ABSTRACT
In this book I have presented a glimpse at what popular music in Vietnam was like between 1990 and 2005, where it came from, who its major actors were, how it was perceived and controlled by the communist government, and how it was shaped by Vietnam’s market economy and infl uenced by globalization. In 2005 I asked Hồng Nhung what she thinks pop music in Vietnam will be doing in the next fi ve years. She said, “I think it will be zooming in a zillion directions. That is very Vietnamese. Everybody does things differently.” “It’s sort of like how the Vietnamese youth drive their motorbikes on the streets, in every which direction,” I responded. The metaphor is appropriate, I believe, because memory politics and market economics have caused many forms of popular music to exist together on a type of popular music continuum in Vietnam and have caused all kinds of popular music to be heard almost any place and at any time. Indeed, while walking down the CD market street (Huynh Thuc Khang) in Ho Chi Minh City, I often experienced sonic jams, just as I experienced motorbike traffi c jams while riding on a moto (motorbike taxi).
