Phạm Duy (5 October 1921 – 27 January 2013) was one of Vietnam's most prolific songwriters with a musical career that spanned more than seven decades through some of the most turbulent periods of Vietnamese history and with more than one thousand songs to his credit,
[ ] he is widely considered one of the three most salient and influential figures of
modern Vietnamese music, along with
Văn Cao and
Trịnh Công Sơn
Trịnh Công Sơn (February 28, 1939 – April 1, 2001) was a Vietnamese, musician, songwriter, painter and poet. He is widely considered to be Vietnam's best songwriter. His music explores themes of love, loss, and anti-war sentiments during ...
.
His music is noted for combining elements of traditional music with new methods, creating melodies that are both modern and traditional. A politically polarizing figure, his entire body of work was banned in
North Vietnam
North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; vi, Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), was a socialist state supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Southeast Asia that existed f ...
during the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
and subsequently in unified Vietnam for more than 30 years until the government began to ease restrictions on some of his work upon his repatriation in 2005.
Life
Phạm Duy was born Phạm Duy Cẩn, on 5 October 1921, in
Hanoi
Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi is ...
. His father
Phạm Duy Tốn Phạm Duy Tốn (1881 – 25 February 1924) was a Vietnamese writer. He was father of the songwriter Phạm Duy
Phạm Duy (5 October 1921 – 27 January 2013) was one of Vietnam's most prolific songwriters with a musical career that spanned ...
was a progressive journalist and writer, and one of the earliest writers of European-style short stories. Phạm Duy Tốn was also one of the founders of the
Tonkin Free School
Tonkin, also spelled ''Tongkin'', ''Tonquin'' or ''Tongking'', is an exonym referring to the northern region of Vietnam. During the 17th and 18th centuries, this term referred to the domain ''Đàng Ngoài'' under Trịnh lords' control, includi ...
movement. Phạm Duy's father died when he was two, and he was raised largely by his older brother
Phạm Duy Khiêm, whom he described as a strict and tyrannical figure. Phạm Duy Khiêm later became a professor and
South Vietnam's ambassador to France, as well as a Francophone writer.
He attended Thang Long High School where his teachers included
Võ Nguyên Giáp
Võ Nguyên Giáp (; 25 August 1911 – 4 October 2013) was a Vietnamese general and communist politician who is regarded as having been one of the greatest military strategists of the 20th century. He served as interior minister in President ...
. He then attended the College of Arts and the Ky Nghe Thuc Hanh Vocational College. He taught himself music and studied in France in 1954-55 under Robert Lopez and as an unregistered student at the Institut de Musicologie in Paris.
He started his musical career as a singer in the Duc Huy musical troupe, performing around the country in 1943–44. He then joined a musical cadre for the
Viet Minh
The Việt Minh (; abbreviated from , chữ Nôm and Hán tự: ; french: Ligue pour l'indépendance du Viêt Nam, ) was a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on 19 May 1941. Also known as the Việt Minh Fro ...
during their resistance against the French. He and the musician
Văn Cao became great friends while there and they collaborated on some of their earliest songs together. He left the Viet Minh after 6 years for French-controlled Hanoi and subsequently moved south to Saigon after becoming disenchanted with their censorship. His work was subsequently banned in communist-controlled areas. In 1969
Đỗ Nhuận Đỗ Nhuận (December 10, 1922 in Hải Dương – May 18, 1991 in Hanoi) was a Vietnamese classical composer. He is known for the first homegrown Vietnamese opera - ''Cô Sao'' "Miss Sao." This and other more-or-less revolutionary themed mu ...
, a leading young North Vietnamese composer of revolutionary opera, singled out Phạm Duy's music as typical of reactionary music in the South.
Exile and return to Vietnam
![Phamduydan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Phamduydan.jpg)
After the
fall of Saigon
The Fall of Saigon, also known as the Liberation of Saigon by North Vietnamese or Liberation of the South by the Vietnamese government, and known as Black April by anti-communist overseas Vietnamese was the capture of Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon, t ...
, Phạm Duy and his family moved to the United States where he settled in
Midway City, California
Midway City is a census-designated place in the United States that forms part of the county land controlled by Orange County, California. The only area in Orange County that incorporates its chamber of commerce and homeowners association to act ...
. His music was banned in Vietnam between 1975 and 2005. However, his music continued to be performed and widely known both inside and outside Vietnam.
He pursued a minstrel's life and appeared regularly all over the world to sing his new refugees' songs (''tị nạn ca'') and prisoners' songs (''ngục ca''), and songs derived from the poems of his friend
Hoàng Cầm (which he termed ''Hoàng Cầm ca'').
