Is there jazz in socialist Vietnam? The answer is “yes,” even though jazz was once perceived as “music of the enemy.” Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam tells the story of saxophonist, Quyền Văn Minh, who helped to give jazz a place in socialist Vietnam. This is an intimate account of a life in jazz under socialism in Vietnam, set in the broader contexts of radical social revolution, war, and uncertainty of political change when peace returned.  After accidentally encountering jazz on the transistor radio as a child, Minh embarked on a life-long quest to learn and play the music. From a self-ta ... More

Is there jazz in socialist Vietnam? The answer is “yes,” even though jazz was once perceived as “music of the enemy.” Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam tells the story of saxophonist, Quyền Văn Minh, who helped to give jazz a place in socialist Vietnam. This is an intimate account of a life in jazz under socialism in Vietnam, set in the broader contexts of radical social revolution, war, and uncertainty of political change when peace returned.  After accidentally encountering jazz on the transistor radio as a child, Minh embarked on a life-long quest to learn and play the music. From a self-taught musician who played at wedding gigs, he rose to become a respectable professional musician in successive song and dance troupes. Minh’s desire to play jazz motivated him to present the genre in socialist Vietnam’s public sphere, which inadvertently led to a teaching career at the national conservatoire. In 1994, he premiered three original jazz compositions in the first jazz concert performed by Vietnamese musicians at the Hà Nội Opera House. Releasing his debut jazz album, Birth ’99, Minh helped to give shape to the nascent genre of “Vietnamese jazz.” Eventually, he founded Minh’s Jazz Club to create a space for musicians to play jazz and Vietnamese audience to learn about jazz.   Written in a creative melange of autoethnography, analytical interventions, and broad contextualizations that faithfully projects the voice of the protagonist, readers could see how the complex political and social contexts of socialist Vietnam are actually experienced by real people. Through the story of Minh, we show how jazz in socialist Vietnam, as we believe in many other Asian countries and formerly socialist Eastern European countries, is mediated by passion, tenacity, and innovation of devoted musicians who saw in jazz the power of artistic self-expression.