Differences Between Traditional Folk Songs and Folk Songs from 1945 to Present

Unlike the formative method, the expressive method does not intend to create pictures of life, but through its linguistic material, "it expresses certain human feelings, expressing people's perception and evaluation of life." [5. 38] The words of an artistic text using the expressive method immediately after the literal meaning, a new layer of meaning appears with more general content than the total semantic content of the words combined, expressing more than one of its semantic planes.

Based on the theoretical basis of the above artistic methods, we conducted a survey and concluded that 685/742 (about 92.32%) of folk songs used the visual method. Thus, the visual art method plays a dominant role in folk songs from 1975 to present.

With “the advantage of direct shaping, it helps the recipient perceive the reflected and described objects in a vivid, intuitive way. The shaping method helps us perceive objects, phenomena, and actions almost as they exist in real life, as they are happening in real life thanks to the literal meaning of the words and thanks to the suggestive, expressive nature of onomatopoeia, idioms, etc., if any” [32. 238]. However, the excessive use of shaping methods in folk songs from 1975 to the present has caused folk songs to lose their artistic value to some extent.

Some folk songs from 1975 to present have the strength of being short, concise, and succinct and have been considered proverbs, confidences, and advice:

A hundred years in this world, a credit debt is the end of the world.

Maybe you are interested!

Losing money without anyone's sympathy. Being greedy for high interest rates is often a trap.

Because of the game, I took risks. If I don't wake up quickly, I will go from poverty to ruin.

[6]

Many folk songs have quite specifically and vividly depicted the reality of modern society:

Life is funny. Vietnamese horror movies are as funny as comedy.

The gift from grandma to her beloved grandchild

An eyesore is what I want.

[6]

The expressive effect and the amount of reality reflected in folk songs using the figurative method are often proportional to the amount of words and the art of organization and choice of language in each song. With a fairly large amount of space, many songs have described quite fully and specifically a certain aspect of reality:

Sad to see the city in the afternoon Your shirt is too short, revealing your skin Sad to see the water spilled out

The person who just arrived knows where to avoid Sadness looks like the fog of gasoline

The road is full of dust and the color of green leaves is blurred. I look sadly at the ladies and gentlemen.

"Golden words and jade words" poured out around the chair, sadly looking at the lonely street corner

The black water is filled with the smell of... urea. Sad to see the paths coming and going.

Some of the guys swerved and swerved, which was terrifying…

[6]

The above folk song with twelve lines has pointed out a series of shortcomings and problems in modern society: the way of dressing, the way of behaving as well as the way of

uncivilized traffic participation of a part of the population in general, and young people in particular; environmental pollution... The author's mood before reality is also directly expressed through the repeated word "sadly looking".

The method of creating images proves to be suitable for the requirement of direct and specific reflection, depicting a picture of life close to what happened in reality. The following folk song is an example:

Children are like buds on a branch.

Knowing how to eat, sleep and study is good. Knowing how to not eat neem leaves is good.

Know that Facebook is just for fooling each other Know how to pout, know how to dye beard

Know how to film a fight at school Know 18+, know how to go to the ditch

Know how to forget your bra and go out at night Know how to eat cha, know how to eat nem

Know to go to motel each girl has a bed Know to love just to pass the time

Know when to give in to your best friend Know iced tea, know human world

Know how to always lose weight and slim down Know how to sympathize and tease people

Know when you cry to laugh out loud…

[6]

The above is a slice of a fairly typical reality in contemporary society. With a relatively large amount of words (for a folk song) along with the repetition of the word “know”, the above folk song is a relatively complete summary of bad habits and vices in the lifestyle of a part of today’s youth.

Folk songs after 1975 have many creative works using visual arts methods but are still very attractive and captivating because they know how to effectively apply traditional motifs:

Yesterday, I saved the hillside beauty. I forgot my wallet next to the young man.

If you can, please give it to me. Don't keep it as a secret in the house.

His car was on fire.

The old wife has not sewn the torn bib yet. His house has been broken for a long time.

Mom has not yet helped him "full" with money...

[6]

However, some folk songs in recent times, due to the lack of reasonable organization of language, limit the ability to reflect reality and lack poetry:

A bowl of cold soup with clear water A tiny piece of pork Ripples in the steam A fly's body is gently blown by the wind.

[6]

Although accounting for a small proportion (about 7.68%), the method of expression has contributed to making folk songs from 1975 to present richer in language organization:

No rice cake has bones. No civil servant has enough salary to live on.

When the loach lays eggs, the salary and price will be comparable.

[6]

The above folk song does not only have the first concrete, direct meaning of the set of words in the text. The way of taking an event that never happens in reality: the loach - a species of animal that only lives in the mud of a pond and never comes to lay eggs on the top of a banyan tree, has given rise to a new layer of meaning in the reader's perception: there is never a story of wages at the same price! The "impossible" similarity of the two objects above is the basis for the folk author to build a layered metaphorical relationship in the folk song. "This is also the goal that must be reached, the final node of the artistic perception process in this folk song." [32. 243]

Although the method of expression builds artistic images in many ways: metaphor, metonymy, comparison, allusions..., they are similar in one point: using one thing to talk about another. This has made the artistic text polysemous, the lyrical content is both concrete and visual and also abstract and general.

