Heavy heart saying "ginger is spicy, salt is salty"

(Baonghean) -“My dear... Salt after three years is still salty/Ginger after nine months is still spicy/But our love is deep/Even if we are far apart, thirty-six thousand days... will not be apart”. That song, since childhood, haunted the farmer from the rice fields of Yen Thanh, so that throughout his life, according to him, “he followed folk songs but throughout his life he could not finish a single verse”.

Artist Nguyen Canh Son in a scene from the lullaby "Ten graces of parents".

The small house of folk artist Nguyen Canh Son is located in the middle of the village, in front and on both sides are vast fields, behind is a pine hill with the wind blowing all year round. Hurriedly inviting guests into the house, Mrs. Hoi, his wife, quickly told us: "He just came back from practicing singing for the children at school, listening to the art performance of the neighboring village preparing to welcome the cultural unit". She said we were lucky, because today he came back earlier than usual, because "every day he leaves from morning until noon, and leaves in the afternoon and comes back in the evening. Since the day he started teaching folk songs at school, he has been gone all the time. When he leaves, that's it, when he comes home he sings..."

The whole Dong Thanh commune knows about Mr. Son's passion for singing. People in Dong Xuan hamlet say that since he was a child, little Son followed his mother to watch and listen to singing. When he was 6 or 7 years old, he insisted on following the village girls and uncles to sing Vi Ghe on moonlit nights. Once, he skipped school to watch a play, but was beaten by his parents but he did not change. Then, Nguyen Canh Son also began his singing career in the fields, on the village stage... and that was also the stage of his whole life.

Mrs. Hoi told us that the song was truly a fate, a destiny that gave her a complete family. Because she was in love with his voice, angry with him because he loved singing so much, and also forgot her anger very quickly because she got to hear him sing to make up. Sometimes, he sang lullabies to his grandchildren, sometimes he sang for both her and her grandchildren. He was away all day, and when she came home, she was about to get angry when she saw him smile and say: "But our love is so deep/ Even if we are far apart, we will not be apart for thirty-six thousand days". She said, hearing that, who could be angry? She added that what was even more special in her family was that Mr. Son and his mother-in-law were both recognized as folk artists on one occasion. Mrs. Hoi's mother, artist Tran Thi Nhu, is nearly 100 years old this year but still loves to sing, and is still active in the Dong Thanh Commune Folk Song Club with her son-in-law.

Nguyen Canh Son admitted that he was just an “ugly guy” but “had a voice that could pull him back”. We joked that he “looked like Truong Chi”, he smiled brightly, nodded, and started singing. While singing, he passionately told us about each genre, such as “vi do dua”, “vi dong mao”, “vi do dua nuoc nguoc”, “vi leo non”, “dam Duc Son”, “dam ve”, “dam cua quyen”, “dam ke”, “dam noi”, “dam xam”… He sang like a silkworm with its intestines pulled out, as if he wanted to convey to us all the depth and affection of the song… We sat quietly listening to him sing, and seemed to see before our eyes the space of the old village… It was the seasons of the moon, by the fields or under the pine hills, people were bailing water, going to get pine needles while singing. The song forgot poverty, the song forgot hunger, the song became a fate, the song multiplied the love for the homeland, for our country.

Mr. Son said that, without knowing where it came from, that proverb made him… drunk, drunk to the point of being swayed for a lifetime. Perhaps since he was in the cradle, he had heard his mother lullaby “Salt for three years, salt is still salty…”. So, right from the time he could sing clearly, the little boy Canh Son hummed the words “spicy ginger, salty salt”. The depth, the “love” of the land, of the people of Nghe An “is only in one verse but cannot be exhausted in a lifetime”. He remembered his childhood days, he clung to his mother’s shirt to go listen to singing. When his mother was not around, he would go to someone’s house to listen to singing and fall asleep in the corner of the yard. When he saw a performance coming to the district, every day he would ask his parents to ride his bike to see it. The whole family had only one old bicycle, the chain often slipped, every time the little boy came home, his face was dirty, and even though he was beaten, he still found every way to go. Beatings were like that, but deep down in their hearts, the little boy’s parents still loved and pampered him. Whenever his son liked a song, his father would go out of his way to find it and hand-copy it for him to practice. And so, the boy's audience was sometimes his family members, sometimes a pine forest in the harvest season, sometimes a vast field of rustling corn, sometimes the night sky with thousands of twinkling stars... Once, in the middle of the night, his father woke up and couldn't find his son. He frantically searched for him, and found his son sitting quietly in the pine forest behind the house and... singing. Another time, Dong Thanh commune organized a performance, and the boy insisted that his mother register him to participate in a performance. Seeing his son's desire, his mother, who had just returned from the fields, had mud on her feet, and her pants were high and low, and ran to the commune to ask for permission for her son to sing. That night, Canh Son stood on a crowded stage for the first time and sang a folk song he had learned from his grandmothers, and everyone praised it. Canh Son heard the thunderous applause below and his heart felt like it was about to jump out of his chest. His joy is not simply expressing himself, but sharing, seeing his own joy and sadness spreading...

