Phạm Duy

Phạm Duy (5 October 1921 – 27 January 2013) was a Vietnamese songwriter. 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. His entire body of work was banned in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War and subsequently in unified Vietnam for more than 30 years. Upon his repatriation in 2005, the government began to ease restrictions on some of his work. Biography Phạm Duy was born as Phạm Duy Cẩn, on 5 October 1921, in his house at the Hàng Thùng Street of Hanoi City, Tonkin, French Indochina. His father Phạm Duy Tốn 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 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 Thăng Long Primary School where his teachers included Trần Trọng Kim a