1 Vol. I.: Thời thơ ấu-vào đời [Childhood and young adulthood] (1990)Google Scholar; Vol. II: Thời cách mạng-kháng chiến [The Revolution and Resistance periods] (1989)Google Scholar; Vol. III: Thời phân chia quốc-công [The period of Nationalist–Communist division] (1991)Google Scholar; and Vol. IV: Thời hải ngoại [My sojourn abroad] (2001)Google Scholar. The first three volumes were published by Phạm Duy Cường Musical Productions in Midway City, CA. The last volume, to my knowledge, has not been published in paper form, but has been available on various websites. I found it at http://www.saigonline.com/phamduy/2005/pdf (last accessed 11 June 2009). All four volumes have been translated by Eric Henry and will be published by Cornell University Press, with the English title of Recollections: Phạm Duy. The passages cited are from Professor Henry's translation, with his permission.

2 Phạm Duy was born and grew up in the North, but after he left the Resistance his songs were banned in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which came into being in 1946. In 1976, after the north and the south were reunified, the DRV was replaced by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

3 Ân, Trần Văn, ‘Phạm Duy, nòi tình’ [Phạm Duy, libido], Văn Học [Literary Studies (Garden Grove, CA)], 21 (Oct. 1987): 88Google Scholar.

4 The Vietnamese expression ‘A falling leaf returns to its source’ (Lá rụng về cội) suggests that people cannot forget their ancestors and the place where they came from.

5 ‘Nhạc sĩ Phạm Duy về Việt Nam sinh sống’ [The musician Phạm Duy returns to Vietnam to live], Thanhniên, http://www1.thanhnien.com.vn/Vanhoa/2005/5/5/108935.tno (last accessed 19 Oct. 2007). This is an interview that took place on 1 May 2005.

6 Chu Lai's comments were quoted by Nguyễn Lưu in ‘Không thể tung hô’ [I can't cheer], Đầu tư [Investment], 13 Mar. 2006. This article can be found on the Viêt báo website: http://vietbao.vn/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45188072&pop=1&page=0 (last accessed 25 Mar. 2010). Nguyễn Lưu also quotes a musician named Nguyễn Đức Toàn whose views of Phạm Duy's return are similar to Chu Lai's. See also Khánh Thy, ‘Nhạc Phạm Duy và những điều cần phải nói’ [Phạm Duy's music and some things that need to be said], http://www.viet-studies.info/PhamDuy_ANTG.htm (last accessed 11 June 2009). This article originally appeared in An Ninh Thế Giới [World Security], Apr. 2009.

7 Phong Thị Lệ expresses her company's views of Nguyễn Lưu's article in a letter to government officials that was made public. The letter, titled ‘Văn bản của Công ty Phương Nam’ [Letter of the Phương Nam Company], can be found at the same online address as Nguyễn Lưu's article.

8 See ‘Phạm Duy vẫn gây tranh cãi’ [Phạm Duy still causes debate], BBC Vietnamese.com, 13 Mar. 2006, http://www.bbc.co.uk/vietnamese/entertainment/story/2006/03/printable/060313_phamdu (last accessed 19 Oct. 2007). This article first appeared on the website talawas (http://www.talawas.org) on 1 June 2005.

9 Dương Thúy, ‘NS [Nghệ sĩ] Phạm Duy: “Yêu người tình, tôi không giấu vợ”’ [The artist Phạm Duy: I had lovers, I didn't hide this from my wife], Tin tuc online, http://tintuconline.vietnamnet.vn/vn/buon/166146 (last accessed 12 Oct. 2007). This interview is dated 9 Oct. 2007.

10 Trần Văn Ân says that Phạm Duy's enjoyed ‘many tens, many hundreds’ (hàng chục, hàng trăm) of ‘fragmentary, makeshift’ love affairs. See ‘Phạm Duy, nòi tình’, p. 89.

11 In citing Phạm Duy's four-volume work I use Roman numerals in upper case to identify the volume and Roman numerals in lower case to indicate the chapter. The last (Arabic) numbers indicate page numbers. I include chapter as well as page numbers because my page references are to a pre-publication draft of Eric Henry's as yet unpublished translation.

