For anyone paying attention to Vietnamese or Cambodian pop culture, the past several days have seen a flurry of online commentary in Southeast Asia and beyond about a new music video by Phương Mỹ Chi and DTAP titled 'Thiên đường với người thương', or 'Paradise with my love'. The track is in Vietnamese and follows the conventions of Vietnamese pop, but the music video (MV) features Khmer Krom culture from southern Vietnam, with scenes filmed at Khmer wats (temples), displays of Khmer dance, and a staging of a Khmer wedding. The central characters in the video are a classical dancer, played by Phương Mỹ Chi, and a musician, played by actor Bảo Định, who meet as children, grow up together, fall in love, and get married.
The video presents a wholesome story and celebrates Khmer Krom culture. The Khmer Krom, or lower Khmer, live in the Mekong Delta and are related to the Khmer people of Cambodia. Both were once part of the Khmer Empire, but several factors have shaped a distinct Khmer Krom culture. Starting in the 17th century, Vietnamese populations moved into the Mekong Delta, which ushered in several centuries of cultural mixture. French colonisation and independence movements established a boundary between Cambodia and southern Vietnam that limited movement. And the distinct qualities of the Mekong Delta itself yielded new cultural forms. The Khmer Krom therefore have many folk traditions about which little is known.
Responses to the video have largely been positive, but it has touched a nerve among some netizens who decry the cultural appropriation of Khmer culture by a Vietnamese pop artist. This debate offers insight into the wider geopolitics of Southeast Asia and the trends of contemporary pop in Vietnam.
The release of 'Thiên đường với người thương' has taken place amid vibrant experimentation with folk traditions in Vietnamese popular music. Songs of folk pop or folktronica feature pop singers reclaiming various folk traditions of their parents and grandparents to fuse them with popular music models that circulate worldwide. Phương Mỹ Chi has several tracks that blend southern Vietnamese traditional music with global pop aesthetics. Artists from northern Vietnam do the same: Hoàng Thùy Linh's 'Để Mị Nói Cho Mà Nghe' incorporates elements of Hmong music, and Kiều Anh's 'Lá Ngọc Cành Vàng' folds a short ca trù (sung poetry) tune into an instrumental interlude.
At the same time, the Vietnamese government plays an influential role both publicly and behind the scenes in promoting some artists over others. For instance, in 2013, the government banned public lip-synching to promote genuine vocal performance but later rescinded the ban. More recently, several pop musicians, including Miu Lê and Phương Diễm Huyền, faced criminal prosecution for supposed illegal activity. Any arrest is a warning to other singers, as Vietnamnet recently indicated.
In this context, Vietnamese pop artists must figuratively walk several tightropes in their artistic creation. The first tightrope involves navigating the razor-edged distinction between cultural appropriation and legitimate experimentation in an environment of fickle social media trends and youth tastes. On this, 'Thiên đường với người thương' has done rather well.
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An article in Cambodia-based The Phnom Penh Post suggests that the music video appropriately “acknowledges” the origins of the Khmer dance and rituals. This echoes Cambodian and Khmer Krom social media posts that relay a sense of pride in seeing Khmer culture represented on an international stage. Vietnamese and diasporic Vietnamese communities also enjoy the video, as VietQ Media has reported.
Social media posts strengthened the case for visual acknowledgement one day after the MV’s release. Phương Mỹ Chi gave her thanks to Trà Vinh University and her dance teacher, Thạch Thị Út Linh, while DTAP released a visual of musical instruments and customs seen in the music video.
The track has not been entirely successful in raising awareness of Khmer Krom sonic culture, however. During one instrumental interlude, for instance, the MV shows musicians playing various instruments of the Khmer classical music genre pinpeat, or ngũ âm in Vietnamese, including the sralai (a quadruple-reed instrument) and Bảo Định playing the roneat ek (xylophone). But the soundtrack contains none of the distinct timbres of these instruments. Instead, listeners hear a rather boring guitar riff. Khmer culture is seen here but not heard.
The second tightrope involves navigating opaque areas of government permissibility. I have no access to specific information about the making of the MV, but the video's wide circulation suggests that it meets government regulations and requirements. The song also upholds the ideals of the recent Resolution 80 on the development of cultural industries in Vietnam, which seeks to promote culture but also manage it appropriately.
Given this environment, it’s no small feat to find fertile middle ground between artistry and policy to successfully represent Khmer culture in Vietnam. This is of paramount importance because of the difficulties today in accessing Khmer Krom music, dance, and rituals. Artists do not often perform outside of the Mekong Delta, with only a handful of performances taking place every year in large cities in Vietnam. Tourists also rarely visit Khmer communities in southern Vietnam, given the lack of infrastructure.
At the same time, murky restrictions often prevent the study of Khmer arts in southern Vietnam. Earlier this year, the very university that supported the MV’s production team would not authorise my Khmer music lessons with staff instructors. This is, of course, the university’s prerogative, and given the long history of colonial and other forms of exploitation, I understand their caution. But my case is not an isolated one among domestic and foreign researchers in Vietnam. And might the commercial use of the Khmer arts by a Vietnamese pop singer also be seen as a form of exploitation?
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The case of 'Thiên đường với người thương' is therefore a complicated one. The song acknowledges, represents, and values the Khmer arts in Vietnam, but at the same time manages and exploits them for commercial and nationalistic ends. But no government can fully control a narrative.
Among the online discussion are several commentators from Thailand who have both congratulated Vietnam for displaying “Thai culture” — thereby completely erasing Khmer and Khmer Krom culture — and remonstrated with Vietnam for featuring “inauthentic” forms of Thai costume and dance. In the midst of a military conflict between Cambodia and Thailand, they have added to the widening culture war between the two countries by bringing Vietnam into it.
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Pop is never boring, and foreign (i.e. non-Southeast Asian) audiences must start to pay attention to the dynamics that bring these songs to life. 'Thiên đường với người thương' encourages reflection on the interconnected nature of music and everyday life and the shifting tightropes that all individuals must navigate when making artistic decisions. And while certain powers may attempt to control a narrative, the openness of the Internet quickly dissolves that enclosure.
I am therefore optimistic about 'Thiên đường với người thương'. I truly hope that it will generate new interest in Khmer Krom culture and open new doors for Khmer artists to showcase their artistry to new audiences. The paradise of the video, then, may not be romantic love, but may instead be a paradise of visibility. Audibility may well be next.
Written by Alexander M. Cannon. He is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Birmingham. This article benefited from a conversation with an avid consumer of Vietnamese popular culture who wishes to remain anonymous. Their contribution is gratefully acknowledged.
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