Phản bội [Vong bội] (Betrayal) [Ungrateful] - Vinh Sử (1973)

đầu đề:

Làm sao giết được người trong mộng

How can I murder someone in my dreams

Để trả thù duyên kiếp phụ phàng.

To avenge a jealous karmic fate.

H.M.T.

Ballade

Trời ơi, Anh đã xa tôi mất rồi!

Good heavens, You've gone away!
Tại anh gian dối nên làm khổ tôi.

Because your lies have made me miserable.
Buổi đầu gặp gỡ chưa nguôi, kỷ niệm mang mãi trên môi, xin ngoéo tay nhau thề chung đôi...

Our first meeting still fresh, memories still born by my lips, we crossed fingers and vowed to be together as a couple.

Nhiều khi tôi cố quên đi nỗi niềm

Many times I've tried to forget these feelings  
Càng quên thêm nhớ vô vàn chẳng yên.

The more I forget, the more I endlessly remember with no relief
Nghĩ mình bạc bẽo vô duyên, để người ta đổi thay đen, cam chấp nhận số phận buồn tênh

I think I'm ungrateful, failed in love, so that somebody changed to black, I've silently accept such a sad fate

Chim xa rừng còn thương cây nhớ cội, người đi xa người tội lắm người ơi!

Birds distant from the forest still love trees, remember their roots, people distant from each other is sin I tell you
Anh quên rồi đàn lia thia quen chậu, bọn mình quen hơi Anh bạc tựa vôi.

You've forgotten that fighting fish get used to their bowl, as we two would get used to our air, You're unfaithful (pale like lime)

 
làm sao tôi giết Anh trong giấc mộng.

How can I murder You in my dreams?
Để cho nhung nhớ không còn nhớ nhung

So my longing is no longing longer  
Trả thù duyên kiếp long đong, trả thù ai đã bội vong, gương đã vỡ sao lành mà mong.

To avenge misfortune in love, avenge someone ungrateful, the mirror once broken, how can it be fixed with only hopes

source: Vinh Sử, "Phản bội" (Khánh Hội, Saigon: Ấn phẩm Họa Mi, [1975].  

For my taste, there is no better interpreter of Vietnamese song than Trang Mỹ Dung. She sings with a full, dark timbre and phrases exquisitely. This song's melody opens in a way that is very foreign to Western ears. It is sung outside of the Western equal tempered scale and instead the pitches are bent toward the equidistant seven note scale that influences the oán mode (my observation owes a great deal to the fine musicologist and composer, Lê Tuấn Hùng). In an equi-distant seven note scale, the third and sixth scale degrees that open the verse (Trời ơi anh đã xa mất tôi...) are neutral, neither major or minor, but in between the major and minor western scale degrees. This inflection that clashes with the diatonic setting of the harmony adds intensity to the emotional impact of the song. Other than the opening of the song's verses, these two degrees are little used in the song.

The opening epigraph is a very famous couple written by "H.M.T." - the colonial era poet Hàn Mặc Tử. Likely known to all Vietnamese listeners, these words that conclude his poem "Lang thang" (Wandering) provide the framework of the songs message. Phạm Duy created a famous song - "Giết người trong mộng" (Killing Someone in My Dreams) - based on the same poem. The poet is driven to dissolution, hardship and hunger by the lingering memory of an ideal love.

"Phản bội" also incorporates the image that opens the Southern folksong "Lý chim quyên." Here are the lyrics and their translation from Phạm Duy's book, Musics of Vietnam (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1975). Phạm Duy writes that "lý" means villagers song. It contrasts with 'hò" - folksongs that arise from work. "Lý chim quyên" could be translated as "Village song of the cuckoo." Phạm Duy's lyrics are written in a strong southern dialect - quyên becomes khuyền.

Lý chim quyên

Chim khuyền guầy

Ăn trái guây

Nhẵn lồng ơi con bạn mình ơi

Thia lia guầy

Quen chậu guây

Vợ chồng

Vợ chồng ở con bạn mình hơi!

The nightingale

eats

longans,

My friend!

The paradise-fish

inhabiting the bowl

like husband and wife 

get accustomed to each other

Viết Chung made an arrangement of this folksong, sung by Thanh Tuyền) that is seemingly based on Phạm Duy's interpretation.

Phạm Duy's transcription includes padding syllables - chữ đệm like ơi, guây (quây), bạn mình - that turn a couplet of lục bát folk poetry into a song. Lục bát means six-eight and refers to the six and eight syllable division. The sixth syllable of the upper line sets the rhyme for the sixth syllable of the following line (lồng - chồng), an aid to memorization.

Chim quyên ăn trái nhãn lồng, 

Thia lia quen chậu, vợ chồng quen hơi.

I would translate the couplet:

The cuckoo eats the longan,

Siamese fighting fish get used to their jar, wife and husband get used to the air.

Hơi means air, but also atmosphere, odor and also implies vitality. The cá thia lia is also known as the cá xiêm. It really is a fighting fish, but the lesson of the song is that within the bounds of a jar it gives up on those fighting tendencies. The word "quen" means to come to know and to grow accustomed to. A husband and wife might also have a tendency to fight within the bounds of "air" - the shared air of a household, but they grow accustomed to one another and hopefully arrive at some kind of harmony in their relationship. Folk wisdom suggests that - the reality of rural Vietnam was that often families decided who got married to who. The future bride and groom had little to say and had to work things out themselves. This, I suppose, was as natural and inevitable as the cuckoo bird's hunger for longan fruit and fighting fish giving up the fight. It is interesting that the bird appears to live in the open and chooses what to eat, while the fish and people and constrained and make the best of things.

The broken relationship started with a pinky promise - ngoéo tay nhau. It sounds like this relationship had conflict (fighting fish) but she believed it was solid and it obviously meant a great deal to her. He became an ingrate who betrayed their "karmic" tie. Like Vinh Sử's song "Sao muốn giết người yêu," the song's narrator thinks murderous thoughts about their former beloved. In the one case, these thoughts were more like a recurring daydream, in "Phản bội" she wants him wiped away from within her dreams.

The sheet music cover at the top of this entry has a few interesting details. It shows the head of a woman singing that transforms as the image descends into an anatomical drawing. Line segments appear to connect organs of the body to attributes of the musical scale shown on a staff skewing upward. The "hỏi" tone in phản is simply presented as a comma. The "nặng" tone in bội is a Playboy bunny symbol (representing the former lover's dalliances?) and the circumflex (＾) on top of the word is shaped into a leaping fish (a fighting fish?).