What remains of an era in its songs?
With Nhớ, the Vietnamese Cultural Weeks invites us to rediscover a part of the cultural life of South Vietnam, primarily between the 1950s and 1975, through the works of songwriters and composers who left their mark on several generations.
Cung Tiến, Phạm Duy, Trịnh Công Sơn, Hoàng Thi Thơ, Vũ Thành An, Trần Thiện Thanh, Ngô Thụy Miên, Y Vân and others sang of love, youth, absence, the passing of time and memory. Simple stories, born in a time shadowed by war, yet one in which people continued to love, to dream and to live.
In their songs, we meet a young girl walking home from school, a love left behind, a wedding procession making its way through a village, a soldier, a city beneath the rain and the memory of those who are no longer there. Fragments of individual lives that, brought together, trace the memory of a time.
Nhớ means “to remember,” but also to think of a person, a place or a moment whose absence remains within us. At the heart of this memory lies Sài Gòn, where the voices, stories and music of a generation were woven together.
Performed in Vietnamese by artists of today, the songs will be accompanied by a narrative in French that will shed light on their context through a few images and certain essential words. Not to translate everything, but to allow everyone to feel their poetry and emotion.
More than a nostalgic concert, Nhớ Sài Gòn, j’écris ton nom is an invitation to rediscover a past on a human scale, through all that women and men loved, lived, lost, hoped for… and sang.
Performed by: Duy Phan, Hong Hanh, Michelle Thuy-Uyen, Xander Trinh Gia Bao, Vavavy
Presented by: Charles Nguyen and Vy Nguyen
Musicians: David Bourcart, Louis-Félix Choinière, Phil Groulx, David Dai Duong Vu
Show direction: Vy Nguyen
Musical direction: David Bourcart
Concept and texts: Kim Phuong Nguyen
