From Isolation to Mainstream : After an embryonic 20 years, the influence of Vietnamese artists, musicians and writers in Orange County is exploding.

Behind the business facades of Bolsa Avenue and Westminster Boulevard, inside the walls of modest homes in tidy suburban neighborhoods, the heart of a vibrant artistic community pumps.

At nightclubs such as the Ritz and the Majestic, elegantly dressed couples dance as singers switch effortlessly from waltzes to rock to rap. Record stores are lined with hundreds of CDs, nearly all recorded in Orange County by local singers and musicians. Bookstores, likewise, are stocked with novels, poetry and other works that make their way from here to Vietnamese-speaking communities all over the world--to Washington, Paris, even Vietnam itself.

There are Vietnamese-language radio and TV, music videos and movies. Some of the most famous names from pre-1975 South Vietnam have settled here--from TV personalities to the former head of Saigon’s National Conservatory of Music and Drama. Now, a new generation is rising, such as Dustin Nguyen, the TV actor who first made his mark in “21 Jump Street.”

While some pour their hearts into maintaining traditional culture, others tap into the latest trends in entertainment and art.

All are encompassed in a burgeoning arts and entertainment community centered in Little Saigon that has been built piece by tiny piece in just two decades, since the first Vietnamese immigrants began to arrive with only what they could carry--in their heads as well as in their arms.

Kieu Chinh, who was South Vietnam’s best-known film actress before she came to Southern California in 1975 (and who was a star of “The Joy Luck Club”), has watched the local cultural community grow. “We have been in war for so long, but life goes on,” she says. “And life cannot go on without culture.”

“There’s a lot going on here,” says James Freeman, an anthropologist and author of “Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese American Lives.” And “it’s not just off in a corner somewhere.”

Little Saigon’s artistic community is one that in many ways has been isolated from mainstream U.S. culture--influences have been flowing in, but seldom out. But as the 20th anniversary of Saigon’s fall approaches, there are signs that this is changing.

The most notable sign is Project 20, an ambitious yearlong commemoration of the first refugees’ arrival and a celebration of their accomplishments here. It will feature musical performances, art exhibitions and literary symposiums locally and in cities across the country.

“We want to open up. We do not want to be a ghetto,” says Dieu D. Le, president of the Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Assn., which is based in Garden Grove, and one of the organizers of Project 20.

The local Project 20 centerpiece will be a performance on June 3 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center of “1975,” a symphonic suite composed by Khoa Le, who lives in Orange.

“Twenty years is a time when you can look back, and at the same time look to the future,” Khoa Le says. “We feel that the Americans want to know something about us, and we have something to share too. Art is the best way to bridge the gap.”

The artistic community in Little Saigon encompasses two generations. On one hand, there are those who arrived young or were born here, many of them university-educated, who are fighting for a place in the mainstream. There are musicians, visual artists and actors, classical musicians, writers and now filmmakers looking to make a mark--and a paycheck--in the larger society, as they ease away from the traditional culture of their parents and strive to forge an identity for themselves.

Meanwhile, there are those who carried the traditional arts to the United States, nurturing them as they built new lives in an unfamiliar place. All along, many have worked to keep traditional culture alive in their children, but increasingly they also have broadened their sights, looking to expose mainstream society to Vietnam’s deep and rich artistic traditions.

Among those who live or work in Orange County are some who enjoyed widespread fame in pre-Communist Vietnam: Pham Duy, Vietnam’s most prolific popular songwriter, and classical composer Nghiem Phu Phi, who headed the National Conservatory of Music and Drama in Saigon until 1975. Khoa Le is not only a composer but a photographer and, in Vietnam, was a popular television host.

The new generation includes, along with Dustin Nguyen (who has followed his role on “21 Jump Street” with one on “seaQuest DSV”), Vietnamese-language pop singers such as Khan Ha and Ylan, and actor Thai Tai who had a role in Oliver Stone’s “Heaven and Earth.” There is a local comedy-improv team, Club O’Noodles, and the beginnings of a filmmaking scene.