12 Tạ Tỵ explains that Hiếu was ultra-modern in part because she allowed herself to be photographed in swimsuits for magazines and newspapers, outlandish behaviour for a young woman from Hanoi in the 1940s. See Tỵ, Tạ, Phạm Duy: Còn đó nỗi buồn (Saigon: Văn Sử Học, 1971), pp. 155–6Google Scholar.

13 For his success with ‘love music’ during the First Republic (1955–63), Phạm Duy says he was ‘much beholden to the voice of Thái Thanh’ (III, xxxvi, 218). She had a wide vocal range, he explains, and so he wrote some songs with very low and very high notes because he knew she could sing them (III, i, 7).

14 ‘Cuộc tình’ is difficult to translate in these contexts. Eric Henry uses ‘romance’, and I have gone with his choice, but, in my opinion, ‘love affair’ is preferable. ‘Cuộc tình’ does not have the same connotations as the English word ‘romance’. Similarly, I believe Phạm Duy's phrase ‘người tình xác thịt’, found in the previous paragraph, should be translated as ‘carnal love partners’, not ‘partners of carnal romance’.

15 Long, Lê Hoàng, Chuyện tình các nhạc sĩ tiền chiến [Love stories of the pre-war composers] (Hanoi: Văn Hóa Thông Tin, 1996), p. 37Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., pp. 39–40.

17 Phạm Duy appears to be confused about Alice's age. In vol. I Phạm Duy says that Alice ‘had just turned two’ when he visited her mother in Phan Thiết in October or November 1944 (I, xxv, 189). If she were two years old in 1944 she would have been 14 in 1956. In vol. III, however, he says that Alice was 16 when he met her again in Saigon in 1956. He remembers, perhaps wrongly, that she had ‘just turned four’ when he ‘clasped her in his encircling arms’ in Phan Thiết (III, xiii, 58).

18 Tạ Tỵ reprints a selection of Alice's poems in Phạm Duy, pp. 164–92.

19 Tạ Tỵ, Phạm Duy, p. 179.

20 Phạm Duy parted ways with Alice after the Tet Offensive in 1968 because she was about to be married. ‘In a pencil written letter,’ he says, ‘she bade farewell to me with no sadness and no lingering regret’ (III, xvii, 136). He continued to write songs that were inspired by this relationship well into the 1970s, however.

21 Trần Văn Ân, ‘Phạm Duy, nòi tình’, p. 91.

22 Yêu là chết ở trong lòng một ít.

23 Thông, Huỳnh Sanh, An anthology of Vietnamese poems (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 284Google Scholar. In the 1950s Phạm Duy composed ‘To love is to die in the heart’ [Yêu là chết ở trong lòng], a song clearly inspired by Xuân Diệu's poem. See III, xviii, 143.

24 See Như-Quỳnh, Cao Thị and Schafer, John C., ‘From verse narrative to novel: The development of prose fiction in Vietnam’, Journal of Asian Studies, 47, 4 (1988): 756–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Duy, Phạm, Đường về dân ca [The road back to folk songs] (Fountain Valley, CA: Xuân Thu, 1990)Google Scholar.

26 These works, which have become some of Phạm Duy's most famous songs, include ‘The pleasure of pain’ [Thú đau thương], inspired by a poem by the same name by Lưu Trọng Lư; ‘Melancholy’ [Ngậm ngùi], based on a poem with the same title by Huy Cận; and ‘Afternoon song’ [Mộ khúc], based on Xuân Diệu's poem ‘Afternoon’ [Chiều].

27 Phạm Duy says the translator was Từ Trẩm Á (Hsu Chen-ya), but he was the writer. The translator was Mai Khê.

28 Phạm Duy explains that the first two Western-style songs to appear were also about dying flowers and unfortunate loves. These songs, composed by Nguyễn Văn Tuyên and Nguyễn Văn Côn, appeared in 1938 when Phạm Duy would have been 17 years old (see I, ix, 61). Perhaps these songs prompted Phạm Duy's rituals of mourning.

29 ‘Tóc mai’ refers to ‘hair on the temple’ (sideburns).

30 Tóc mai sợi vắn sợi dài/Lấy nhau chẳng đặng, thương hoài ngàn năm.

31 The song, ‘Love is only beautiful when it is incomplete’ [Tình chỉ đẹp khi còn dang dở], is based on a poem by Hồ Dzếnh called ‘To hesitate’ [Ngập ngừng]. Nha Trang Công Huyền Tôn Nữ, email message to author, 9 Nov. 2008.