Phạm Duy first returned to Vietnam for visits in 2000. In 2005, he announced that he and his son, the singer
Duy Quang, would return permanently.
His announced return was greeted with much fanfare in Vietnam, and the government began to ease restrictions on his work. To date, dozens of his songs have been allowed to circulate in Vietnam again.
Death
Phạm Duy died on 27 January 2013, in
Saigon, one month after the death of his eldest son
Duy Quang.
[ ] His wife Thai Hang had died in 1999 to lung cancer.
At 91 years of age he had been suffering heart and liver disease and gout.
[ ] A documentary film ''Pham Duy, music and life'' is yet to be released.
Mirroring widespread reaction from the public and his fellow artists, singer
Anh Tuyet said, "Hearing that he died, I'm melting ..."
Acclaimed film director
Đặng Nhật Minh
Đặng Nhật Minh (b. Huế, Vietnam, 1938) is one of Vietnam's foremost film directors. He began making documentary films around 1965 and is the first Vietnamese person to be awarded the Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture, in 1999. His films have w ...
, who was contracted to direct a movie about Phạm Duy's life, expressed his regret of not being able to do it during his lifetime.
[ ]
An impromptu benefit concert was held in his honour on 1 February, with the 60 million VND proceeds going to his family.
[ ] Thousands of well-wishers, including many of the most notable names in Vietnamese music, paid their respects at his home before he was buried on February 3, 2013, in Binh Duong Park Cemetery.
[ ] At his funeral, attendees spontaneously sang some of his most famous songs.
Family
Phạm Duy's father was
Phạm Duy Tốn Phạm Duy Tốn (1881 – 25 February 1924) was a Vietnamese writer. He was father of the songwriter Phạm Duy
Phạm Duy (5 October 1921 – 27 January 2013) was one of Vietnam's most prolific songwriters with a musical career that spanned ...
, a noted journalist and writer, and his mother was Nguyễn Thị Hòa. He was the youngest of five children, and his eldest brother was
Phạm Duy Khiêm, who became a Francophone writer.
He was considered the "patriarch" of a musical dynasty. His wife, the singer
Thái Hằng, was the older sister of the composer
Phạm Đình Chương as well as of the singer
Thái Thanh
Thái Thanh (born Phạm Thị Băng Thanh; August 5, 1934 – March 17, 2020) was a Vietnamese-American singer. She was one of the most iconic singers of the Western-influenced popular music in Vietnam, known as ' New music of Vietnam' ().
...
, who gained widespread fame performing many of Phạm Duy's works. His eight children have achieved success in music as part of the band ''The Dreamers'' who performed around the world.
His eldest son was the singer
Duy Quang (who predeceased him by more than a month), and another son is musician Duy Cường. His daughters include the singers Thái Hiền and
Thái Thảo. Thái Thảo's husband is the noted singer
Tuấn Ngọc. Among his nieces and nephews are the singers
Ý Lan (daughter of Thái Thanh) and
Mai Hương.
Legacy
Professor Vu Duc Vuong, a director at
Hoa Sen University, said that Pham Duy was Vietnam's most important musician of the 20th century, and compared him favourably to
Nguyễn Du,
Hồ Xuân Hương
Hồ Xuân Hương (wikt:胡, 胡wikt:春, 春wikt:香, 香; 1772–1822) was a Vietnamese people, Vietnamese poet born at the end of the Lê dynasty. She grew up in an era of political and social turmoil – the time of the Tây Sơn dynast ...
, and
Xuân Diệu.
He is considered one of the most prolific and varied musicians of modern Vietnamese music, as well as one of those who molded it from its infancy.
Generations of Vietnamese grew up memorising many of his songs and many singers gained fame performing his works,
most notably his sister-in-law
Thái Thanh
Thái Thanh (born Phạm Thị Băng Thanh; August 5, 1934 – March 17, 2020) was a Vietnamese-American singer. She was one of the most iconic singers of the Western-influenced popular music in Vietnam, known as ' New music of Vietnam' ().
...
.
Ethnomusicologist Jason Gibbs described Phạm Duy as "a writer of undeniable sensitivity and created works that Vietnamese will remember for hundreds of years. There is a remarkable directness, honesty and depth of feeling in his lyrics, during a time when many Vietnamese creative figures had to be guarded in their expression."
In the last years of his life, he campaigned unsuccessfully to have the entire oeuvre of his works, excepting those that "the government would deem inappropriate", to freely circulate in Vietnam again.