Little Saigon’s arts community will continue to bloom over the next decade, says Eric Crystal, coordinator of the Center for Southeast Asia Studies at UC Berkeley.

“I think we could expect in the next 10 years Vietnamese moving into positions of prominence in academics and the arts,” Crystal says. “They are extraordinarily vigorous and diligent and making a kind of contribution to California society that’s far out of proportion to their numbers here.”

*

The first immigrants to arrive included much of the elite of South Vietnamese society. “Many of them were artists--musicians, painters and sculptors, writers and poets,” says Pham Cao Duong, a historian who teaches extension classes at UC Irvine and UCLA about the Vietnamese American experience.

At first, those who made a living as artists in Vietnam had to find other means of supporting themselves, but many found ways of keeping their creative inclinations alive. “Many of them have been very active since they first arrived in this country, especially the writers and poets,” says Duong.

Still, in those first years, survival was the main concern--survival and adjustment to a new way of life. “To tell you the truth, the first 10 years here, everybody is struggling with the basic needs, for food, clothes, housing,” notes Tien Q. Nguyen of Garden Grove, a dermatologist and a member of the Project 20 organizing group.

Actress Chinh, who fled to the United States in 1975, notes that “most of our people, the older generation, came here and could not go back to their own expertise”--not just artists and entertainers but doctors and lawyers and teachers, as well as generations of military men who had limited civilian skills.

Many of the men who came here “didn’t know how to do anything else but handle a gun and go to war,” says Chinh, who is organizing her own celebration of Vietnamese culture, called Viet USA 20, July 1 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. She lives in Studio City but is co-publisher of a magazine in Westminster.

Despite a few high-profile roles as well as a stream of smaller roles and behind-the-scenes consultant work, Chinh still hasn’t been able to re-establish herself completely. People who knew her work in Vietnam often ask “why I accept small parts here and there,” she says. “Many don’t understand how difficult it is to work in Hollywood. The competition is so great. To Hollywood, we all look alike.”

By the ‘80s, however, the Vietnamese who came to Orange County had started to build an impressive infrastructure for arts and entertainment in Little Saigon itself. Now, record shops line the streets, and the vast majority of the product sold there is recorded locally, in one of a dozen or so high-tech studios. The thriving nightclub scene draws young and old, and a music video production business exerts influence in Vietnamese communities around the world.

The area boasts 10 Vietnamese-language bookstores--the nation’s largest concentration--and produces five literary magazines. Orange County is home to the majority of roughly 100 Vietnamese book, short story and poetry writers established in this country and to three of the five largest Vietnamese publishing companies in the U.S., says Yen Do, publisher of Little Saigon’s Nguoi Viet, the country’s oldest and largest Vietnamese-language daily newspaper.

This wealth of activity reflects an avid embrace of freedom of expression long forbidden by oppressive foreign governments, and a greater reverence, Do says, for the written word than for any other facet of Vietnamese intellectual life and culture.

Do notes that literature is the vehicle through which ancestral wisdom is passed down through generations, and while three centuries of war obliterated paintings, sculpture and architecture, books and manuscripts--”which people could hide”--survived.

“Most of our past heritage has been destroyed. But even in the rural areas, where some people can’t read, when they see a piece of writing, they keep it in a high, safe place. They never throw it away.”

While market-driven entertainment thrives (a full-time Vietnamese-language cinema screens films daily), other art forms requiring broader community-based support remain in their infancy. There is no permanent venue for traditional music, for instance, and no theater scene to speak of. There are not yet enough trained Vietnamese American musicians for a symphony orchestra (because of French colonial rule, Vietnam has a long classical tradition), although a young generation of performers is coming up through the ranks.

Le and others created the Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Assn. in 1993 in part to provide a gallery and stage space for local artists who had none. They have discussed the possibility of renting or building a large performing and visual arts facility, although a search for funding has been fruitless.

Coordinating a large-scale event such as Project 20 provides numerous challenges to a community that has not previously taken on such a task.

