Music & Rituals: Vietnamese Weddings (updated!)

As someone who was born into a Vietnamese family, I've been involved in a number of Vietnamese traditions and practices as a child. Naturally, then, I'm familiar with a bit of the Vietnamese culture - even despite my own family not being that heavily ingrained into it (since, according to my mom, many Vietnamese families become significantly less in touch with the culture after immigrating to America). 

Out of the ceremonies carried out in the Vietnamese culture, the wedding tradition is one of the most familiar ones to me. The particular one I attended stuck out quite a bit to me, after all. It was specifically with my mom and her boyfriend, back when I was a young teenager. Since the wedding was arranged to be at Vietnam - considering that we were staying at/visiting Vietnam at the moment - it was the first time I was able to personally witness what a traditional Vietnamese wedding was like.

Now according to my mom and other sources, weddings like this are often based on what religion the involved parties believe in. It's often either Buddhist or Christian. In my mom's case, she's Buddhist - so the wedding wasn't held at a church, but rather at our relatives' house (since we were temporarily staying there at the time) - and prayers were done in relation to Buddhist principles as well. The wedding involved the traditional engagement ceremony, too - which had the groom's family members bring gifts and jewelry to the bride's family members for the bride. Here are a few pictures from my mom's engagement ceremony:

The big after-party in the afternoon, however, would apparently be around the same regardless of religion. 

Either way, Vietnamese weddings tend to include either traditional Vietnamese music or modern, popular songs from Vietnam or America. Or even all of those. It is rather common for weddings to even hire a band to play live as well (sources: 1 & 2). The traditional Vietnamese music part, however, is naturally most in touch with what makes Vietnamese culture unique. It's slow and conjunct, often complete with vibrating vocals of a sweet and smooth kind. It's often much like the song below:

This video even includes a slideshow of pictures from a Vietnamese wedding. It is not the original video for the song, however. The original song video can be found in The Nguyen Collection's YouTube channel.  

I unfortunately cannot provide much of an example for modern Vietnamese songs that'd be played, since I have zero idea as to what most young people in Vietnam would listen to today. I'm not entirely sure just how popular and common Vpop is among the people in Vietnam, either (even though it's actually quite good). What I am familiar with, however, is the general style of music the older Vietnamese people around me enjoy. The music is overall similar yet slightly different to traditional Vietnamese music - which may be why the older people enjoy it so much. Here's an example of it, which definitely captures many of the elements I often hear in my family and their Vietnamese coworkers' favorite songs:

I could go on and on about what this song shares with many of the songs my family and their Vietnamese coworkers like to listen (and sing) to. Long story short, however, the same kind of introductory music, instruments, singing style, and transition from slow music to higher, more powerful music/vocals are used in this song.  

So how is this significant? Particularly, Vietnamese weddings are still ultimately arranged by the couple themselves (even though their families still play a very large role in the process and actual wedding procedures (source). Therefore, the music is part of what they ultimately decide on. So this kind of music is a natural go-to song for people like my family. They even enjoy gathering together with other relatives and/or coworkers in the same house during special occasions - loudly karaoke-ing the night away with songs like the above example. 

Music & Me

 

Hi, I'm Tera Nguyen! I was born in this very state and grew up in Boiling Springs. I've never moved into anywhere else so far. I often do various things during my free time, but the ones I do most often are anime games, reading their stories, and roleplaying existing characters online! I also often like to listen to music during car drives.

I consider my music tastes to be unorthodox, though. Even after taking Chorus for multiple years before college, and even after dancing in a dance cover group for a few years, I still can't help but deviate to around the same kinds of Jpop and Kpop songs most of the time. Primarily Jpop nowadays, though.

Songs

1. One of my favorite songs is "TA" by Stray Kids! I find it to be a very, very catchy song, and I frequently jam to it and feel tempted to dance whenever it comes up in a playlist - even more than with many other songs I like. It's enjoyable to recognize everyone's voices and listen to how each one of them sings/raps their parts as well~ It sometimes even reminds me of their growth as artists, since their improvement compared to back then vaguely shows through in this song. 

There's no English subtitles, though. So you'll have to search up the translated lyrics if you're curious about them. Sorry!

 

2. A song that's personally meaningful to me is "Hanauta" by Alexandros. I first discovered it over a year ago in a fandom ship animatic, and fell in love with both the song and animatic in an instant. I'm especially in love with the song's beautiful combination of vocals and musical accompaniment - along with how well it highlights the deep, melancholic feeling of the overall animatic's story and cinematography. It especially came to mean to me more, too, with how this animatic was the very first animatic I ever watched of both its respective ship and respective fandom. The ship was the very first one that I've ever been able to hold dear to myself in years, too. So even in present day, I can't help but deeply associate this song with that animatic, and I still look at both of them and the ship with fondness. 

So here's the original song! Like with the previous song, though, you'll have to look up the English translated lyrics if you want to read them. They are nice lyrics, though. Here's also the animatic I mentioned in case you'd like to see it as well: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1TK4y1j7cH (If you do check it out, do click the little TV icon with the checkmark at the bottom of the video to turn off the bullet comments~)

3. There's unfortunately a few or more genres I can never understand nor connect with, however. One of them is rap. Even though I do enjoy rap when incorporated with vocals most of the time, I can't find myself to enjoy songs with just rapping at all. Especially whenever it's too vulgar, or whenever it lacks too much depth or storytelling. It's just difficult to find anything enjoyable to listen to in pure rap at all. Here's a good example of what I mean (even including a common beat that I admittedly dislike, due to repeatedly hearing it from peers throughout my childhood): 

4. I'll be discussing a bonus song as well~! "Failure Girl" by KairikiBear is another one of my favorite songs that I heavily considered placing in the second category. To put it shortly; it's a very enjoyable song to listen to, but its lyrics are the most noteworthy part of it all. I love the lyrics so much, and I especially love how well they and the rest of the song portray this specific, awful sense of feeling unwanted. I've even found myself deeply resonating with this and finding comfort in it whenever I felt deeply unloved or disliked by people. And I genuinely hope this song can provide the same sense of resonance and comfort to even more people, too.

Note that this is unlike the other songs, as this one is from the Vocaloid side of Jpop culture instead. So the vocals are purely sung by a voice synthesizing software called a Vocaloid - for this specific case, Hatsune Miku. So if you end up finding this song too difficult to listen to for any reason, you can try listening to Oktavia's English cover of it instead! 

Anyway, that's all! Thank you so much for putting in the time to read all of this if you did. And I do hope I didn't sound overly formal or unpleasant at any point in this blog as well. Have a good day now!