Musician Nguyen Dinh Bang and the song "Red Flower Season"

Hearing that musician Nguyen Dinh Bang - Author of the famous song "The Time of Red Flowers" has just drifted off to the land of white clouds..., I could not help but be shocked. Because, just a few months ago, I called to congratulate him when he was awarded a certificate of honor by the Vietnam Musicians Association for the work "The Time of Red Flowers" - "A typical musical work commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Liberation of the South and National Reunification April 30, 1975 - April 30, 2025".

Musician Nguyen Dinh Bang (sitting on the left of the photo) talks with the author (Photo: Yen Dan)

As a journalist from the same hometown as musician Nguyen Dinh Bang, I was fortunate to meet and talk with him a few times at his small house in the Mai Dich Cultural Collective (Cau Giay, Hanoi). Through the open and friendly stories about the hometown, life and music of the talented musician from Ninh Binh, I accidentally got more interesting information related to one of the best love songs of the early period of the renovation period - the song "The Time of Red Flowers".

Musician Nguyen Dinh Bang is from the low-lying plains of Tho Chuong (Bac Ly commune, Ninh Binh province) - a countryside that has long been known for its famous traditional craft of weaving mats, buckets, boats... When mentioning his hometown, musician Nguyen Dinh Bang tearfully recalls: During the French colonial period, every flood season, going to the entrance of Tho Chuong village and looking in all four directions, one could only see vast white water. Fields, roads, markets... were all flooded, so the only means of transportation were small, floating bamboo boats and rafts. Therefore, after Tet, people from Tho Chuong village spread out in all directions to make a living. Men followed the Red River upstream to sell bamboo rafts and downstream to sell to customers. Women brought their craft of weaving mats, buckets... to the market and river wharves, densely populated areas with a lot of rice to make a living. At the age of eight, Nguyen Dinh Bang followed his parents on a bamboo raft to go to a foreign land to make a living. The bamboo raft was both a means of transportation and a source of raw materials for the family's livelihood. When he reached adulthood , the young man from the Tho Chuong lowland region joined the army, studied music, and then became attached to music as a predestined relationship...(*).

The song "The Time of Red Flowers" was composed by Nguyen Dinh Bang in 1989, set to music from the poem of the same name by poet Thanh Tung. According to musician Nguyen Dinh Bang: In 1989, Nguyen Dinh Bang and a number of musicians attended a symphonic music composition camp in the Soviet Union. Unaccustomed to the cold climate, he fell ill and was hospitalized for a whole month in the land of the White Birch. While in the hospital, he rummaged through his luggage and found a collection of "99 good love poems" (Culture Publishing House) to read to distract himself. Nguyen Dinh Bang accidentally flipped to the song "The Time of Red Flowers" right at the line "Every season of red flowers comes/ Flowers fall like rain"... making his heart He suddenly felt an indescribable excitement. From that moment of accidental excitement, the musical ideas and rhythms kept appearing, continuing and surging, helping him to quickly write and complete the piece of music with the same name as the poem, which at that time he did not know would later become a love song of his life. Later, when it was successfully arranged by musicians according to the original intention, especially through the "perfect" voice of singer Le Thu ( Ho Chi Minh City), the love song "The Time of Red Flowers" immediately created a buzz and became an indispensable song in the notebooks of music lovers, especially students at that time.

Sharing a little about the musical theory aspect, musician Nguyen Dinh Bang opened his heart: in the first part of the song, he deliberately let the rhythm of "Red Flower Season" be leisurely and slow, like a confession, like the slow walking steps of two people who are together on the "road of memories" after many years apart with deep, burning memories: "Under the color of flowers like a burning fire of desire/Walking silently on the deserted road of the past/Only the sound of cicadas boiling loudly/But not allowing the heart to calm down at all"; "I am absorbed in a distant cloud color/The sail drifts back to a time that has passed/You silently sing an old poem/About a time of passionate youth/About a time of magical red flowers" ... Then, in the next second part, the harmony suddenly surges like streams of memories, burning desires and longings, rushing back at the same time "Every season of red flowers comes/Flowers like falling rain" ; “The fragile petals rustle bright red like regrets of a time of youth ”… Because of this difference, the rhythm of “The time of red flowers” ​​seems to be impossible to fit into any common rhythmic pattern, period… but it spreads endlessly along the flow of emotions, the improvisation of the musician, following the harmony between poetry and music. And when at the peak of the climax, Nguyen Dinh Bang was very skillful, “very professional” when using three harmony parts for the chorus “Each season the red season returns/Flowers like falling rain…” to express to the utmost depth the flow of emotions mixed between sweet memories mixed with the feeling of loss, regret and bewilderment in the hearts of those who have once gone through “the time of youth”, “the time of passionate girls”…

