Veteran artist Tong Son has dedicated 64 years to his lifelong love - producing haunting, moving tunes with his harmonica. His skills are unrivaled, particularly as he plays the instrument while eating bananas or drinking beer.

Son, 84, whose real name is Duong Ngo Tong, recently released his 6th and also his last CD titled “Anh con no em” (I’m still owning you), which features some of Son’s  best, signature performances with his treasured harmonica.

Love at first sight lasts a lifetime

In 1946, the young Tong stumbled across a harmonica dropped by a French soldier. Immediately struck by its stunning, melodic sounds, he declined several generous price offers to sell it.

In 1948, when he was 18, Tong went to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City now), where he learned to fix typewriters. He played the harmonica to relieve his homesickness only and never visualized himself as an artist later.

With some music theory learned from his elder brother, Tong taught himself to play the tunes broadcast on the radio then.

He was later asked by revolutionary soldiers to secretly build typewriters to type propaganda leaflets.

He was later apprehended by French troops and was put in different jails. His harmonica again was his source of solace and his deeply touching tunes even moved French guards to tears.

In 1950, Tong enrolled in a competition held by the Phap A Station with a harmonica performance. Not confident enough, he added his father’s first name, Son, to his own name, so that if he failed this time, he could use his real name to take the competition again the following year. His stage name, Tong Son, was born then.

His performance instantly won over the judges and audiences, catapulting the harmonica, which had previously been considered an instrument to entertain only and ranked far below mainstream instruments like the piano and violin, to the spotlight.

Since 1955, particularly after Tong released his debut album, the harmonica earned a strong foothold in the local music scene.

The artist later mastered his harmonica skills, which inscribed his name as one of the very few southern ‘weirdly gifted’ artists in the 1960s when he was only in his 20s.

When the hit western “The good, the bad and the ugly” by director Sergio Leone became popular in Vietnam in 1966, local youths instantly fell head over heels in love with the immortally haunting harmonica tune by master musician Ennio Morricone.

For the following decade, Tong was asked to perform this western tune wherever he went and his name soon became firmly attached to it.

He later developed his unique skills of playing the harmonica and eating bananas or drinking beer at the same time.

“These are merely variety skills for me to make a living. Genuine art, not these skills, is the thing that counts,” Tong modestly said about his skills, though several almost choked trying to play the harmonica and eat bananas simultaneously.

Though Tong never considers himself a harmonica master, young musicians keep coming to him and insist that he impart his outstanding skills to them. Hoang Hoa, one of his long-time students, recently asked him to support his class to train a new batch of harmonica artists.

Tong also owns a prized collection of over 100 harmonicas of various kinds.

Though he has some wives and more than ten children, he still lives by himself during all these years.

“Perhaps my artistic career demands that I live on my own to devote wholeheartedly to it,” he joked.