Ngu Cung returns to the Northwest

When looking back at the history of Vietnamese popular music, the years 2005-2008 will surely be seen as a golden age.

It can be said that Ngu Cung is one of the "founding heroes" who created the Northwestern rock scene - Photo: BNCC

The popularity of the Vietnamese Songs program has promoted the birth of a new wave of musicians, diversifying the musical "terrain", every soundscape from rock to R'n'B, from folk to ballads are full of imprints.

The Pentatonic Band belonged to that period.

As impressed as today's Gen Z generation is by Double2T's The Mountain People, at that time, people of the late 8X and early 9X generation were by Ngu Cung's The Wife Robber.

Before that, the Central Highlands had been rockified and become a towering realm of Vietnamese rock thanks to the songs of Nguyen Cuong and Tran Tien, but the Northwest - another majestic mountainous realm - had not yet. It can be said that Ngu Cung is one of the "founding heroes" who created the Northwest rock realm.

Then after many years, through the periods when rap was on the rise, and not only in Vietnam but also in the world everyone felt the gradual decline of rock music, Ngu Cung returned with an album of new compositions, Heritage, exactly 10 years since Cao Nguyen Da (2014), if not counting the album of remixes of Vietnamese classics in rock style in 2022.

Ngu Cung Band - Photo: VAN TRUNG

Legacy is much better than one would expect from a band that has perhaps been classified as being on the wane. It's not a celebration album, or a throwaway album, it's a real album.

Although the opening track of Song Dich Dich doesn't have the same ecstatic sonic experiments as the opening track of Cao Nguyen Da, its straightforward ferocity is like a declaration of return, that rock is still here and not going anywhere.

The album then opens up like a road trip with a flat, easy start, then gradually leads us to more dangerous, rocky, adventurous roads, roads on cliffs that few people pass through in Fire Jumping, Rain Praying, Man Le 1979, The Twins of the Mountains, and at that point, the Five Palaces are the Five Palaces we once knew in Wife Robber.

We are again entering the realm of Northwest rock, but much deeper and more elusive.

Replacing the excitement is the mysterious, legendary feeling of the ghosts and spirits that people still tell each other about when sitting around a fire on a rainy night in the middle of the forest; the transcendent, heavenly feeling when entering a Mother Goddess temple;

is the blurring of the line between lyrical and historical material, the harmony between the lightness and elegance of the pear blossom forest and the weight of the history of the border war. There are riffs that are a minute long but still make us want them to be longer.

Pentatonic Band - Photo: T.DIEU

The Five Palaces return to being the Five Palaces

There are lyrics that remind us of the time when music still required polished lyrics: Thieu Quang shines brightly in the sky/ A verdant color, fresh and ornate/ On the green mountains, there are many fruits and flowers...

That difference is not surprising, because in terms of human resources, the Ngu Cung of Heritage today is almost no longer the Ngu Cung that we knew during the time of Wife Robbery, even the main singer Hoang Hiep also withdrew last year.

The only member still active today is Tran Thang, the band's lead guitarist and songwriter.

Other positions are constantly being filled. The constant influx of new members—the Heritage even has three completely new names, who have only been with the band since... 2024—brings to mind a famous philosophical paradox: how many parts of a ship can you replace before the ship is no longer the same? Like all philosophical questions, there is no definitive answer to this question.

But for Ngu Cung, perhaps change is inevitable so that Ngu Cung can return to being Ngu Cung, a band associated with a time of Vietnamese popular music that brought many fresh surprises, so that they can continue their exploration of the Northwest that was put aside for ten years, this time taking different paths.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/ngu-cung-tro-lai-tay-bac-20250112100657537.htm