32 In his English translation Eric Henry does not include this parenthesis about tie or debt, but I do because it is in the original and because it clarifies the meaning of ‘tình duyên’ (romantic destiny).

33 As Tạ Tỵ says, ‘Love for Phạm Duy was inspiration to create.’ See Phạm Duy, p. 141.

34 This is not to say that Phạm Duy's love partners did not profit emotionally, financially or professionally from their relationship to him. Phạm Duy demeans his love partners by describing them as sexual objects, not fully developed individuals, but he humanises them to a certain extent by suggesting that they also enjoyed these encounters, that they, too, were creatures with desires. Phạm Duy boasts that he launched the singing career of Thương Huyền, one of his love partners (II, vi, 26); and we know that Alice, his platonic lover, was inspired by her relationship with Phạm Duy to write 300 poems. In the Resistance and in wartime Saigon Phạm Duy was a well-known and influential individual, and no doubt many of his love partners, particularly the singers and dancers, believed their association with Phạm Duy could enhance their careers. One must be careful not to assume that Phạm Duy's love partners were helpless victims. Unfortunately, he tells us so little about them, and they have not written their own accounts, and so their motivations and personalities remain unclear.

35 The translator minimises Phạm Duy's achievement by using the English words ‘romance’ and ‘romantic’ to translate certain words and phrases that in the original Vietnamese do not connote ‘romance’ as English readers understand the word. Phạm Duy calls the women he slept with in dance and teahouses ‘người tình xác thịt’, or ‘love partners for sex’ (xác thịt means ‘body’ or ‘flesh’), but in the English translation these women become ‘partners in carnal romance’ (III, vii, 52). In English translation even Phạm Duy's affair with his brother-in-law's wife becomes romantic — a ‘romantic disaster’ and an ‘unseemly romance’ — though ‘ái tình’, the word Phạm Duy uses in these phrases, means ‘love’ not ‘romantic’. Phạm Duy, however, reserves the closest Vietnamese equivalent to the English word ‘romantic’ — lãng mạn — to refer to the literary movement spearheaded by Hoàng Ngọc Phách and the New Poets (see I, ix, 60; III, viii, 56). In Professor Henry's translation, descriptions of Ph?m Duy's sexual encounters as ‘romances’ or ‘romantic’ could lead English-language readers to underestimate his powers of artistic transformation — his ability to compose songs that are much more beautiful and romantic than his descriptions of these experiences in his memoirs.

36 ‘A passing wind on a summer's night’ [Gió thoảng đêm hè] is the third song. In this song a passing wind searching for happiness (niềm vui) and love (ân ái) swells up the breast of a young schoolgirl.

37 Văn Cao (1923–95) was a composer whose fame equalled and perhaps surpassed Phạm Duy's. ‘Thiên Thai’ [Fairyland], one of his most famous songs, is based on an ancient Chinese story about two men, Lưu Thân and Nguyễn Triệu (Liu Ch'en and Juan Chao), who travel to fairy grottos and fall in love with fairies.

38 Vũ Thành An's romantic (in the traditional ‘unfulfilled’ sense) songs were very popular in South Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s. He wrote a series of songs with titles like ‘No name song number two’ [Bài không tên số hai], ‘No name song number three’ [Bài không tên số ba], etc.

39 Trần Văn Ân, ‘Phạm Duy, nòi tình’, pp. 89, 92.

40 Ibid., pp. 90–1.

41 Blossoms of the flame tree (Royal Poinciana), called hoa phượng in Vietnamese.

42 Using Freudian terms one could say this relationship involved real repression and sublimation of desire and therefore Phạm Duy did not need to pretend to be unfulfilled; in other words, this truly was a hopeless love.

43 Tạ Tỵ, Phạm Duy, p. 227.

44 See, for example, Gammeltoft, Tine, ‘“Faithful, heroic, resourceful”: Changing images of women in Vietnam’, in Vietnamese society in transition, ed. Kleinen, John (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 2001), p. 274Google Scholar; and Schafer, John C., ‘Lê Vân and notions of Vietnamese womanhood’, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 5, 3 (2010): 129–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 And, according to a well-known expression, ‘When fighting comes to the home, women must fight’ (Giặc đến nhà đàn bà phải đánh).

