The Music Stopped

It is 7pm on a Sunday evening. I am having dinner with my parents, before driving back to LA for the week. Mom puts on one of her favorite CD's, the singer Ha Thanh, who has an extremely clear, light and airy voice. I have grown to love this singer's voice as well, as it floats into the air some of my favorite of the old songs, bringing me a sense of familiar home and memories, as well as exquisite beauty within each note. To hear Mom describe Ha Thanh's voice is to see real passion. Mom does not use fancy vocabulary or metaphors to describe, but rather, draws out her normal words and emphasizes with tone, "It's sooo light and each time I hear, it becomes so GOOD and so BEAUTIFUL! Mẹ thấy hay ơơơơơơi là hay, hay QUÁ!".

I ask Mom why I had never heard Ha Thanh among her cassettes when we were still living in Vietnam. Mom says that after 1975, Ha Thanh only sang certain songs that she was allowed to sing, and those were not the songs that Mom loved. Of course, the concept of censorship is not new to me, especially after years of studying and following social movements. But this time, censorship put side by side with Mom's expressive love for this music and its romance, and my own appreciation, it hit me personally. Briefly, I had to imagine how it could be that one day, the music stopped. All the songs you grew up with, fell in love over, cried over, was inspired by, one day they all just stopped. You were not allowed to hear them any more. In the streets, flames were engulfing cassette tapes and books in huge piles. Then what happened? Who were you, and who could you become?

Then, I got in my car and drove off to LA for the week.