[ ] Among his strongest advocates are renowned musicologist
Trần Văn Khê, historian
Dương Trung Quốc, and researcher
Nguyễn Đắc Xuân
Nguyen Dac Xuan (born 1937 in Thừa Thiên-Huế, Vietnam) is a Vietnamese novelist, researcher of Huế's culture, who is best known for his poetry and his books and his research on the culture and history of the Nguyen dynasty and Ancient Hu ...
, who wanted the government to allow, at minimum, his song cycles ''Con đường cái quan'' (''The Mandarin Road'') and ''Mẹ Việt Nam'' (''Mother Vietnam''), particularly its concluding song "Việt Nam Việt Nam".
The two song cycles, according to Khê, are "masterpieces deserving to be disseminated across the whole country because of their true artistic qualities". With these two cycles, Pham Duy "talked about a totally unified Vietnam, painted a picture of Vietnam complete geographically and culturally, from the breadth of its history to the depth of its soul, from its philosophy to its outlook on life."
After his music was banned in Vietnam for more than 30 years, he and his music were considered to have been forgotten by the newer generations.
However, according to the musician Tuấn Khanh, the outpouring of reaction on
social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
before and after his death clearly showed that his name is not so easily forgotten.
Criticism
Phạm Duy's 2005 move from the U.S., where he resided since 1975, to
Saigon, was a cause for much criticism, from both outside and within Vietnam. Some overseas Vietnamese accused him of hypocrisy and of showing sympathy towards the communist government of Vietnam, even though a number of his songs have been about resistance, refugees, and their Vietnam. In contrast, some musicians from within Vietnam, particularly Hanoi, saw the acclaim he received on his return as inappropriate for someone whom they consider a traitor.
In 2006, his first post-1975 concert in Vietnam was well received by critics. However, composer Nguyễn Lưu wrote an article titled "
oucan't acclaim" in which he criticised Phạm Duy's works, citing many instances in which he saw
bourgeois or anti-communist lyrics. The article received much criticism from readers, with some calling the criticism "simplistic" or "ignorant".
In 2009, Musician
Phạm Tuyên, author of many well-known socialist songs (and son of the journalist
Phạm Quỳnh), stated that to judge him, one must look at his contributions as well as his mistakes. To him, the media mentioning Pham Duy's great music while ignoring all his past mistakes is unfair to musicians who have spent their whole lives devoted to the Revolution.
[ ] Trọng Bằng, another musician of so-called "
red music
RED Music, stylized RED MUSIC, formerly RED Distribution, LLC (Relativity Entertainment Distribution) was a Sony-owned sales and marketing division that merged under The Orchard in 2017. RED previously handled releases for more than sixty i ...
", said that Phạm Duy had a "sinful past", while the musician Hồng Đăng said that "the true value of an artist is his patriotism...and truthfully only some of
hạm Duys song received popular success, not all were well-received."
After Phạm Duy's death, Phạm Tuyên said that "my generation is still influenced by Phạm Duy's music...his songs about homeland, country, left a lasting impression on my mind," and that "I was very happy when he returned." However, no representative from the Vietnam Musicians Association attended his funeral, and according to musician Tuấn Khanh, the Propaganda Committee warned the media not to make a big deal out of his death.
Works
Periods
Pham Duy divided his career into several periods:
* Folk Songs (Dân Ca), which recorded the images of the Vietnamese during the struggle for independence, culminating in his Song Cycles (Truong Ca), which join several folk tunes to proclaim the greatness of the Vietnamese people. Included in this period is his 1968 album, ''Folk Songs of Vietnam,'' released on
Folkways Records.
* Heart' Songs (Tâm Ca) - which aimed to awake humanity's conscience, to protest against violence and inhumanity.
* Spiritual Songs (Đạo Ca), with a Zen character, which aimed to seek for the truth.
* Profane Songs (Tục Ca), which tackled head-on hypocritical attitudes and phony virtues.
* Children's Song (Nhạc thiếu nhi), Young Women's Songs (Nữ Ca) and Peace Songs (Bình Ca), which were songs of joy.
* Resistance Songs and for the motherland
* Refugees Songs and for life in exile.
In addition, his many love songs have been sung and learned by heart by three generations over the last forty years.
Notable songs
Phạm Duy wrote about 1000 songs. Some of his notable works :
* 1954-1975 - a song about the two migration events in Vietnam during the 20th century, the
Operation Passage to Freedom
Operation Passage to Freedom was a term used by the United States Navy to describe the propaganda effort and the assistance in transporting in 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist ...
and
Fall of Saigon
The Fall of Saigon, also known as the Liberation of Saigon by North Vietnamese or Liberation of the South by the Vietnamese government, and known as Black April by anti-communist overseas Vietnamese was the capture of Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon, t ...