46 This famous story, which scholars trace back to at least the 15th century, features a woman who, while waiting for her soldier husband to return from the war, told her small son that a shadow on the wall was his father. When her husband finally did return, his son refused to accept him, saying his father was the man who returned every evening. When the husband accused his wife of infidelity, she committed suicide by jumping into the Red River.

47 Phạm Duy explains that he and Thái Hằng had separate bedrooms because his loud snoring bothered her but nevertheless, he says, ‘another child would appear every one or two years’ (III, xiv, 107).

48 Phạm Duy had learned ‘Tilt’ as a student in the Latin Quarter in Paris, so, he says, he always won (III, xi, 81).

49 Duong, Wendy, ‘Gender equality and women's issues in Vietnam: The Vietnamese woman — warrior and poet’, Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal, 10 (2001): 14Google Scholar.

50 Dương Thúy, ‘NS Phạm Duy’.

51 Contemporaries of Phạm Duy also see his not abandoning his wife for his young lover as an act of sacrifice. See Trần Văn Ân, ‘Phạm Duy, nòi tình’, p. 89.

52 See Phạm Duy đã chết như thế nào [How did Phạm Duy die?] (Saigon: Văn Mới, 1971), p. 74Google Scholar.

53 See Binh, Ngo Thi Ngan, ‘The Confucian four feminine virtues (tứ đúc): The old versus the new — kế thừa versus phát huy’, in Gender practices in contemporary Vietnam, ed. Drummond, Lisa and Rydstrom, Helle (Singapore University Press, 2004), p. 52Google Scholar; and Pettus, Ashley, Between sacrifice and desire: National identity and the governing of femininity in Vietnam (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 43Google Scholar.

54 Pettus, Between sacrifice and desire, p. 112.

55 Ibid., p. 81.

56 He does admit to having smoked opium. See I, xxxvi, 195 and III, iv, 26.

57 See Nha Trang Công Huyền Tôn Nữ Thị [hereafter cited as Nha Trang], ‘The traditional roles of women as reflected in oral and written Vietnamese literature’ (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1973), pp. 29, 37.

58 See Jamieson, Neil L., ‘The traditional family in Vietnam’, Vietnam Forum, 9 (1986): 116Google Scholar; and Nha Trang, ‘The traditional roles of women’, p. 181.

59 Jamieson, ‘Traditional family in Vietnam’, p. 117.

60 For an account of a ‘classic polygynous, patrilineally extended family’, see Luong, Hy V., Revolution in the village: Tradition and transformation in North Vietnam, 1925–1988 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1992), throughout, but especially p. 71Google Scholar.

61 All three were famous and admired figures in colonial Vietnam. Nguyễn Văn Vĩnh was a well-known journalist. Trần Trọng Kim was a conservative historian whose arguments in support of preserving Confucianism sparked debate. He served briefly as prime minister in 1945 when the Japanese took control from the French colonial authorities. Bùi Kỷ was a scholar, poet and educator who after the August Revolution chaired the Cultural Association of the Resistance.

62 Wendy Duong, ‘Gender equality and women's issues’, p. 25.

63 Nha Trang, ‘Traditional roles of women’, p. 184.

64 I am indebted to Jason Gibbs for the term ‘marginalised’. He used it in an email message (25 May 2010) in describing Phạm Duy's love partners.

65 Cô kia cắt cỏ một mình,/Cho anh cắt với chung tình làm đôi. Quoted and trans. by Nha Trang, ‘Traditional roles of women’, p. 161.

66 Phạm Duy calls the reformed music (nhạc cải cách) or modern music (tân nhạc) that he popularised in the late 1930s and 1940s ‘new folk songs’ (dân ca mới) because they were inspired by ‘ancient folk songs’ (dân ca cổ), which in turn were sung versions of folk poetry (ca dao). See Duy, Phạm, Đường về dân ca [The road back to folk songs]Google Scholar. In his memoirs he says that his folk songs and his song cycles (trường ca) that he composed later were ‘nourished by my contact with folk music in those days when I lived in … Yên Thế’ (I, xvi, 121).

67 Dương Thúy, ‘NS Phạm Duy’.

68 Hải Triều, ‘Nghệ thuật vị nghệ thuật hay nghệ thuật vị nhân sinh’ [Art for art's sake or art for life's sake], Đời Mới [New Life] (24 Mar. 1935).

