From: nguyen@VAX.MUSKINGUM.EDU
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Subject: [Music] thie^n ta`i ho. Tri.nh,
Date: 9 Apr 92 19:40:57 GMT


Hi Mr. Nobody,

Well, many TCS scholars have argued a lot about the NEWLY CHANGED TCS
from on their OWN OLD SPECULATIONS on TCS.  They are ... "pathological
people."  I wish you have a glance on these excerpts.

Good day,
T.

   TRI.NH CO^NG SO+N'S NEW ATTITUDE IN THE NEW SOCIALIST SOCIETY
 
Excerpts from BITTER VICTORY by Robert Shaplen, Harper & Row, 1986, pp5-8.
_____________________________________________________________________

I had last seen Trinh Cong Son a few days before the end of the war,
in a small garden filled with azaleas and frangipani next to the house
where he was staying, not far from my motel.  He was with his brothers
and sisters and a few friends when I arrived, about dusk that evening
in April 1975, and he was strumming his guitar and singing some of his
sad antiwar songs that had made him famous and had been banned by the
government for the past five or six years...

At this time, Trinh Cong Son was thirty-six years old, a thin,
intense man with deep-brown eyes and a small, wispy beard.  His
voice was soft and melodious, and it seemed to hover in the
heavy pre-monsoonal atmosphere--full of foreboding, for North
Vietnamese troops were drawing closer to the city almost hour by
hour...  I had asked Trinh Cong Son if he would remain, and he had
replied, "Yes, I will stay here--we are all Vietnamese.  But if
the Communists don't offer me inspiration, I won't write." (1)

Now here he was again, nine and a half years later, walking
toward me through the glare of the late afernoon sun on the
rooftop dining room of the old Majestic Hotel, overlooking the
river ... "I am still bachelor," (2) he began, and he went on to 
tell me he was mostly writing songs for documentary and feature
films.  He summarized the themes of several of the films. One
was about a group of girls on a state farm near the Cambodian
border who were captured and beheaded by the Khmer Rouge troops (3)
...Another was about a woman doctor who had fought against the
Americans and had been killed by bombs in the jungle when the
war was almost over (4).  A third film told the story of a group of
teenage boys and girls who had been corrupted by the insidious
life of Saigon but had been "reeducated" and were leading
productive lives in the city (5).

" I have a wider audience now," he said, "workers and
peasants as well as students--and I travel about and sing for
them too.   Vietnam has not lost its taste for song and melody.
In fact, there is a mass audience today, and there wasn't
before."   I asked him if there is less sadness now that the
war is over.  "There is no sadness the way there was," he said.
"If there is any, it is a private sadness of pathological
people (6)--people who hug it in their hearts and don't accept the
fact that society has changed.  They haven't changed, and they
blame society.  They don't share the common cause, they don't
mix (7).  Frankly, there are fans of mine who blame me now for
changing.  They wanted to keep me a prisoner of their own
feelings of sadness, to retain my old image, but I wanted to
free myself in new sentiments and aspirations.  My philosophy is
that if a man doesn't change day by day he's a dead man."(7)

I asked him if he would sing me one of his new songs, and he
said he would sing "Myth About Mother," ... He wrote it, he 
added, for the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Ho Chi Minh
city (Saigon's new name). (9)...

Trinh Cong Son was one of the few old friends or acquaintances
I was able to see during my four days in Ho Chi Minh city, which
was part of my six weeks' return to Vietnam in the late summer
and fall of 1984...
-------------------- end of excerpts ------------------------

FOOTNOTES:
(1):   *
(2):   As heard last year, TCS has been engaged with a young model
       who was a runner-up in a beauty contest in Hanoi.
(3):   Em O+? No^ng Tru+o+`ng Em Ra Bie^n Gio+'i ?
(4):   Ca'nh Chim Co^ -Do+n ?
(5):   Do+`i Go.i Em Bie^'t Bao La^`n ?
(6):   *
(7):   *
(8):   *
(9):   *
  
       * =  very interesting ideas.