While I was in college, a band featuring a Khmer lead vocalist (Cambodian retro-psychadelic pop) called Dengue Fever -- and the most haunting tune on their featured album was one called "Sleepwalking on the Mekong"
As a language among Asians, Vietnamese is supposedly described as the most melodic -- and from a pure tonal linguistic point of view, I can agree as it's got numerous nuances to tone and inflection in ways that can differ even from some Chinese languages and dialects (though I'll note it's not necessarily the smoothest in flow compared to something like Shanghainese).
So starting from a musical frame of mind, Khmer is easiest to distinguish from Vietnamese (at least to me as a relatively foreign listener) by the hard constonant gracenotes at the beginning of certain words and phrases. At a glance, attempting to pronounce the Cambodian capitol, Phnom Penh, might be the most visible example-- the "P" sound runs directly into the "n" right away. So to an English speaker, it sounds a bit like like a stutter between two consonents.
Vietnamese however tends to be pretty straight forward and feels relatively simplistic in its conciseness--one starting consonant per syllable. No rhythmic complexity at the start of any words.
ANyhow, I brought all this up to highlight some interesting similarities (and my sort of sibling-like love for what little I understand about the Khmer language, culture, music, and people) because there are a few South Vietnamese songs from the 1960s-70s that shares a very similar cadence to Dengue Fever's song "Sleepwalking on the Mekong" and I wanted to put the two here side by side for us to listen and compare as they share some interesting similarities in aesthetic and maybe composition too if not by aesthetic.
[will post links here later when I'm not supposed to be sleeping]
As a far off side note:
I was curious about Baltimore's (greetings from the region) incinerator and assumed that they had the situation quietly under wraps--it turns out the state of Maryland recently came down on the operators and require it to reduce emissions by 1/5th as recently as August of 2018 haha
With the newly elected governor and other officials in Michigan's executive and legislative branch, I suspect we'll have new advocacy opportunities that might sway how we can shift the landscape of air pollution in communities afflicted by it (especially in Detroit).
Gretchen Whitmer, Garlin Glichrist, and Stephanie Chang here we come! Save us a slot in your calendars for a phone call or meeting won't you please?
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/environment/bs-md-trash-incinerator-pollution-20180820-story.html
As a language among Asians, Vietnamese is supposedly described as the most melodic -- and from a pure tonal linguistic point of view, I can agree as it's got numerous nuances to tone and inflection in ways that can differ even from some Chinese languages and dialects (though I'll note it's not necessarily the smoothest in flow compared to something like Shanghainese).
So starting from a musical frame of mind, Khmer is easiest to distinguish from Vietnamese (at least to me as a relatively foreign listener) by the hard constonant gracenotes at the beginning of certain words and phrases. At a glance, attempting to pronounce the Cambodian capitol, Phnom Penh, might be the most visible example-- the "P" sound runs directly into the "n" right away. So to an English speaker, it sounds a bit like like a stutter between two consonents.
Vietnamese however tends to be pretty straight forward and feels relatively simplistic in its conciseness--one starting consonant per syllable. No rhythmic complexity at the start of any words.
ANyhow, I brought all this up to highlight some interesting similarities (and my sort of sibling-like love for what little I understand about the Khmer language, culture, music, and people) because there are a few South Vietnamese songs from the 1960s-70s that shares a very similar cadence to Dengue Fever's song "Sleepwalking on the Mekong" and I wanted to put the two here side by side for us to listen and compare as they share some interesting similarities in aesthetic and maybe composition too if not by aesthetic.
[will post links here later when I'm not supposed to be sleeping]
As a far off side note:
I was curious about Baltimore's (greetings from the region) incinerator and assumed that they had the situation quietly under wraps--it turns out the state of Maryland recently came down on the operators and require it to reduce emissions by 1/5th as recently as August of 2018 haha
With the newly elected governor and other officials in Michigan's executive and legislative branch, I suspect we'll have new advocacy opportunities that might sway how we can shift the landscape of air pollution in communities afflicted by it (especially in Detroit).
Gretchen Whitmer, Garlin Glichrist, and Stephanie Chang here we come! Save us a slot in your calendars for a phone call or meeting won't you please?
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/environment/bs-md-trash-incinerator-pollution-20180820-story.html
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