The Song Poet Opera: Workshop

The Song Poet Opera tickets were all sold out six months before the opening dates. This is the first time this has happened in MN Opera history. I am excited and apprehensive at once–so many people will get to hear my debut as a librettist. FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WERE UNABLE TO GET TICKETS, […]

Bits of news:

I write you with bits of news:-I submitted my fifth letter to a refugee child for Al Jazeera. This final letter in the short series will run on Thursday. For those of you who may have missed any of the letters, you can find them here: https://www.aljazeera.com/author/kao_kalia_yang_200504133603622-The Song Poet, my second book, has been selected as […]

It’s here! From the Tops of the Trees

Young Kalia has never known life beyond the fences of the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. The Thai camp holds many thousands of Hmong families who fled in the aftermath of the little-known Secret War in Laos that was waged during America’s Vietnam War. For Kalia and her cousins, life isn’t always easy, but they still […]

Questions? Get in touch.

Returning Customer?

Login to your account

SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date with upcoming events or special announcements.  Sign up for my personal newsletter.

Bee Yang

Hmong song poetry | kwv txhiaj hmoob

Thaum Hluas Txog Hnub Laus: When the Days of Youth are Gone (Bee Yang, 2014)

This is an album of Hmong song poetry, kwv txhiaj hmoob, composed and sung by Bee Yang, Kao Kalia Yang’s father. The album notes and English translation of one of the songs are by Kao Kalia Yang.

Kwv txhiaj is, in the words of Ralph Ellison on the American Blues, “an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-cosmic lyricism. As a form, the blues [and kwv txhiaj] is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.”

NOTE:  The duration of the songs do not reflect the actual song length.  Please consider ordering the CD for the full songs.  Thank you.

*This CD is available for purchase for $15.  Click below to order:

Bee Yang: Hmong Song Poetry