69 Tai, Hue-Tam Ho, ‘Literature for the people: From Soviet policies to Vietnamese polemics’, in Borrowings and adaptations in Vietnamese culture, ed. Lam, Truong Buu (Mānoa: Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, University of Hawai'i, 1987), pp. 52–83Google Scholar.

70 The writer Nguyễn Tuân, whom, as I will explain, Phạm Duy resembles in some respects, makes such a repudiation. See Nguyễn Tuân, ‘Nguyễn Tuân tự phê bình’ [Nguyễn Tuân's self-criticism], Văn Nghê [Literature and Art], 12 (May 1958). Excerpts are printed in Nhật, Kim, Những nhà văn tiền chiến [Hanoi pre-war writers today] (Saigon: Hoa Đăng, 1972), pp. 75–7Google Scholar.

71 Butler, Judith, Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 146–7Google Scholar.

72 Lê Hoàng Long reports that Nguyễn Văn Khánh and Châu Kỳ were heavy drinkers. See Chuyện tình các nhạc sĩ tiền chiến, pp. 50–1, 73.

73 Ibid., p. 66. This view of poetic inspiration was widely accepted. In his biography of Phạm Duy, Tạ Tỵ says, ‘Artists aren't gods: They need circumstances to inspire them. If [Phạm] Duy were only happy with the love of his kind wife and obedient children, it is certain that no matter how much outstanding talent God gave him he could never have created his series of love songs.’ These songs, Tạ Tỵ says, were inspired by Phạm Duy's tortuous relationship with Alice. See Phạm Duy còn đó nỗi buồn, pp. 217–18.

74 ‘Xây dựng’ is usually translated as to ‘construct’ or ‘build’ but ‘cultivates’ accurately captures the idea that obtaining complicated romances useful for composing purposes might require some conscious effort.

75 Trần Văn Ân, ‘Phạm Duy, nòi tình’, p. 90.

76 Phạm Duy's puts ‘internal’ (nội) and ‘external’ (ngoại) in shudder quotation marks because he intends a play on words. ‘Ngoại tình’, literally ‘outside love’, means adultery; ‘nội tình’, literally ‘inside love’, is not a common expression. More commonly, if a married man has a girlfriend or concubine, Vietnamese would refer to his wife as the ‘legal wife’ (vợ chính), the ‘official wife’ (vợ chính thức), or ‘first wife’ (vợ cả); they would refer to his girlfriend or concubine as the ‘second-rank wife’ (vợ lẽ) or ‘little wife’ (vợ bé).

77 Talking about bees and butterflies visiting flowers is a delicate and literary way to speak of sexual intercourse.

78 Vĩ, Hàn, ‘Nhạc Kháng chiến của Phạm Duy (1945–1951)’ [The Resistance songs of Phạm Duy (1945–1951], Văn Học [Literary Studies], 21 (1987): 107Google Scholar.

79 For examples, see I, xxviii, 208–9; II, xxiv, 97; III, ii, 15.

80 ‘Đường ta ta cứ đi: Nhớ bạn nhạc sĩ Phạm Duy’ [On our road we go: Remembering the musician Phạm Duy], in Văn xuôi Hoàng Cầm [The prose of Hoàng Cầm] (Hanoi: Văn Học, 1999), pp. 154–6; 161Google Scholar.

81 Henry, Eric, ‘Pham Duy and modern Vietnamese history’, Southeast Review of Asia Studies, 27 (2006): 90Google Scholar.

82 Tạ Tỵ, Phạm Duy: Còn đó nỗi buồn, p. 159.

83 Ibid., pp. 103–4.

84 Tốt đẹp phôi ra/Xấu xa đậy lại.

85 Gergen, Mary, ‘7 Life stories: Pieces of a dream’, in Storied lives, ed. Rosenwald, George C. and Ochberg, Richard L. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 138Google Scholar.

