A message to any new band

In most of my blogs, I have used many examples from many countries such as India, America. It might be an obstacle for me to write about something that is not really familiar, but it is a good news to me if some problems in media in other countries are  more popular in other countries than in mine. One of the main reason is that in a developing country as Vietnam, the gap among social groups is still smaller than other developed countries. Another factor is the media in Vietnam has just developed significantly in recent 10 years, when there are many private media business founded and decide to buy the copyrighted programs from other countries. Vietnamese now could watch a national version of famous TV shows on the world like The Voice, So you think you can dance, etc. It’s such a good news for Vietnamese audience to enjoy a variety of TV shows, and of course for Vietnamese new bands too, because they now have more opportunities to show their talent and gain success. However, talent is not the only thing that they are supposed to offer the TV watcher.

F-Band is one of the most successful bands in X-Factor Vietnam, who are famous for their performances with cover versions of different types of songs, from the Southern traditional songs to latest pop hits. Here is one of the hits cover versions of them:

Another impressive but controversial performance of F-Band is a mixed cover versions of traditional songs of Tay Nguyen people- one of the minority ethnicity of Vietnam:

Overall, this is such a good performance of the band when they have prepared carefully for it from the quality of the songs to the theme of their performance. As the theme is about the Western Highland area in Vietnam, many popular and beautiful images of this area are portrayed on their performance such as the image of elephants, the famous waterfall  which is one of the most beautiful waterfall over the world, the fire which is often considered as the spirit and the friendliness of people there, and many traditional dances are also used. However, what affected strongly their performance is the performance costumes they wore.

One of the popular costumes of men in Tay Nguyen is loincloth. In the performance of F-Band, they did use the Pieu brocade, a traditional scarf which is a cultural symbol of the Thai ethnic group in the northwestern mountains in Vietnam, in the form of a loincloth. Thai people expressed their angers and disappointments to the performance because the Pieu scarf is one of the most meaningful thing in their culture, which is used as the headwear of any Thai girl- not a kind of loincloth. To Thai people, a girl is taught to weave and embroider a Pieu scarf since she is 6-7 years old to ensure that she could finish her own scarf before getting married. That scarf is a gift of a bride to her groom’s family and the quality of the scarf is used as a standard to evaluate the quality of Thai women.
The F-Band claimed that their stylist is quite young and have no knowledge of the community;s traditional costumes. This means that they chose to use the Pieu scarf just because they love its pattern and they believe that it is something related to the Tay Nguyen culture- what they want to express in their performance. What they did here is known as cultural appropriation- the act of taking elements of another culture which is often sacred and symbolic and presenting it in a shallow manner. The intention is rather often inconsequential because their acts usually stem generally from the privilege. In the case of F-band, they used the traditional scarfs of Thai people as beautiful costumes for the benefit of their performances without intentional offences to the minority group. Their unaware of the offence they caused has strongly affected the love of audience for them and also strongly affected their career in the future.

The F-Band has tried their own best to save their image by officially apologized for their mistake, and of course, that’s all they could do now. The point is that any band- especially the new band wanting to join the media market should bear in mind that any act of them will affect their long-term career. Keeping your image beautiful and “clean” to the audience is not such an easy task at all. It’s not your own talent that makes your success. You have to show a good combination between what you have and what you know about the audience. In this specific case, it is that you should be aware of what you are doing could cause harm to a part of your audience. It is your task as a part of entertainment world to make sure that your performance is suitable with your audience if you want to survive; and it is your responsibility to unpack your own privilege as people with privilege of majority, to stop doing things that you don’t understand the consequences related to the majority.