Landing corporate financial support is difficult, as fledgling efforts in the Vietnamese American community must compete with more established mainstream organizations. To organize a large-scale concert, for instance, “takes much support,” says Nghiem, who was one of Vietnam’s best known classical-style composers before he moved to Westminster.

One of Nghiem’s compositions was featured last summer at Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton in one of the most ambitious programs to date of Vietnamese classical music (a blend of Western classical with Vietnamese traditional touches).

*

The inroads to mainstream culture have been sporadic so far, but they are on the rise as the second generation of Vietnamese Americans reaches adulthood. Vietnamese faces are turning up with more regularity on television and film.

Although controversial among some Vietnamese Americans, “Heaven and Earth” was itself a watershed development. After a generation of Vietnam war movies told from the U.S. perspective, it attempted to tell a war story through the eyes of a young Vietnamese woman (it was based on the memoirs of Le Ly Hayslip, who now lives in San Diego). 1993 saw the art-house success of “The Scent of Green Papaya,” a French-Vietnamese production set in South Vietnam. And locally, stirrings are being heard of a Vietnamese-language feature film business based in Little Saigon.

“Many more stories can be told besides war, besides blood and barbed wires and tanks,” says actress Chinh. “I am more interested in people stories. . . . There are many stories I wish Hollywood would touch.”

The influence of the Vietnamese American community will be felt artistically, she says, just as previous generations of immigrants made their marks. It is a slow process, but an inevitable one. “Most of us now are Americans. Many of us have gone into the mainstream already.”

Louis G. Spisto, the executive director of the Pacific Symphony Orchestra and a member of the organizing committee for Project 20, agrees that as the years pass, “it’s going to be fascinating to see how the marriage of (Vietnamese) culture and Western European culture will blend and create maybe something even more exciting.”

* FUND-RAISER CREATES CONCERN: Date of event and anniversary of Saigon’s fall are two days apart. B4

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Arts in Little Saigon: A Five-Day Series

Today: Over 20 years, a vibrant culture has emerged, piece by piece.

Monday: A small core of believers is working to keep traditional music alive.

Tuesday: The pop music mecca of the Vietnamese-speaking world.

Wednesday: Some artists struggle to confront the past; others try to move beyond it.

Thursday: How the county’s arts establishment has--and hasn’t--reached out to Vietnamese Americans.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Faces in the Crowd

Among the big Vietnamese stars who now are in Orange County:

Kieu Chinh: One of South Vietnam’s most prominent actresses, was in “The Joy Luck Club,” works in Westminster.

Nghiem Phu Phi: Headed the National Conservatory of Music and Drama in Saigon, lives and teaches in Westminster.

Dustin Nguyen: Television actor whose credits include “21 Jump Street,” “seaQuest DSV,” Orange Coast College graduate.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

PROJECT 20

Upcoming events:

* Friday, 9 a.m.: Project 20 opening ceremony with keynote address at 10 a.m. by James Freeman, anthropology professor at San Jose State and author of “Hearts of Sorrow,” an account of Vietnamese American lives. Titan Pavilion, Cal State Fullerton. Free. (714) 773-2414.

* Friday, 10:45 a.m.: “Refugee Life in the United States: The First 20 Years,” panel discussion with speakers from the Vietnamese, Hmong, Laotian and Cambodian communities; includes Eugene Trinh, staff scientist with JPL; Mouachou Mouanoutoua, social worker with the Orange County Social Services Agency; Pray Sananikone, UC Irvine campus and community diversity relations director; Hang Ngor (to be confirmed), actor (“The Killing Fields”). Titan Pavilion, Cal State Fullerton. Free. (714) 773-2414.

* Friday-March 24 (closed Saturday and Sunday): “Refugee Life: The First 20 Years,” exhibit of photography, with oral history audio tapes of refugees. West Art Gallery, Cal State Fullerton. Noon-4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Free. (714) 773-3355.

* Friday-Dec. 22: “Southeast Asians in Southern California: A Journey and a Celebration,” exhibit of clothing, musical instruments and other artifacts. Anthropology Museum (Room 313, Humanities and Social Sciences building), Cal State Fullerton. Opens at 5 p.m.; hours thereafter are 2-5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Free. (714) 773-3977.

