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Various (Vietnamese) Artists: Ho! Roady Music from Vietnam
Oh, that darned Southeast Asia! Will its mysteries never end? I've heard the media say a lot of things about Vietnam, and they never quite get their stories straight. One minute it's a quaint land of rice patties and basket hats, the next it's a hotbed of industrialization. It's a lush place or it's a polluted one; it's still an enemy of ours or it's another receptacle for American pop culture hegemony. It's culture as confused collision, compressing the jump into the future into years, not decades or centuries. It's some sort of party and everyone's invited, but whose house is it anyway? Peter Jennings isn't much help.
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In trying to provide some small answers, Ho! Roady Music from Vietnam can't help but add to the bewilderment. It staples together 21 exploded pieces of Vietnamese vernacular and popular music, recorded sloppily on city streets, in parks, and at barbecues, honks, coughs and all. Edited one into another, the songs—funeral marches, easy listening pop, covers of English pop songs, opera, even electric blues (!), bluegrass (!!), and hip-hop (!!!)—cut back and forth against the grain, carving a jagged zig-zag whose path speaks volumes about what Vietnamese urban culture is.
First off, it's a noisy, crowded mess, as street musicians jam the air with megaphones while trying to rise above Saigon's clamor. Half of the songs have motorcycles revving and heavy machinery pounding in the background—"FNL's Blues" whites out twice into Mack truck rumble—while the other half demand attention like a jackhammer. The Dead Men's Orchestra and other funeral bands hit harder and faster than the Florida State University marching band, spraying off drumrolls in all directions on instruments that sound like garbage cans, blaring on brass that's not quite in tune. No sedate funeral this—more like a carnival for joyous, wayward souls.
Moreover, it's a mélange of styles, each one freeze-dried and reheated into something distinctly Vietnamese. Apparently, there's a Vietnamese Soul Sonic Force, a Vietnamese John Lee Hooker, and even (gasp!) a Vietnamese Thom Yorke. Clint Viet's "Mot Nam Do/Dollar-Hand" is simultaneously Spaghetti Western harmonica, polka, and Salvation Army keyboard sci-fi, all so over-modulated that it's a wonder something doesn't explode.
Most of the best music on Ho! toes that line, quavering between kitsch and greatness, composure and collapse. Even some of the near-awful pop schlock is redeemed by edging itself with stridency—the amateur singers break into gorgeously shaky vibratos when they stress their cords, or confidently spew nonsense syllables over the chintziest imaginable accompaniment as if they were Ella Fitzgerald.
It—noise, chaos, quaver—all apotheosizes on Ho!'s scorching second rendition of the chestnut "Ghost Riders in the Sky," led on the single-stringed dan bau instead of guitar. Casio stabs arpeggiate like it's Jock Jams, clippity-clop hand percussion make like hooves, and even a sampled horse neighs for a little oomph as restaurant patrons hack up phlegm and chat in the rear. But the real firestarter is a mini-Hendrix on the dan bau, bending notes into a banshee wail until the 20-watt speakers go up in flames.
As Ho! would have it, that's Vietnam. A place fraying around the edges and knotting up into balls of stress, but often happily, beautifully. Ho! isn't simplistic or reductive. Rather, it's playful and sloppy. It sounds like real life. (Trikont)
—Sam Frank
All materials © 1999 The Yale Herald, Inc., and its staff.
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