The Melody of Cửu Long

Huy Phan.

Bến Tre province, Vietnam

A rare breeze brushes through the coconut fronds amidst the roiling heat. One is suddenly pulled back from their mid-day slumber, not from the rustling above, but from a growing rhythm of pattering. There, on the river, a woman was standing on top of a canoe, pulling herself back-and-forth, slicing the water with her paddles. From the canoe, a tune slowly emerges…

Like the fleeting breeze, the woman and her song suddenly came and left, returning the summer soundscape to the splashing of water against the banks and the diligent buzzing of cicadas. What they also left behind for the bystander is a strange sense of longing… an indescribable feeling… like yearning for the breeze to return and lick away the rolling beads of sweat on their cheeks on this hot summer day. 

The melody that you just heard belongs to hò, a unique genre among the large collection of performative oral literature from my community of Tây Vietnamese (Mekong Delta, Southern Vietnam). Just like the wind, river, fields, and the people of the Delta, oral literature is an element of the Tây cosmos. 

Viewing oral literature as a part of the world is a testimony not only to its ever presence but also to its bond with the Tây ‘ecosystem.’ To understand Tây oral literature is thus to contextualize Tây not only as a geographical area, but also as a mood, a lifestyle, a culture, and a shared identity. It is through this kaleidoscopic lens that meanings emerge from the lexical assemblage of birds, fish, and water found in the lyrics. And through this lens that you can see the serene flow of the Mekong emerges from the musical mimeses that are the unique drawn-out melodies of Tây oral genres.

Though as a part of this ecosystem, the oral tradition is inevitably subjected to changes that occur to the Tây world. Wars, climate changes, and the ‘-ization’ forces (industrialization, modernization, urbanization) altogether reshape the Delta and the life of its residents. Cultural milieus that once enabled the performance and transmission of the tradition are disappearing rapidly. One needs to look no further than the rice fields to see the gusts of change. Throngs of farmers that once swarmed these fields every harvest season in March have given way to the towering tractors. Melodies from the impromptu chorus of muddy, sweaty amateurs may no longer be heard, as if both the sound and the will to sing have been drowned by the deafening roar from the beasts of productivity. Departing from the fields, the unstoppable gust then swept to the houses, snatching away the lullabies. Here, asking ‘why’ the lullabies left makes less sense than pondering about ‘whether’ lullabies even need to stay? Afterall, the children are gone.

When the livelihood that once rested upon agriculture is now destabilized by growing droughts and salinization, younger members of the community see no other option but to uproot from the Delta to the bustling cities, settling their families in the new place — and the new hope — of a new and better life.

The melodies that once drifted freely through the land now dissipate and vanish quietly into the social-scape that is the 21^st century.

Is this the end of our oral tradition? How is this disappearance felt in our creative, imaginative, and spiritual life? Could we ever bring it back? How would we do so? Does it even do any good for us to bring it back to begin with?… 

Or is it the case that the tradition simply enters a state of metamorphosis as a defensive mechanism in these trying times? And if so, where can we find it in the Tây world and the larger Southern Vietnamese society?

These are the questions that I, as a community member, a social scientist, a public humanist, and an artist, ask. They are the impetus that ignites my ongoing project, The Melody of Cửu Long, to describe and document the oral tradition of the Tây community across the Delta. While the answers to these questions are still out of my grasp, I am certain that they will be found in the heart-to-heart conversation with my fellow Tây, but more importantly, with the melodies themselves – fragments of memory that linger in my mind and the collective memory of the Delta about a breeze that once caressed our cheeks: Where are you?

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For more information, please visit:
Giai Điệu Cửu Long (‘The Melody of Cửu Long’)
– https://www.youtube.com/@Tayoralliteratureproject
My personal website: https://sites.google.com/view/huyphanlinguist/home

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