by Le Quynh AnhThe crowd exploded in screams and applause when the four Backstreet Boys leapt onto the stage. The whole stadium jumped to their feet and began dancing wildly to the hit "Everybody".
No sooner had I thought my obsession was cured, when memories of the Backstreet Boys' concert in Ha Noi two weeks ago come rushing back. The show was quite a spectacle. My friends and I had one and half hours of non-stop dancing and singing... well, screaming, while our childhood idols belted out hit after hit, accompanied by impressive choreography that unleashed a flood of excitement and anxiety.
I have to admit, it was not the rare opportunity to attend "a world-class performance by the best-selling boyband of all time", as a pompous advertisement read, that drove me to buy a front-row ticket. It was, in fact, driven by pure nostalgia.
In 1998, as a little girl with limited English, I hummed along to the Backstreet Boys infamous As Long as You Love Me, a song I learned from a borrowed VHS video tape. Thirteen years later, as a grown woman who works for the national English language daily, I could actually afford to see them live.
As a girl I certainly sang along despite the language barrier. But many of them were still over my head. How could I understand everything when I only knew the present tense? The answer was simple. I made up a simple memory game. I'd memorise the songs by sounds rather than words. Come to think of it, I realise now that as an 11-year-old girl I was constantly singing about love!
We depended on the weekly magazine for students Hoa Hoc Tro as our sole source of lyrics. I remember vividly how anxious I was waiting for TV music shows and radio stations to play Backstreet Boys hits.
There was no internet available to replay songs whenever we pleased — Google was still in its infancy and YouTube didn't exist yet. At the time, even in my wildest dreams I could never imagine being so fortunate as to attend a Backstreet Boys concert and be able to give my friends real-time updates at the same time.
I don't wish I had grown up in a different time though. The act of yearning made it all the more exciting and rewarding when our wishes were finally met. Many of my friends would save their pocket money for weeks just to be able to buy a new CD or posters of the band.
My generation grew up at at time when we could really feel the impacts of Viet Nam's growing global presence. MTV alone was a strong indicator that Western culture and our culture were merging. This was one of few channels where we could study English.
And pop music, a genre we later on learned was generally associated with banality, was still something so marvellous to us because not many other genres of music were available.
We were, one way or another, soon idolising pop stars. Our idols even motivated us to study English. I told myself if I studied hard, I would be able to talk to them someday.
The youngest generation in Viet Nam seems to have it all. Thanks to the internet and cable TV, they can listen to worldwide hits minutes after their release.
However, in a time of such abundance, do they truly appreciate it or just take it for granted?
Many people laughed when I told them the ticket cost me VND2 million (US$100). But they didn't know my motivation: nothing is too expensive for a chance to rewind to your childhood. — VNS
No comments:
Post a Comment