Regarding the lyrics, the musical version of “The Time of Red Flowers” ​​by Nguyen Dinh Bang has a little change compared to the original literary work of poet Thanh Tung. This has raised the work to a higher level, with a deeper philosophy of life. Talking about that “variation”, Nguyen Dinh Bang confided that he struggled for a long time before deciding to use “The fragile petals rustle and turn red” instead of the original poem: “ The fragile petals are scattered and red” which was already very good, very deep and full of the poet’s feelings. Not only that, he also boldly “lightened the level of sadness” and made Thanh Tung’s poem somewhat private by replacing the two words “ blood oozing” with “regret” so that the lyrics would match the musical idea, with the main sound of the song: “Like regretting a time of youth” . This “variation” is for no other purpose than to make “The Time of Red Flowers” ​​become a common sentiment, a common, beautiful, and holy nostalgia of many generations of people who have gone through “the time of youth”, “the time of passionate maidenhood”, … and not just simply, in a specific love of someone. And fortunately, from the original poetic verse which was already very good and very profound, through the creative improvisational music of Nguyen Dinh Bang, “The Time of Red Flowers” ​​has been given wings to sublimate to a new level of success. The change that led to this success was very much agreed and appreciated by poet Thanh Tung…

In the heart-to-heart story of musician Nguyen Dinh Bang, I also learned another very interesting detail. That is, many years after the song "The Time of Red Flowers" became a song that was memorized by the majority of audiences and listeners who love music, especially students, the music composer and the literary author of the work of the same name had the opportunity to meet in Hanoi. During that meeting, poet Thanh Tung confided very sincerely that: although he was the one who wrote the soul-stirring, soul-stirring verses, when he heard the "heartfelt" poetic verses and words that he had always cherished suddenly sublimated and shone with the talented, spontaneous harmony of Nguyen Dinh Bang, he felt "goosebumps", especially with the chorus with many layers of harmony and continuously rising: "Every season of red flowers comes/Flowers like falling rain/Every season of red flowers comes/Flowers like falling rain ...".

Now..., the talented musician Nguyen Dinh Bang has gone to the distant white clouds... He has gone far away, but to me as well as to the majority of professional musicians and music lovers, musician Nguyen Dinh Bang and his timeless love song "The Time of Red Flowers" will forever be "a song that goes with the years".

(*) Musician Nguyen Dinh Bang was born on December 27, 1942; died on October 19, 2025.

In 1960, he entered the Intermediate Cheo class, Course I, of the Vietnam Cheo Theatre and became a musician of the theatre. In 1967, he volunteered to go to the battlefield to serve in the combat on the Truong Son route. In 1974, he studied composition at the Hanoi Conservatory of Music (now the Vietnam National Academy of Music) and graduated in 1979, then worked at the Music Publishing House until his retirement (in 2002);

Some typical works: “The Red Flower Season”, “Sudden Rain”; “Cruising on Lam River”; “Sea Star”; “Naked Truong Son”; “Vietnam in the Shape of a Dragon”; “Thi Kinh-Thi Mau” (Baleade Symphony)…

Musician Nguyen Dinh Bang was awarded the State Prize for Literature and Arts in 2007.

The Vinh

Source: https://baoninhbinh.org.vn/nhac-si-nguyen-dinh-bang-va-ca-khuc-thoi-hoa-do-251021061350428.html