Vietnam rocks carefully
HANOI - Nguyen Yen Thi had a rock `n' roll fantasy: She'd play the
bass in an all-girl band. Here in Vietnam, where ballads about
unrequited love and valiant soldiers dominate the airwaves, her
vision seemed as farfetched as a Communist Party-sponsored Ozzy
Osbourne concert.
But with a little determination and a lot of help from the Internet,
the 18-year-old has become part of a small but growing community
of young Vietnamese who are bringing rock music to one of its last
unconquered frontiers.
Vietnam's communist government, whose musical preferences tend
toward the wholesome, still exerts close control over what music
can be played here. But lately it has eased its grip a bit, allowing a
few officially sanctioned rock shows that drew thousands of
passionate fans.
There is no Top 40 machinery here, no all-powerful recording
industry catapulting its artists to stardom. The censors permit only a
few carefully chosen MTV clips on Vietnamese television.
Vietnam's rockers remain part of a mostly underground movement
whose gentle subversiveness is part of its allure. But as fans share
their musical obsessions in Internet chat rooms and pass along
favorite songs by word of mouth, rock is slowly going mainstream.
With more than half its 80 million citizens younger than 25, Vietnam
would seem more than ready to plug in its amplifiers and strike a
few power chords.
These days, even the most determined Culture Ministry bureaucrat
would have a tough time reining in the rock `n' roll passions of Thi
and her friends. They gather every Saturday afternoon to jam on
the tiny patio of a rock-crazy friend, a cozy spot that, like much of
Hanoi, is an odd mix of urban and rural, with scruffy chickens
clucking about and industrial waste flowing by in a nearby creek.
"We're the first female rock band in Hanoi!" exclaims Nguyen thi Thai
Thanh, the lead singer in Thi's group, the Halleys, named after
Halley's comet. "Everybody wants to know, `How can these girls
play rock `n' roll?' They think we are supposed to concentrate on
clothes, shopping and boyfriends."
With the wiry frame and manic energy of a female Mick Jagger,
Thanh revels in smashing such stereotypes.
"We want to play rock!" she growls in fluent but heavily accented
English. "We want to prove that girls can do everything boys can
do!"
Then she launches into a rough but impassioned rendition of Joan
Jett's "I Hate Myself for Loving You."
I hate myself for loving you
Can't break free from the things that you do
I wanna walk but I run back to you
That's why I hate myself for loving you
Vietnam's rock community remains so small that the Halleys, who
first picked up their instruments six months ago, have few
homegrown role models. But on Friday nights, they find inspiration
at the R&R, an American-style bar owned by Jay Ellis, an expatriate
who clings unapologetically to a 1960s lifestyle.
He has decorated his club with old album covers that are perennial
Berkeley favorites: Hot Tuna, Jimi Hendrix and, of course, the
Grateful Dead. At the front of the bar, Ellis, who runs the place with
his Vietnamese wife, Huong, has placed portraits of dueling
revolutionaries: George Washington and Ho Chi Minh.
At the rear of the bar, White Eagle, the Vietnamese house band,
plays perfect covers of American rock. And young wannabe rockers,
like Thi and her friends, gather to gawk. The band plays everything
from Santana to the Allman Brothers.
"These are the godfathers of rock in this town," Ellis says of the
band, whose leader, Hoang The Vinh, plays a mean electric guitar.
Vinh began his career studying classical music at a conservatory in
Hanoi. But one day, after being blown away by Deep Purple's
"Smoke on the Water," he traded in his accordion for an electric
guitar.
This was in 1982, when being a rocker in Vietnam was a lonely
occupation. Vinh once played a concert where his music so enraged
the crowd that they hurled a brick and a can of beer at him. They
wanted to hear Abba - or something they could waltz to.
Even today, syrupy pop songs and traditional folk music get most of
the airtime on Vietnamese radio and TV. Love is the dominant
theme, and many songs celebrate the bravery of Vietnam's
revolutionary soldiers. The video clips that accompany these
numbers are filled with conical straw hats, pretty flowers and
beautiful women in ao dais, Vietnam's traditional dress. Many of the
young Vietnamese who live and breathe rock `n' roll dismiss this
music as "stupid pop," as one of them put it. Among this crowd,
heavy metal bands like Metallica are big. But the truly hip will tell
you that they like "alternative" rock.
In the R&R crowd one recent Friday was Binh, the ponytailed
chairman of the recently formed Hanoi Rock Club
(www.hanoirockclub.org), whose favorite bands include Nirvana and
those Berkeley, Calif., punks Green Day. "Rock is always in my mind
and in my heart," he says.
Binh attributes the growth of rock at least in part to the growth of
Vietnam's economy. As more people have more money to spend,
they are able to buy musical instruments for the first time.
It's hard to form a garage band, after all, if you can't afford a
garage.
"Vietnam is still a very poor country, but now that people are
becoming a little bit richer, they can afford to hear more kinds of
music," Binh says.
The computer revolution has also helped fuel the growth of rock `n'
roll in Vietnam. Pirated music is ubiquitous here, downloaded online
and then burned onto CDs that are sold for $1 apiece.
And the Internet has become Vietnam's great rock `n' roll meeting
place.
Determined to find like-minded fans, Thi became a Webmaster and
created an online forum where people can discuss everything from
Kurt Cobain's suicide to Eminem's manners.
She met all of the members of her band in a chat room on her Web
site (www.rockvn.com).
The rockers here know that they have to be careful not to take their
fun too far, lest they offend the government. They can scream and
dance, but any Snoop Dogg verbal outbursts or guitar smashing
would be unacceptable.
Tran My Trang, an aspiring concert promoter, is careful to consider
government sensibilities when she organizes a show.
The contract she uses, which is scrutinized by the Culture Ministry,
guarantees that the performers won't take off their shirts or swear
onstage.
"If you have a good relationship with the ministry, you can persuade
them," says Trang, 25, who recently won approval for a rock show
to honor John Lennon on the anniversary of his death.
The few Vietnamese rockers who write their own music and lyrics
are careful to make sure that the words are upbeat, not sinister.
"We compose our songs in a different way," says Tran Lap, the lead
singer for the Wall, a Metallica-influenced band that is probably the
hottest rock group in Vietnam right now. "Everything is about the
beauty of society."
Lap doesn't mind if he can't go completely wild on stage. "This is a
difference between Eastern and Western people," he says,
explaining that the Wall's fans "go crazy in a civilized way."
Even if they make it to the pinnacle of Vietnamese rock, musicians
have to keep their day jobs.
The members of the Wall (www.buctuong.com), a
Metallica-influenced band that has appeared on Vietnamese
television many times, continue to work as architects, engineers and
designers.
"I'm sure there will be a time in the future," lead singer Tran Lap
says, sounding hopeful, "where playing rock `n' roll can be a real
job."
By Ben Stocking - San Jose Mercury News - February 28, 2003.
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