Saturday, January 18, 2020

MƯỜI NĂM, RỐ̀I MƯỜI NĂM ̣̣(họa thơ Tôn Nữ Thu Dung)

hoa tho tn thu dung: MƯỜI NĂM, RỐ̀I MƯỜI NĂM
Nho TD dua cho ban be cua TD goi la mon qua dau nam. cam on TD da tao cho cam hung.


Mười năm hoa trắng không còn trắng
Tôi nhặt mùi hương, đã mất hương
Mười năm áo lụa vừa phai luạ
Biền biệt mùa thu, biệt phố phường
Mười năm tím ngặ́t màu tim tím
T́ím cả màn đêm, tím chỗ nằm
Mười năm con sóng thôi là sóng
Trôi dạt, hay là dạ̣t bể Đông?
Mười năm em có còn biêng biếc?
Môi tủổi trăng tròn, môi ướm trăng
Mười năm ly cách thành ly biệt
Thương quá, mười thương cuả đoạ̣n trường
Mười năm níu lấy mười năm nưã
Gíó lạnh quay về buốt vết thương
Tang TD de tuong nho me toi, co NTTN cua Dong Khanh Hue, nguoi me da day toi tho viet va tieng viet truoc khi lot long.
DNN
jan 2020

Monday, January 13, 2020

GIONG HAT HA THANH AFTER 1975?

...if this was sung by Ha Thanh, it speaks for the quality of her voice, natural and she was born with it. She does not inject the Hue esoteric quality into her voice here.  If it is Ha Thanh, this was recorded long after 1975, perhaps after 1990, and yet her voice was still at the top form, better than ever. If the poetry was by Nhu Thuong from Ban Me Thuot, it was somebody i knew from 2013. And, if the composer was the singer Anh Tuyet, then this was a composition made by somebody who knows Vietnamese folk music, and BRAVA to her...Very seldom did I hear something that I just have to praise...

After consulting a singer friend who knows Ha Thanh's voice, I have to agree with her this is NOT Ha Thanh of Hue. reasons below:

this does not sound like Ha Thanh of Hue. HT's voice was much thinner and yet more mature. Plus, she has the "glottal stop" of Hue's accent injected into her singing. Her voice also has more obvious "passage" from MID VOICE (very light and lots of steady yet very soft ringing resonance) to HEAD VOICE (often legato, very beautiful).  This tape does not have the Ha thanh's characteristics of the past although it is the same lyric soprano quality. it appears like the type of voice enhanced by technology. And it's also more "dieu". Ha Thanh is not "dieu" in her singing. She sings like she were standing in a choir.  Another uniqueness of Ha Thanh's voice is the total lack of energy, although she flies high in the lyric soprano range, very beautiful vibrato.  
it's awful if someone else sang and said it was ha thanh. I do acknowledge that a voice may change depending on the level of training and alteration made to the breath and the register.  Mine did change depending on practice and training or simply losing it. In Ha Thanh's case, she did not "retrain" her voice in the U.S, and even if she did, she would not lose the "Hue" tonal and consonant articulation.  That I think sticks for life.  
But even if a voice changes, something is still consistent as unique in the voice. (In my case, it's the sweet vulnerability at the end of the phrase when i had to go into my head voice and the resonance in the midvoice with certain words when i utilize the breath and the power of the register.  When I don't utilize it, my voice is very light and immature.  
In sum, this voice does not have the ha thanh's unique quality. It is also too young for the maturity of Ha Thanh's voice (a characteristic that appeared even in the 1960s when she was in her late 20s). A voice does not get young with age. Maturity in the voice came with the register and with age. Ha Thanh's voice was very mature even in her 20s.  Another characteristic of Ha Thanh's voice is her lack of sustained breath support although she has very long legato, meaning a naturally born talent. 

The way to check into the authenticity whether this was ha thanh's voice in the U.S. was to check with her family, including her sister Ms. Lien Nhu. 

WND

Saturday, January 11, 2020

MEMORY OF VIETNAM: the best of Hue, the best forever

Yes, I walked toward Broadway to audition for Miss Saigon when no Vietnamese singer yet made such walk, and I listened exclusively to classical music and jazz, BUT I AM TELLING YOU THIS:  THE FOLLOWING IS THE BEST, BECAUSE THESE TWO SINGERS SANG WITH ALL OF THEIR HEART AND THEY EXPRESSED THE UNIQUENESS OF THEIR CULTURE:  No one can duplicate the following, and they touched their listeners with the soul of their voice, toward the collective soul of Hue, a unique place on earth:  

Thanh Thuy, alto, and then Ha Thanh, soprano range, singing the best of Y Van from the 60s, in their unique esoteric Hue accent...they sing the soul of Hue to us...

Maria Callas and Edith Piaff can sing on top of the world, but they can't sing with a Hue accent and they can't deliver the Hue spirit...to those whose soul is Hue