Russian music/Blues

[Thanh Dang Nguyen <nguyet1@Eng.Auburn.EDU>]

Hai,

> Have you watched "the fiddler on the roof" ? A beautiful
> musical film; there is a scence in the film where the Jewish folks and the Russian 
> folks in the same village sang and dance their seperate musics.

Glad to hear you mention that musical. My dear list members, don't miss
this evergreen movie! It's a little bit long (total running time is about
3 hours), but wonderful, witty, and touching. I first saw it on Hungarian
TV many years ago (in my case it means about 5-6 years back into the past),
and fell in love with it so much. I had tried hard to find a copy of this movie
on video, but it was not until last year that I managed to buy a copy
here in the States.

The mentioned scene in the movie is my big favourite, too. Ironically,
the Russian soldiers are played by American (or British?) actors, and
they sang in English, too, except maybe the first sentence. But it's
a memorable scene indeed. Much, much better than "Flashdance", or "Dirty
Dancing" :-)

> Boy oh boy, I must have run into a "Casablanca" fan :-). I'm sorry to say
> that I was not impressed and moved to tears by the film, guess it was too
> romantic for me.

Don't get me wrong! I'm not dwelling on romantic stories and the like. My
favourite movies come from Tarkovsky, Wenders, or Bergman. But at the
same time, I respect artistic works like "Casablanca". Its setting,
timing and playing is magnificient and captivating. And still I'm not
talking about the young and beautiful Ingrid Bergman, who played for
the first time with the legendary actor Humphrey Bogart. It's something
like even when I hate Hollywood deep in my heart, I must admit that
Steven Spielberg's "Indianna Jones I" was a wonderful adventurous movie.
I think people sometimes overlook the movie simply because it has
a simple plot; Hollywood has trained us to exciting, bloody
and cheap thrills :-)

And guess what, "Casablanca" was directed by a Hungarian director,
named Kertesz Mihaly. You don't know how proud the Hungarian are
when talking about this movie!

> Have you ever watched a French film called "The adventurers", starring
> Alain Delon, Lino Ventura, and a cute girl whose name I forgot.

Thanks again to the Hungarian, I watched that movie many years ago in
black-and-white. It was a very romantic story about friendship, and love,
typical of the French style. Somehow I always prefer the French romanticism to
its American counterpart. It's more life-like I think.

> How about us talking about blues? I heard that you like blues. Some people
> (especially those just coming from VN) got the wrong impression that this
> is an exclusively black music. I think that this (and jazz) is actually
> the music of upper-middle-class America.

Upper-middle-class ???? How do you know that? Blues, let me get it straight,
is just like another kind of music, except that, in my opionion, it is
the most honest music ever invented. People usually have extreme prejudice
towards blues, thinking it's sort of music for black, dirty, uneducated
people, it's slow, sad and boring due to its monotonous pace. It
was true half a century ago, since black people first invented this music
and it was only popular in Southern states (Alabama, Mississippi, Tennesse,
etc.) Later, some black musicians moved to Chicago, Detroit ... and so was
born the urban blues (or Chicago blues, in which style Gary Moore plays
for you). Blues also got a big boom in mid-60's in both America and
Britain, but died off slowly from early 70's. Nowadays, blues fans are
kicking around all over the world, from Norway to South Africa, from Japan
to Canada, with my honor as being one of them. Blues has nothing to do
with race, education, age, musical skills or whatsoever, but FEELING.
Blues is life, in short!

I think the following quote is an eloquent statement of the meaning of
the blues:

``
     The most astonishing aspect of the blues is that, though replete
     with a sense of defeat and downheartedness, they are not
     intrinsically pessimistic; their burden of woe and melancholy is
     dialectically redeemed through sheer force of sensuality into an
     exultant affirmation of life, of love, of sex, of movement, of
     hope.
                                 RICHARD WRIGHT,
                                 in "Twelve Million Black Voices", 1941 ''

However, it's OK if people hate the blues music in general; at least
it's fine with me. They have other passions, and let them pursue their
meaning of life. I have found it in blues. Don't be surprised, it's
more than a form of music; it's philosophical, too.

BTW, somebody asked what "still got the blues" means. It's very
common in blues songs, and generally "get the blues" means "get
down", "get frustrated", or "being sad". You know black people
used to have a hard time, and they sang the blues just to let
their deep sorrow out of their heart so that they can live on to the
next day. Just imagine if you were treated like a slave, being
segragated from the white, with no hope, no rights at all -- and you 
will see how blues help people survive. It's an amazing fact to me that
they used to treat black people like dirt here in the Southern
US even in the 60's, in a country boasted as the homeland of
equality, freedom and democracy. And it's still a big problem in
our present time.

> Or here is an equally fascinating topic: let's try to describe America!

Seems to me you're extremely ambitious! :-) Well, we don't have to do
that! Read Kurt Vonnegut instead! Seriously, we can be back to this huge
topic later ....

Cheers,

-Thanh