However, the “stage” that he remembers most in his life is the stage on the battlefield. Those were the years when he joined the army (1979 to 1985) at the northern border. The sound of enemy artillery shells echoed from the other side, but on this side he still sang. It was “Chieu bien gioi” (Tran Chung), “Ho keo Phao” (Hoang Van), “Truong Son DongTruong Son Tay” (Hoang Hiep), “The sound of gunfire echoed in the border sky” (Pham Tuyen)… On rainy nights, with hungry stomachs, the brothers in the unit only had a little dry food left, giving each other pieces of bread, looking at each other full of love and singing “Border afternoon, my dear/ Is there any place higher/ Like the head of the river, the head of the stream/ Like the head of the clouds, the head of the wind/ Like the sky of the border homeland…”. His art troupe sang day and night for the soldiers to listen to, tirelessly. He said, in the team there was a man named Huy from Quynh Luu, who had a high fever in the afternoon, his body was freezing cold, the brothers in the unit took turns to warm him up, but when on the other side of the border, enemy artillery flashed, he stood up and sang loudly: “The sound of gunfire echoed in the border sky…”. The verses were sung without music, using the applause of his comrades as the high and low tones, but they sang until they forgot themselves.

After leaving the army and returning to his hometown, Nguyen Canh Son joined the cooperative's art troupe. His singing voice was heard again on the village stage. At engagements and weddings, he also "doubled" as the MC. People in the commune said that he had a "good hand", organizing weddings for any couple, that couple would be happy. When there was a funeral, he would come and play the trumpet. So, whether it was happy or sad, the people of Dong Thanh became familiar with his presence... He also considered it his "mission". Whoever liked to listen to singing, he was ready to sing, whoever liked to learn folk songs, he devoted himself to teaching. And he himself also researched and "learned" a lot. He learned from his mother-in-law - artist Tran Thi Nhu, learned from respected teachers and artists such as Mr. Phan The Phiet (formerly a district cultural officer), Meritorious Artist Dinh Bao, Meritorious Artist Duc Duy, Meritorious Artist Danh Cach, Meritorious Artist Tien Dung... And his way of learning, when he could not meet his "teacher" in person, was to learn through... tapes and discs, on mass media.

Farm work is also busy, but fatigue never makes him forget to sing. Whenever he has free time, he is enthusiastic and busy with communal and village affairs. For the past two decades, he has always been an active member of the Dong Thanh Performing Arts Team participating in the Sen Village Singing Festival. Then the festivals and competitions: Folk songs of the Central Coast, Cultural and Sports Festival of Nghe An ethnic groups, Songs of the Central Highlands, Farmers' songs, Folk song festival "Connecting the folk songs", Folk song festival of Vi Dam of Nghe An... The "Duong to ben ngoai", "Gai lang Mai, trai lang Thuong", "Phu tu tinh tham"... of folk songs of Nghe An brought him the Silver Medal at the "Central Highlands Singing Festival" (held in Hue in 1998), the Gold Medal at the "Farmer's Song" contest (held in Quang Ngai in 2000), the A prize for the whole province at the Folk song festival of Nghe An (2011)... Since the policy of bringing folk songs into schools, Nguyen Canh Son has been invited by schools in the district to teach, for him "it is a great joy". He said "Folk songs will never disappear, they are in the blood and flesh of every Vietnamese person. I understand this more deeply when teaching folk songs to young children...".

He also talked about his emotions, a farmer who has spent his whole life working with the fields and forests, every time he stood in the sunny schoolyard, watching his homeland change day by day and listening to the children singing folk songs in the classroom. Then he confided about the concerns of the villagers about China illegally placing the Haiyang 981 drilling rig in Vietnam's continental shelf. In the small house filled with wind and the smell of pine leaves, he sang the song he once sang at the border: "Gan lam Truong Sa" by musician Hinh Phuoc Long, like the heart of a son of his homeland turning to the sea and islands...

“I will sing until the last day of my life” – Nguyen Canh Son, a 55-year-old farmer, said “definitely” when saying goodbye to us. He believes that his country will overcome all difficulties, believes in the tradition and the heart of the Vietnamese people because that tradition, that heart will always shine in the saying “ginger is spicy, salt is salty”.

An Ngoc - Thuy Vinh