* Saturday-April 18 (tentative): Exhibit of photography and sculpture by Lai Huu Duc. Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Assn. (VAALA), 11022 Acacia Parkway, Suite A, Garden Grove. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Free. (714) 537-8352.

* March 31-April 6 (closed Saturday and Sunday): “7,305 Days,” exhibit of contemporary art by Ann Phong and Hoang Vu. East Art Gallery, Cal State Fullerton. Noon-4 p.m. Friday and Monday through Thursday. Free. (714) 773-3262.

* April 13: Performance of traditional music by Nguyen Thuyet Phong and ensemble. Time and place to be announced. Organized by VAALA. (714) 537-8352.

* April 15-May 15: Exhibit of works by Vietnamese American artists. UC Irvine Main Library, off Campus and Pereira Roads, Irvine. 8 a.m.-1 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 8 a.m.-9 p.m. Fridays; 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturdays; noon-1 a.m. Sundays. Free. (714) 824-4968.

* April 19, 9 a.m.: “Covering Southeast Asian Communities,” panel discussion on the media with Seth Mydans, Los Angeles-based correspondent for the New York Times; Thuy Vu, reporter for KPIX-TV Channel 5, San Francisco; Dieu D. Le, chairman of the board of editors for Nguoi Viet Daily, Little Saigon. Titan Pavilion, Cal State Fullerton. Free. (714) 773-2414.

* April 19, 1 p.m.: “Beyond the Killing Fields: Life in a Cambodian Refugee Camp,” slide show of work by Kari Rene Hall, staff photographer, Times Orange County Edition, of Khmer refugees living along the border between Thailand and Vietnam. Titan Pavilion, Cal State Fullerton. Free. (714) 773-2414.

* April 26 and 27, 8 p.m.: Premiere performance of a symphonic/choral work by Elliot Goldenthal reflecting on the human experience of the Vietnam War, in observance of the 20th anniversary of its end; commissioned by Pacific Symphony, which will perform the piece with the Pacific Chorale and soloists and children from the local Vietnamese community. Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $14-$41. (714) 755-5799 or Ticketmaster, (714) 740-2000.

* May 6 (tentative): Vietnamese refugees who arrived in the U.S. at Camp Pendleton will meet there for a homecoming ceremony. Organized by VAALA. (714) 537-8352.

* June 3, 3 p.m.: Premiere performance, by the Pacific Symphony Institute Orchestra, of “1975,” a symphonic suite by Khoa Le. Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Free tickets available at the box office on day of performance. (714) 755-5788.

* July 22: Festival of songs composed in Communist concentration camps. Time and place to be announced. Organized by VAALA. (714) 537-8352.

* Aug. 26, 8 p.m.: Performance of traditional music by the Lac Hong Music Group, Robert B. Moore Theatre, Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. $15. (714) 554-6878.

* November: Project 20 closing ceremony, to be announced. Organized by VAALA. (714) 537-8352.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Background: Vietnamese in O.C.

Orange County has the largest Vietnamese community anywhere outside of Vietnam itself: almost 100,000 people, with more than 41,000 of them living in three cities--Westminster, Garden Grove and Santa Ana--as of the 1990 census.

Westminster has the highest concentration of Vietnamese Americans living anywhere in the U.S.--14.6% of the city’s population.

Vietnamese refugees have been arriving in Orange County since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

The first wave came largely because many of the refugees entered the U.S. at nearby Camp Pendleton. Subsequent waves came to join family and friends already established.

In Westminster, they built Little Saigon, the social and commercial hub of their community, with hundreds of Vietnamese businesses and--nowhere near as visible to the observer from outside--an arts and entertainment industry that now has influence in Vietnamese communities around the country and around the world.

This year sees Project 20, an ambitious commemoration of the first refugees’ arrival and a celebration of what they and their offspring have accomplished. Project 20 will feature musical performances, art exhibitions and literary symposiums locally and in cities across the country.