ABSTRACT
Using life stories of Vietnamese jazz musicians, we put together in Chapter 7 an anthological collage of becoming and being a professional musician in socialist Vietnam. Who are the people playing jazz in socialist Hà Nội? From a centrally planned command economy to a socialist market-oriented economy, how did one come to learn music and become a professional musician? In addressing these fundamental concerns, we unveil a rather rigid pathway in which the performing arts have been subjected to serving both revolution and nation. Although adoption of light music among professional troupes in the late 1970s helped to pave the way for jazz to be eventually introduced in the late 1980s, the collage presented in this chapter also illustrates how the intricate enmeshing of politics and music ultimately limits the flourishing of jazz on the official performance stage. Indirectly, the collage suggests that Vietnamese jazz musicians are destined to have to create and grow a jazz scene for themselves.
