnamese
imperial courts) dominated also V?ng c? even before the new
music composers learned how to use the Vietnamese pentatonic
scales and breaths (hoi, like hoi xuân)… in their new songs.
Hey, cung oán was used but not always sad. Such as, Lý chim
quyên "Song of the Cuckoo" (in cung oán) is not sad, and Ru
con "Lullaby" of the south (also in cung oán: Gió mùa thu, m?
ru con ng?, nam canh ch?y, th?c d? v?a nam, h?i chà ng chà ng
oi, h?i ch?ng ch?ng oi, em nh? t?i chà ng...) less sad, to very
sad like Lan và Ãi?p: Hoa bay theo… gió cu?n r?ng d?y sân
rêu… nhìn hoa tà n r?ng roi, Lan bâng khuâng tê tái tâm h?n…
And this reminds me of Út B?ch Lan, who's the best in sad
v?ng c? and c?i luong (mostly folk tunes, such as in Lan vÃ
Ãi?p, N?a d?i huong ph?n,…). She was known as gi?ng ca
s?u n?.
Best,
Nhà n
Marc J. Gilbert mgilbert at hpu.edu
Thu Feb 20 20:52:31 PST 2014
Some suggestions to all (some who may correct me and/or forgive me for its familiarity):
Le Boudin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Boudin>
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Boudin
... is the official march of the French Foreign Legion. "Le Boudin"..."Song references the Legion's operations in Tuyen Quang<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tuy%C3%AAn_Quang> (1884-1885) and in Camerone<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Camar%C3%B3n> (1863), which would become the Legion's anniversary." YouTube has any sites with song and background, especially the selection from the film, "March or Die."
1. Edith Piaf - Non, je ne regrette rien - (original) - YouTube<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFtGfyruroU>
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFtGfyruroU
o By redbabylon ·
o 2 min ·
o 1,834,598 views ·
o Added Feb 04, 2012
Piaf dedicated her recording of the song to the French Foreign Legion returning from the Algerian War.
1. Edith Piaf - Mon Légionnaire - 1937 - YouTube<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHRFxmRh7kY>
* Edith Piaf - Mon Légionnaire - 1937 - YouTube
* www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHRFxmRh7kY
* By Vieux Disques *
* 4 min *
* 40,212 views *
* Added Nov 25, 2010
* Mon Légionnaire Nouvelle version - (M. Monnot - R. Asso) Edith Piaf accomp. par l'orchestre J. Météhen Disque Polydor n° 524.299 / mx. 3897 HPP Paris
This site has accompanying video of French colonial Africa. The English lyrics are not always correct on many sites, but here, close enough. We see the dead lover who is found in the desert with his beautiful eyes wide open and with sunlight glinting on his blonde hair in the sand all evocative of the place of the Legion in the popular French imperial imagination. His tattoos speak across generations of such soldiers.
Thanks to everyone for all these -- wonderful!
And Marc.... I'm a little bowled over to learn that Rien de rien (Non, je
ne regrette rien), which I probably bellowed out from time to time while
living in Algeria in 1969-70, had that dedication. Makes we want to run
back and apologize!
thanks to all,
Diane