.
* Áo Anh Sứt Chỉ Đường Tà
* Bên Cầu Biên Giới
* Bến Xuân (co-author with Văn Cao)
* Cây Đàn Bỏ Quên
* Chỉ Chừng Đó Thôi
* Chuyện Tình Buồn (Năm Năm Rồi Không Gặp)
* Cô Bắc Kỳ Nho Nhỏ
* Cô Hái Mơ
* Con Đường Tình Ta Đi
* Còn Chút Gì Để Nhớ (1972)
* Đưa Em Tìm Động Hoa Vàng
* Ðường Chiều Lá Rụng
* Em Hiền Như Masoeur
* Giết Người Trong Mộng
* Giọt Mưa Trên Lá
*Hoa Rụng Ven Sông
*Hoa Xuân
* Kiếp Nào Có Yêu Nhau
* Kỷ Niệm
* Kỷ Vật Cho Em
* Minh Họa Kiều - song form of ''
The Tale of Kieu''
* Mùa Thu Chết
* Ngày Xưa Hoàng Thị
* Nghìn Trùng Xa Cách
* Nha Trang Ngày Về
* Ngậm Ngùi (Poem by Huy Cận)
* Nhớ Người Thương Binh
* Nước Mắt Mùa Thu
* Nước Non Ngàn Dặm Ra Đi
* Phố Buồn
* Quê Nghèo
* Tâm Sự Gửi Về Đâu
* Thà Như Giọt Mưa
* Thuyền Viễn Xứ (1970)
* Tình Ca (1953) - a song about one's love for country. When this song was allowed to circulate in Vietnam again in 2005, a company bought the rights to the first 10 notes of the song to use in promotions for 100 million VND.
* Tình Hoài Hương (1952)
* Tình Hờ
* Tiễn Em
* Tóc Mai Sợi Vắn Sợi Dài
* Tôi Còn Yêu Tôi Cứ Yêu
* Tôi Đang Mơ Giấc Mộng Dài
* Tổ khúc Bầy Chim Bỏ Xứ
* Trả Lại Em Yêu
* Tuổi Ngọc
* Tuổi Thần Tiên
* Trường ca Con Đường Cái Quan
he Mandarin Road- a cycle of 19 songs detailing a journey from northern to southern Vietnam. He started writing the songs in 1954 and competed them in 1960. The purpose of these songs was to affirm the cultural unity of Vietnam and to protest the partition of the country.
These songs are still banned in Vietnam.
[ ]
* Trường ca Mẹ Việt Nam
other Vietnam- a cycle of many songs about Vietnam personified as mothers. These songs are still banned in Vietnam.
**Việt Nam Việt Nam - the last song in the cycle, it enjoyed the status of an unofficial national anthem in South Vietnam.
Before dying, he expressed his wish for this song to be allowed to circulate in his native country.
* Vết Thù Trên Lưng Ngựa Hoang (co-author with Ngọc Chánh)
* Vợ Chồng Quê
* Yêu Em Vào Cõi Chết
Phạm Duy has also written lyrics for many foreign songs and brought them to Vietnamese audiences. Some examples included:
* Chuyện Tình Yêu
* Dòng Sông Xanh
*
Khi Xưa Ta Bé (Bang Bang)
* Ngày Tân Hôn
* Que Sera Sera
* Trở Về Mái Nhà Xưa
Books
* Phạm Duy wrote an autobiography (Hồi Ký Phạm Duy) which has 4 volumes.
* Phạm-Duy ''Musics of Vietnam'' translated Dale R. Whiteside - 1975
[Phạm-Duy ''Musics of Vietnam'' translated Dale R. Whiteside - 1975 "This is the first book in English on the popular music of Vietnam — a songbag of Vietnamese music. The Musics of Vietnam is a popular work, on the order of the John and Alan Lomax collection of American folk songs."]
References
External links
Official websitePham Duy Obituary ''Los Angeles Times''
Interview with Pham Duy, 1982Vietnam's Rock 'n' Roll War includes an interview with Pham Duy
English Translations by Pham Quang Tuan
Phạm Duy and his songs in vietnamesePham Duy at Wikivietlit''Folk Songs of Vietnam'' Album Detailsat
Smithsonian Folkways
Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was fo ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pham, Duy
1921 births
2013 deaths
People from Hanoi
Vietnamese expatriates in the United States
Vietnamese composers
People from Midway City, California
Vietnamese songwriters
20th-century Vietnamese male singers