A question that arises is why there is such a big difference in the ratio of visual text and expressive text in folk songs from 1975 to the present. To explain this, we cannot help but pay attention to the historical context, the creative context, the performance environment as well as the artistic sense of the creative subject in this part of folk songs. Our country's society is in a period of strong transformation, modern people seem to be caught in the vortex of the extremely urgent and hurried pace of life of the market economy. In such historical context, performance environment along with the theme and lyrical inspiration of national history do not allow folk songs of this period to "favor" the roundabout way of speaking, talking far and near, using one thing to express another of the expressive art method. Moreover, creative subjects - people from all walks of life - with the burden of food, clothing, rice and money in difficult economic times no longer have much time to invest in their creations like the authors of traditional folk songs.

3.4. Differences between traditional folk songs and folk songs from 1945 to present

Before the August Revolution of 1945, our people lived in confinement, resigned to the fate of slavery. With the success of the August Revolution of 1945, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was born, bringing our people to a new height, giving our people the right to be masters.

Through the study of Vietnamese folk songs from 1945 to present, along with the study and reference of research works on traditional folk songs, we have found that due to being born in different historical and social circumstances, there are some differences between these two groups of folk songs:

The first is the main inspiration. Living in the miserable, deprived, and extremely oppressed conditions of Vietnamese society before 1945, the masses composed traditional folk songs focusing on two main contents: the people's lamentations about their hard, difficult lives, being oppressed, exploited, and bound in all aspects; the heartfelt love, optimism, and hope for good things to come to their lives. Therefore, the main inspiration of traditional folk songs tends toward lyrical inspiration of private life. After 1945, with a new status, with the ability to participate in all areas of society, our people composed folk songs focusing on two main contents: love, a sense of responsibility for the homeland and the negative phenomena in society. The main inspiration of folk songs in this period tends toward lyrical inspiration of national history. Thus, if the main inspiration of traditional folk songs is lyrical inspiration of private life, the main inspiration of folk songs from 1945 to 1975 is lyrical inspiration of national history. This is completely consistent with the reflective needs of our people at that time.

Second is the theme. Compared to traditional folk songs, folk songs from 1945 to the present have changed and expanded the scope of themes. If love and family are the two central themes of traditional folk songs, then in folk songs from 1945 to the present, social themes occupy the central position. Although the same theme is about love and family, in two different parts of folk songs, folk authors have exploited them in different ways.

are not the same. In the traditional folk songs about love, the majority of the folk songs describe the rich and diverse emotions in the relationship between couples. In the folk songs from 1945 to 1975, love between couples is associated with love for the country and love for the nation. In the folk songs from 1975 to the present, love between couples is associated with trivial demands. The transformation and expansion of the scope of the topics in the two folk songs above have partly reflected the change in historical reality as well as the change in the artistic concept of folk authors in the new periods.

Third is the artistic space. Folk songs from 1945 to the present still have the appearance of an abstract artistic space as in traditional folk songs. However, the main function of folk songs from 1945 to the present is to reflect history, so the place names have been individualized and become independent elements of the folk songs.

The simple, close, familiar space that exists in traditional folk songs is also present in folk songs from 1945 to the present. However, due to being born in a new historical context, the aesthetic concept of the creative subject is new, so the nature of that space also changes.

If in traditional folk songs, the vast, majestic space carries the stature and beauty of nature and the universe to compare with human feelings, specifically love between men and women or the merit of parents, then in folk songs from 1945 to 1975, this space is used to affirm the solidarity and determination to fight of the entire nation, to praise the great contributions of the Party and Uncle Ho.

A very new point of folk songs from 1945 to present compared to traditional folk songs is that in modern folk songs, there is the appearance of a new type of space with a high socialization such as factory space, school, enterprise, construction site, hospital, battlefield, frontline, rear, internet cafe, dim light shop... The appearance of this type of space is completely consistent with historical reality and the inspiration of the subjects creating folk literature in general as well as modern folk songs in particular.

Fourth is artistic time. The artistic time in traditional folk songs and the artistic time in folk songs from 1975 to present is the present time, the performance time, which is symbolic to express the range of human emotions. Besides the artistic time which is symbolic, in folk songs from 1945 to present 1975, the artistic time is sometimes the time which is realistic and accurate. The effect of this type of time is to accurately record the glorious feats to motivate, encourage, and inspire our people to fight.

Fifth is the lyrical character. Although there is a huge amount of lyrics, the lyrical character in traditional folk songs focuses on character types such as boys, girls, husbands, wives, mothers, children, women with the status of daughters-in-law, merchants, servants, and hired workers.

In folk songs from 1945 to 1975, besides the typical characters in traditional folk songs mentioned above, there were also "new" characters such as soldiers, guerrillas, female laborers, workers, etc. Along with that, characters such as hired workers, servants, fortune-tellers that appeared frequently in traditional folk songs were sparse and gradually disappeared in modern folk songs. Traditional folk songs are the voice of the masses, especially women. That is why the female character accounts for a fairly high proportion of 1587/2079 (accounting for 76.33%) of folk songs with female lyrical characters. Traditional folk songs are where old mothers, young girls, and hard-working wives express all the emotions from longing, joy, sadness, desire for love, desire to live, and dreams of a peaceful and prosperous life. In folk songs from 1945 to the present, the number of female characters is equivalent to the number of male lyrical characters. Because folk songs at this time are no longer a place to express the emotional range of women but a place for the masses to encourage and motivate each other to fight together, increase production to protect and build the country, as well as criticize the negative phenomena that still exist in society.

Sixth is performance. Performance is a term used quite commonly in the study of literature and folklore. The connotation of this concept is still a matter of much debate.

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