Shaky and shaky together

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

Perhaps many people are hesitant to listen 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, because of an idea that is unlike any other. It is to connect Xam - a 700-year-old art - 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 only lightly touched on sexual issues and have been strongly opposed on TikTok, while our ancestors dared to compose songs a hundred times more daring.

Xam: NEW LOVE MEETS PERSONALITY - To Minh Cuong

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

Meaning that character or love is also a fate to meet, love does not necessarily have to be love, there are so many kinds of love 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 "love" otherwise it would be considered... "ambiguous", a "red flag".

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

It turns out that 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 since ancient times, and are much more charming, both vulgar and full of love, very satirical but not lacking in subtlety.

Like in the song " Wild Pineapple Without Thorns", with images of fertility scattered throughout the song, such as "oàn 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 guy who specializes in repairing pots, and then from the image of pots that seem nothing more than normal, we realize that this guy is actually a womanizer, sharing a bed with anyone. How bold!

Hat xam Tet show with the theme of Ke Cho flower mat 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 just happened to be there, 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, "expressing their feelings in poetry" by asking the Xam singer to sing their feelings: "Today is Sunday, it's raining/ I'm so busy listening to Xam singing 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 been established for 10 years. Perhaps because it is young, because of Gen Z, it is easy to talk about the "muddy" and the deviations from the standards of 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 ancestors already had without the need for sexual revolutions from the West.

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