Shaky and shaky together

Many fun interactive games at Xam xe duyen 1 - Photo: BTC

Perhaps many people are hesitant about listening to Xam, hesitant about a type of folk music belonging to the past, hesitant about not fully understanding the musical rules to fully enjoy it.

But at the Xam Xe Duyen performance, the shyness only passed in the first few minutes, then everyone got into the Xam.

First of all, it was because of an idea that was unlike any other. It was to connect Xam - a 700-year-old art form - with a new concept introduced to Vietnam: Pride Month, a month to honor gender diversity, or more broadly, to honor the many faces of love.

We thought "sexual liberation" was something new that we learned from the West, but few people know that Xam has long been full of the spirit of liberation.

A female audience member even pointed out that young Vietnamese singers today have faced a wave of fierce opposition on TikTok for just lightly touching on sexual issues, while our ancestors dared to compose songs a hundred times more daring.

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Opening the show with a famous love ballad called Tinh moi met tinh, "Xam artist" Ngo Van Hao explains the origin of the familiar folk verse: "Today, Tinh moi met tinh/ Like Kim Trong explaining when he met Kieu".

Meaning that character or affection is also a fate to meet, affection does not necessarily have to be love, there are so many kinds of affection in the world. So isn't it true that our ancestors were too modern compared to modern times, the time when there was a very clear distinction between "character" and "affection" otherwise it would be considered... "ambiguous", a "red flag".

Then the more the Xam singers sang, the more the audience exclaimed "oh, ah".

It turns out that the things that people today refer to as soulless words like "trap boy", "trap girl" - referring to people who like to tease other people's feelings - have been told in Xam songs for a long time, and are much more charming, both vulgar and full of love, very satirical but not lacking in subtlety.

Like in the poem Thornless Wild Pineapple, with images of fertility scattered throughout the poem, such as "oản te", "bánh dày", "green banana", "pineapple thorns longer than spikes"...

After all, phallic worship has always been at the core of an agricultural culture.

Even the four pleasures of Vietnamese people include sex. So why be shy about talking about sex?

That's still nothing, when it comes to the song Anh Han Noi, a Xam song that is rarely performed, perhaps because of its cheerful and boundless nature, the audience admires the humor of the elders even more.

Singing about a man who specializes in repairing pots, and then from the image of pots that seem like nothing more than normal, we realize that this guy is actually a womanizer, sharing his bed with anyone. How daring!

The Tet Xam singing show with the theme of Ke Cho Flower Projector was organized by the Center for Promotion of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Vietnam in early 2024 - Photo: TIEU TUNG

That day , some people had registered in advance, some were just sitting there by chance, some had listened to Xam many times, some were listening for the first time. But at the end of the day, when the Xam singers said "it's time to go home", everyone still lingered, begging the Xam singer to sing a few more lines.

Even the elderly who usually like to go home early stay a little longer, "composing poetry" and asking the Xam singer to sing their feelings: "Today is Sunday, it's raining/ I'm so busy listening to Xam singers that I don't want to go home yet."

Xam xe duyen is a program of the Cheo 48H group - I row back to my hometown, which has just completed 10 years of establishment. Perhaps because of youth, because of Gen Z, it is easy to talk about the "muddyness" and deviations in an ancient art form.

For a long time, we have tended to place it on the altar of respect, forgetting that it is a folk art, and since it is folk, it is spontaneous, playful, and can go against all orthodox discourses on language and behavior.

Even the audience who never wrote poetry could write poetry that day (or ask ChatGPT to write poetry) for the Xam singers to sing.

The song "Wild Pineapple Without Thorns" has the line "xoc xa xoc xech, xoc xa xoc xech" - a line that encapsulates the spirit of love that our grandparents already had without the need for sexual revolutions from the West.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/xoc-xa-xoc-xech-cung-xam-2024063009453183.htm