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,[1] 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.

He attended Thăng Long Primary School where his teachers included Trần Trọng Kim and Võ Nguyên Giáp.

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 left the Viet Minh after 6 years for French-controlled Hanoi and subsequently moved south to Saigon after becoming disenchanted with their censorship.

[10][11] After the collapse of the Republic of Vietnam, Phạm Duy and his family moved to the United States where he settled in Midway City, California.

[14] Mirroring widespread reaction from the public and his fellow artists, singer Anh Tuyet said, "Hearing that he died, I'm melting ..."[14] Acclaimed film director Đặng Nhật Minh, 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.

[16][17] 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.

[2][3] Generations of Vietnamese grew up memorising many of his songs and many singers gained fame performing his works,[21] most notably his sister-in-law Thái Thanh.

Ethnomusicologist Jason Gibbs described Phạm Duy as "a writer of undeniable sensitivity and created works that Vietnamese will remember for hundreds of years.

"[3] 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.

However, composer Nguyễn Lưu wrote an article titled "[You] can't acclaim" in which he criticised Phạm Duy's works, citing many instances in which he saw bourgeois or anti-communist lyrics.

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.

[16] Pham Duy divided his career into several periods: In addition, his many love songs have been sung and learned by heart by three generations over the last forty years.