Jammaster Vu

diasporic Vietnamese counter
culture
in America

The most important documentary you will ever see. Mile-high hair. Synthesized sounds. Teenage rebellion. Elizabeth Ai was on a mission to excavate an untold story of rebellious punks in the chaotic world of 80s Vietnamese New Wave until she uncovers a hidden past.

In January 2023, this film was still in production and in its kickstarter phase. The concept had me hooked – this film focuses in on a sort of sub-culture amongst Vietnamese immigrants in America during the late 80’s and early 90’s whereby they listened and danced to their take on italo-disco/eurodisco. I could NOT wait for this film to come out I was beyond excited for it. Concurrently, I was participating in the JAMuary challenge, whereby I try to write as many songs as I could for the month of January. I then decided to dedicate one of the songs to the new wave documentary and did a song in the style of Vietnamese New Wave which I called “YÊU”.

In Vietnamese, “yêu” is a way of expressing romantic love. It is generally stated as follows:
“Anh yêu em” – I (male) romantically love you (female).
“Em yêu anh” – I (female) romantically love you (male).

The Vietnamese language and culture has a strong emphasis on titles as a sign of “respect” although this can be a veiled attempt at bolstering the concept of filial piety. The Vietnamese language is also one of many languages that utilize grammatical gendering, which can lead to a notion of binary gendering; an extremely non-inclusive practice. Historically, Vietnamese culture has not been tolerant of LGBTQIA+ values and issues – and this song, though in a simplistic way, aims to avert that entirely.

While the lyrics start out with the standard “anh yêu em” and “em yêu anh”, it then flips the script and reads “anh yêu anh” and “em yêu em” – loosely meaning “I (male) romantically love you (male)” and I (female) romantically love you (female)”. This doesn’t quite address trans issues – which would have been my desired attempt, though it is a good start to opening up dialogue regarding LGBTQIA+ issues. Perhaps “bạn yêu bạn” which are non-gendered pronouns would have been appropriate, it just doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. It’s difficult to really convey these thoughts in a short 90 second song, so ultimately I landed on just flipping the script on the classic sayings.

The verse lyrics, though short reads:
“Trời đất ơi!” (OMG!)
“Rất là dễ thương” (You are so cute and easy to love)
“Who gives a f**k”
“Nếu mà không có bình thường” (If it’s not normal)

After composing the song – I tagged @newwavedocumentary on instagram not really expecting anything to come out of it other than for the filmmaker, Elizabeth Ai, to know that I was excited for the project. To my surprise, the new wave crew liked the song! In fact, they chose to use my song for the end credits!

Listen to YÊU here: