http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9810-7049
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ABSTRACT
This article investigates how radio was used to amplify the reach of vernacular forms of musical cosmopolitanism in late-colonial Hanoi. Between 1948 and the early 1950s, the musicians of Việt Nhạc – the first all-Vietnamese ensemble to appear regularly on Radio Hanoi – performed a unique blend of popular chansons in Vietnamese and local folk styles live on air to a radio audience across French Indochina. These creative artists sounded out the final stages of French imperialism in the region and its associated forms of Western European-influenced musical cosmopolitanism; they also nurtured an attentive radio listenership who gradually shifted their ears to Sino-Soviet-influenced musical cosmopolitanism following independence. Drawing on archival records, radio guides and interview data, this research excavates the story of the Việt Nhạc ensemble from the uncomfortable crevice between colonial and postcolonial history. In retelling this story, the writing interrogates the relationship between cultural and political change at the end of an empire.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Jason Gibbs for connecting me with Nguyễn Thiện Tơ, and to Tơ and my other research collaborators in Hanoi for being so generous with their time and energy. Thanks are also due to the two reviewers and Jann Pasler who provided exceptionally helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this essay, and to Tom Wagner, Tom Western and Abigail Wood for their work in compiling the issue. Any remaining faults are my own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Lonán Ó Briain is Head of the Department of Music and an Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham. Oxford University Press published his first monograph, Musical Minorities: The Sounds of Hmong Ethnicity in Northern Vietnam (2018). He previously served as Reviews Editor for Ethnomusicology Forum and is the current Website Reviews Editor for the Yearbook for Traditional Music.
ORCID
Lonán Ó Briain http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9810-7049
Notes
1 See McHale (Citation2004) for more information on the mass media, especially print, and its impact on the public sphere in twentieth-century Vietnam.
2 See Jason Gibb’s active blog for an extensive compilation of advertisements for gramophone players, records, musical instruments, instrumental lessons and music performances in early twentieth-century French Indochina (http://taybui.blogspot.com, accessed 4 July 2017) and Gronow (Citation1981) for a survey of record label catalogues and archives in the region.
3 http://www.radiotsf.fr/radio-sindex-la-premiere-radio-dindochine-est-nee-a-haiphong/, accessed 3 July 2017, and ‘Création des diverses associations à Haiphong’, VNA-I, Fonds de la Résidence supérieure au Tonkin, d79728-02. The former source lists the first broadcast from Radio Sindex as occurring in February 1928; the latter indicates that the station was not established until 21 July 1928.
4 ‘Création des diverses associations à Haiphong’. VNA-I, Fonds de la Résidence supérieure au Tonkin, d79728-02.
5 ‘Engagements pris par la Société Radio-Indochine à Hải Phòng envers le gouvernement provincial Yunnanais’. VNA-I, Archives Centrales de l’Indochine – Résidence Supériere au Tonkin, d40.988.
6 ‘Délivrance des documents relatifs aux activités financiers des Services de l’Indochine à la Radio-Saigon 1940, 1943, 1944’. VNA-I, Fonds de la Direction des Finances de l’Indochine, d16875.
7 Interview with Nguyễn Lân Bình, 9 December 2016.
8 After the First Indochina War, an instrumental version of ‘Kill the Fascists’ was recorded for use as the signature musical jingle for the VOV.
9 Examples of the introductory articles include a two-page biographical sketch on Louis Armstrong (Việt Khúc Citation1949) and three pages on the Italian conductor, Pierino Gamba (Việt Khúc Citation1950).
10 ‘Chương trình phát thanh âm nhạc của đài phát thanh tiếng nói Việt Nam, do ban Việt nhạc trình bày 1949’.; VNA-I, Phông Sở Thông tin tuyên truyền Bắc Việt (hereafter PSTTBV), d219. Lê’s reference to the station as the Voice of Vietnam using the Vietnamese term rather than Radio Hanoi challenges the standard historical narrative about the VOV.
11 http://dbqh.na.gov.vn/daibieu/19/0000000320/Đam-Quang-Thien.aspx (accessed 21 June 2018). I am grateful to Jason Gibbs for directing me to this information.
12 ‘Chương trình phát thanh của Đài phát thanh tiếng nói Việt Nam’. VNA-I, PSTTBV, d220.
13 For further information on tân nhạc see Henry (Citation2005), Phạm (Citation2006) and Gibbs (Citation2008).
14 ‘Biên bản phát thanh của Đài phát thanh Hà Nội’. VNA-I, PSTTBV, d152 and ‘Biên bản phát thanh của Đài phát thanh Hà Nội’. VNA-I, PSTTBV, d71.
15 Curiously, both Baker and Chevalier recorded versions of ‘The Little Tonkin Girl’ (Le Petite Tonkinoise), which included a chorus that could sound playful to Parisian audiences or offensive in an oppressed colonial setting:
16 http://www.phamduy2010.com/02sokhao/phongtra3.php (accessed 18 January 2017).
17 Ngọc Bảo later became renowned as a singer of revolutionary songs. He is also credited as the first Vietnamese musician to be invited to the Pathé-Marconi Studios in Paris to record. In 1951, he recorded several songs with Guy Théven and his Orchestra. Five of these recordings are included on the recently released compilation, (Nhó Viêt Nam Xưa) Nostalgique Vietnam: Chansons de Charme, Poèmes et Prières 1937–1954 (2014, Budapest Music Center, Catalogue no. 860245).
18 See Ó Briain (Citation2018) for a consideration of musical representations of minority ethnic groups in the Vietnamese media.
19 ‘Về việc trả lương cho các nhân viên của Đài Phát thanh Hà Nội. 1950–1951’. VNA-I, PSTTBV, d248.
20 ‘Về việc trả lương cho các nghệ sĩ công tác với Đài phát thanh Hà Nội của Sở Thông tin tuyên truyền Bắc Việt 1951’. VNA-I, PSTTBV, d247.