Vietnam War Song Project (VWSP) | |
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Mission statement | "This project is an interpretive examination of over 6,000 Vietnam War songs identified, revealing how the war's significance is represented through music" |
Type of project | Free, open history, online, and physical archive |
Location | Austin, Texas, U.S. |
Founder | Justin Brummer |
Established | 2007 | , Washington D.C., U.S.
Website | rateyourmusic |
The Vietnam War Song Project (VWSP) is an archive and interpretive examination of over 6000 Vietnam War songs identified. [1] It was founded in 2007 by its current editor, Justin A. Brummer, a historian with a PhD in contemporary Anglo-American relations from University College London. [2] [3] The project analyses the lyrics, and collects data on the genre, location, ethnicity, nationality, language, and time period of the recordings. [4] [5] [6] It also involves the preservation of the original physical vinyl records. Additional items collected include cassette tapes, CDs, MP3s, record label scans, and sheet music.
The project is currently hosted on the online collaborative database Rate Your Music, with components on YouTube, and at the University of Maryland. [7] [8] [9]
Part of the project includes a discography, Vietnam War Songs: An incomplete discography, which has over 6000 titles, both unique songs and cover songs, a collaboration between Hugo Keesing, Wouter Keesing, C.L. Yarbrough, and Justin Brummer at the University of Maryland Libraries. [10] Hugo Keesing, adjunct professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, and the producer of the 13 CD box-set compilation Next Stop Is Vietnam is also a major contributor of songs and record scans. [11] [12] [13]
The project has categorised songs into a variety of themes, from anti-war / protest / peace songs, to patriotic / pro-government / anti-protest songs during the war years, as well an analysis of songs released in the post-war period. Other themes include regional songs, such as Puerto Ricans in the Vietnam War, Australia in the Vietnam War, New Zealand in the Vietnam War, Mexican-Americans, and songs from South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Genres include soul, gospel & funk, the blues, garage rock, and punk music. The project also looks at songs about key events and issues, which include the Chicago Seven, Kent State shootings, the My Lai Massacre, and the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue. [14] [15] Other topics include songs about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Christmas music referencing the Vietnam War, and Vietnam War songs referencing the Civil rights movement in the US (1950s-60s), the Silent majority, and the Domino theory.
The project is a respected academic resource and a significant source of reference in popular culture. [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] Erin R. McCoy, Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Beaufort, notes in her book A War Tour of Viet Nam: A Cultural History, that "Brummer...is tirelessly cataloging every obscure piece of music from the Viet Nam era or about the Viet Nam War. His work is amazing and a...deeper dive into music". [24] Furthermore, McCoy remarks "Dr. Brummer...combs record stores around the world looking for obscure and unique songs written about the war, and the collection he's continually building is some serious and important work". [25]
James Barber's interview in military.com with "Justin Brummer, the one-man operation who put together the project...the greatest scholar of songs about the Vietnam War" notes "The Vietnam War Song Project is an epic undertaking". [26] Moreover, Barber wrote "it's an invaluable resource for anyone who cares about the history of the war". [27] In Barber's TechHive article, he noted that "the amazing Vietnam War Song Project channel on YouTube... aims to collect all songs written about the war. Many of these were one-off, private-pressing 45s, and Justin Brummer is painstakingly archiving them on YouTube". [28] The University of Maryland's Modern Songs of War and Conflict archive comments "The Vietnam War Song Project, helmed by Justin Brummer" is "an ever-expanding project seeking to assemble a comprehensive discography of the war". [29]
The Tennessee Council for the Social Studies has praised the work of the VWSP, noting the "Vietnam War Songs Project continues to find incredible Primary Sources for teachers to use in their Vietnam War teaching", and that the project "adds a different primary source emphasis to dealing with the Vietnam War". [30] [31] Rachel Lee Rubin, Professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, notes in her book Merle Haggard’s Okie from Muskogee, "I...want to call attention—to the magnificent Vietnam on Record discography, compiled by Hugo Keesing, Wouter Keesing, C. L. Yarbrough, and Justin Brummer". [32] Writer Cori Brosnahan, in her PBS American Experience article on the songs of the My Lai massacre observes "researcher Justin Brummer started studying songs of the Vietnam War while preparing his PhD...and today he has catalogued some 5,000 songs". [33]
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, commonly called the Vietnam Memorial, is a U.S. national memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring service members of the U.S. armed forces who served in the Vietnam War. The two-acre (8,100 m2) site is dominated by two black granite walls engraved with the names of those service members who died or remain missing as a result of their service in Vietnam and South East Asia during the war. The Wall, completed in 1982, has since been supplemented with the statue Three Soldiers in 1984 and the Vietnam Women's Memorial in 1993.
Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about 331,000 square kilometres (128,000 sq mi) and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's fifteenth-most populous country. Vietnam shares land borders with China to the north, and Laos and Cambodia to the west. It shares maritime borders with Thailand through the Gulf of Thailand, and the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia through the South China Sea. Its capital is Hanoi and its largest city is Ho Chi Minh City.
The Vietnamese people or the Kinh people, also recognized as the Viet people or the Viets, are a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to modern-day Northern Vietnam and Southern China who speak Vietnamese, the most widely spoken Austroasiatic language.
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Ernest Lou Medina was a captain of infantry in the United States Army. He served during the Vietnam War. He was the commanding officer of Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry of the 11th Brigade, Americal Division, the unit responsible for the My Lai massacre of 16 March 1968. He was court-martialed in 1971 for his role in that massacre, but acquitted the same year.
The cinema of Vietnam originates in the 1920s and was largely influenced by wars that have been fought in the country from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Okie from Muskogee is the first live album by Merle Haggard and the Strangers released in October 1969 on Capitol Records.
Nguyễn Phú Quang, known popularly simply as Phú Quang, was an influential Vietnamese composer, primarily known for his love songs and songs about Hanoi. He also wrote symphonies and concertos, as well as film scores and soundtracks.
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Phạm Duy was one of Vietnam's most prolific songwriters with a musical career that spanned more than seven decades through some of the most turbulent periods of Vietnamese history and with more than one thousand songs to his credit, he is widely considered one of the three most salient and influential figures of modern Vietnamese music, along with Văn Cao and Trịnh Công Sơn. His music is noted for combining elements of traditional music with new methods, creating melodies that are both modern and traditional. A politically polarizing figure, his entire body of work was banned in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War and subsequently in unified Vietnam for more than 30 years until the government began to ease restrictions on some of his work upon his repatriation in 2005.
"The Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley" is a 1971 spoken word recording with vocals by Terry Nelson and music by pick-up group C-Company.
"Okie from Muskogee" is a song recorded by American country music artist Merle Haggard and The Strangers, which Haggard co-wrote with drummer Roy Edward Burris. "Okie" is a slang name for someone from Oklahoma, and Muskogee is the 11th largest city in the state. The song was released in September 1969 as first single and title track from the album Okie from Muskogee, and was one of the most famous songs of Haggard's career.
"2 + 2 = ?" is a single from The Bob Seger System on their debut album Ramblin' Gamblin' Man, released in January 1968, on Capitol Records. It is an anti-Vietnam War song.
Oanh Thi "Cecilia" Bui, written in Vietnamese as "Bùi Thị Oanh" and known by the stage name Lệ Thu, was a Vietnamese singer. Born in Hải Phòng, she was well known in South Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s for singing the songs of singer-songwriters such as Trịnh Công Sơn and Phạm Duy. She released 24 singles and numerous albums with famous overseas Vietnamese singers like Khánh Ly, Hương Lan and Tuấn Ngọc.
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Bang Nhat Linh is a Vietnamese contemporary artist based in Hanoi. His works are usually simple but multi-layered, dreamy and humane. They reflect the surveys into the depths of the psychological spaces, memories, history, submerged and of the oblivion in which "war memorabilia are removed from their original contexts to be placed within another context, or positioned in a relationship with human as communicable and interactive objects.
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