20 years, remembering Trinh Cong Son...

( Quang Ngai Newspaper) - When I started writing this article, a sad melody flashed through my mind, poignant but not at all tragic, the lyrics carrying the philosophy of a human life: "Which speck of dust will transform into my body/ So that one day I can grow into a large body/ Oh, wonderful dust/ The sun shines on a wandering life...".

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So, it has been exactly 20 years since the talented musician Trinh left his “life of wandering” - a worldly philosophy that perhaps only he could express. During that time, music lovers have not forgotten him for a single day by singing passionate, intense melodies in the hustle and bustle of life. His music still remains with life, living strongly, persistently, challenging time.

Musician Trinh Cong Son. PHOTO: TL

Leaving behind more than 600 songs in more than 40 years of composing, this is an extremely large and admirable legacy that even those in the industry, few people dare to dream of. The kind of music that anyone can sing, everyone in life knows at least a few songs, every generation sympathizes with and loves. Musician Trinh Cong Son must have been extremely happy when he put his compassionate heart into familiar yet haunting and haunting melodies.

A contemporary musician once said that "Trinh Cong Son writes music as easily as taking words out of his pocket". It is a type of music whose lyrics and ideas are surprisingly beautiful and unique, not defining any school or philosophy but still penetrating people's hearts like a watering stream... His music sublimates steadily, seemingly never having a "down" period with a rich variety of topics. The message about life, love, and fate, forged from Buddhist philosophies alongside the permeation of existentialism, has created a look and appearance of Trinh Cong Son that cannot be easily confused with any other musician of his time or later.

Life - love - fate are the main themes of the composer Trinh. However, when writing about his mother, listeners see his portrait in another dimension, because of the touching and poignant lyrics that make tears well up: "At night, I sit with the lamp on, remembering/ Every story of the past/ Mother comes back and stands in the rain/ Covering her sleeping children/ Watching every step of the enemy/ Mother sits in the rain..." (Legend of Mother).

When he writes love songs, we can easily see a romantic and romantic man, living fully and devotedly to love: “I bring you a quynh flower/ Is it the fragrant quynh or your fragrant lips/ Your lips give me a rose petal/ The silk of that moment has not been forgotten” (Quynh huong). A critic commented very concisely: “The beauty in Trinh Cong Son’s lyrics, both the body of the words and the soul of the poem, is vague and difficult to define in the right sense, but clearly so beautiful, yet somehow ghostly”.

The rare thing that musician Trinh Cong Son has that is different from many of his colleagues is that throughout his composing career, he has never set anyone's poems to music. Because, he was the first poet, perhaps even earlier than when he wrote music: "Is the sun as rosy as your lips/ Is the rain as sad as your eyes/ Each strand of your hair/ Falls into life as drifting waves" (Like a flying stork's wings). The pure source from Trinh's innate talent, just flows passionate poetic ideas: "Each lover leaves us like small rivers/ Oh small rivers/ The promises are like rains..." (Distant Love). The smoothness, sophistication and refinement to every idea, every word in each work, of course, first of all, are very beautiful poems.

The ethereal, subtle poetic quality mixed with the "weird" nature when constructing images makes Trinh Cong Son's music capable of strongly stirring the listeners' emotions, even... not understanding, not being able to explain but still finding it really beautiful: "What age is it, just a little sad, thin shirt on the shoulder/ What age leaves the footprints of birds crossing the sky/ Please let your arms still be long and smooth/ Please let loneliness come at this age/ What age wanders the city with cloud-like hair..." (What age is it for you) or "What sun shines on my heart/ Let love grind it into pebbles/ Please cover my face with sadness/ Each passing day, waiting for good news" (Dust). That is something so strange that surely only Trinh Cong Son can do.

The journey of more than 40 years of writing and composing, the sympathy between sound and language has shaped the shape of his spiritual children. Wherever he went, attached to and accidentally fell in love with the land and people, Trinh Cong Son always had time to send back to the country immortal songs: "Do you still remember or have you forgotten? / Remember Saigon, rain and then suddenly sunshine / Remember the streets whose names I did not know / Remember the street lights that kept me awake at night / The morning covered you with the green tamarind leaves..." (Do you still remember or have you forgotten?). And especially, the people of the capital will certainly be very grateful to him for sending one of the best love songs about Hanoi of all time: "Hanoi in autumn / Yellow rice tree / Red-leafed banyan tree / Lying side by side / Old streets, old houses / Dark brown tiled roofs... Hanoi in autumn / Hanoi autumn / Remembering someone / To remember everyone" (Remembering Hanoi autumn).

Trinh's music, sometimes in a few joyful moments, still hides behind the layer of free-spirited and cheerful language a deep premonition, along with a sad philosophy of fate: "The bird perches on a bamboo branch/ The fish stays in a stream of water/ The bamboo branch...í...a/ The river...í...a.../ I now stay in this world/ A hundred years later, I will return to a faraway place at the end of the sky" (Lodging).

Trinh Cong Son was once compared by Van Cao to "The Poet", a brief and concise summary when referring to this talented musician named Trinh. He lived the fullest life possible with music and a huge legacy of compositions left for posterity. More than 60 years of "wandering" on this temporary earthly world - that must have been a fulfilling "wandering" of a kind-hearted man, full of compassion, loving people, loving life with a heart eager to contribute. After 20 years of returning to the dust of eternity, his music remains forever. And then, every day, his haunting love songs still resound with longing, speaking for many people about beautiful ideas about life, about the meaning of life: "Living in life, you need a heart/ For what, do you know/ For the wind to take it away/ For the wind to take it away..." (For the wind to take it away).

NGO THE LAM

Source: https://baoquangngai.vn/channel/2028/202103/20-nam-nho-trinh-cong-son-3049534/