✩⡱ one last music culture: vietnamese cải lương!
For the semester's last week, we were assigned to teach each other about something we haven't learned yet - naturally, I thought of Vietnamese "cải lương"! The musical genre "cải lương" is something I've grown up hearing and watching in different settings, whether it be watching it at a family friend's house on the TV, or hearing an auntie sing it. I know of this genre because of my heritage, so much of the information I am drawing from comes from both personal knowledge and various Vietnamese-tourist sources. "Cải lương" is both a musical art and genre from Vietnam, roughly translated to "renovated theater". Its name's origin comes from it being a combination of three things: "tuồng", which is southern Vietnamese folk music and Chinese-based classical theater form, Asian popular theatre, and French comedy - this shows how big of an impact European (French) colonialism affected Vietnam and its culture. Old, establish...