86 Sills' autobiography, Beverly, is one of the seven autobiographies discussed by Gergen.

87 Yeager, General Chuck and James, Leo, Yeager: An autobiography (New York: Bantam Books, 1985), p. 103Google Scholar.

88 Phan, Vũ Ngọc, Nhà văn hiện đại [Modern writers], vol. 3, 3rd edn (Saigon: Thăng Long, 1959), p. 490Google Scholar.

89 See, for instance, Duong Van Mai Eliot's description of her father's affair with an ả đào singer, who later became his ‘de facto secondary wife’, in The sacred willow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 219–20, 225Google Scholar.

90 Jason Gibbs, ‘Tradition and continuities in Vietnamese social music making’, talawas, http://www.talawas.org/talaDB/suche.php?res=2716&rb=0206 (last accessed 26 May 2010).

91 Kim N.B. Ninh describes an ‘intellectual discourse with religious overtones’ that prevailed in the 1950s. For writers like Nguyễn Tuân who wrote in the old society, ‘there was no escape from sin,’ she writes, ‘and salvation could only be achieved through the recognition of the party and the revolution’. See A world transformed (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), p. 116Google Scholar.

92 See Nhật, Kim, Những nhà văn tiền chiến Hànội hôm nay [Hanoi pre-war writers today] (Saigon: Hoa Đăng, 1972), pp. 61–2Google Scholar.

93 Tuân, Nguyễn, ‘Nguyễn Tuân tự phê bình’ [Nguyễn Tuân's self-criticism], Văn Nghê [Literature and Art], 12 (1958)Google Scholar. Excerpts are printed in Kim Nhật, Những nhà văn tiền chiến, pp. 75–7.

94 Thanh, Hoài and Chân, Hoài, Thi nhân Viêt Nam [Vietnamese poets] (Saigon: Hoa Tiên, 1968), pp. 53–4Google Scholar. This work, a well-known anthology with critical analysis, was originally published in Hanoi in 1942. See also Jamieson, Neil L., Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 185Google Scholar. I have used Jamieson's translation.

95 Kim N.B. Ninh, A world transformed, p. 33.

96 Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam, p. 169.

97 Ibid., p. 208.

98 Tô Hoài, a close friend of Nguyễn Tuân's, describes a visit he made with his friend to a songstress house in his memoir Cát bụi chân ai [Dust and sand at someone's feet] (Hanoi: Hội Nhà Văn, 2005), pp. 215–16Google Scholar.

99 In his Ten indecent songs [Mười bài tục ca], a collection of bawdy tales in verse, Phạm Duy portrays male–female relationships in an even cruder manner. Indecent song number one, entitled ‘Hát đối’ [Answering each other in song], ends with this exchange between a man and woman: ‘[He]: I'm like a stud in heat that runs about,/And you're a yowling female cat, its rear-end raised. [She]: Don't speak such idle nonsense;/Your mother once … was just as much a yowler!’ (III, xix, 150). Phạm Duy's father, Phạm Duy Tốn, writing under the pseudonym Thọ An, compiled a collection of ribald stories in the early 1920s, proof that learned Vietnamese gentlemen enjoyed dirty jokes. Phạm Duy wrote these songs from 1968 to 1970 because, he says, he was angry about the never-ending war and corruption (III, xix, 149–55).

100 Nguyễn Trọng Văn, Phạm Duy đã chết như thế nào, p. 60.

101 For example, the ‘Mother of Gio Linh’ [Bà mẹ Gio Linh] and ‘When will you take the French outpost’ [Bao giờ anh lấy được đồn Tây], both written in 1948, had to be edited (and the second retitled) because both contained the word ‘Tây’ (Western, Westerner). Although ‘Tây’ usually referred to the French it could be understood to refer also to the South's American allies. Therefore a line like the following from ‘Mother of Gio Linh’ had to be changed from ‘The mother is glad her son kills many Westerners [Tây]’ to the less specific ‘The mother is glad her son is a good fighter’. In regard to the second song, now known as ‘Poor village’ [Quê nghèo], on his website Phạm Duy says: ‘When I came to Saigon, I had to change the verses in order to have the song circulated.’ See ‘Modern folk songs, part 2: Suffering’, http://phamduy.com/document/danca22.html (last accessed 5 May 2010). See also his memoirs, II, xxix, 126–7.

102 Nguyễn Trọng Văn, whom Phạm Duy describes as a ‘Marxist educator’ (III, xxxvi, 222), lives in Ho Chi Minh City. He was a professor at the University for Social Science and Humanities but has been retired for several years.

103 See Nguyễn Lưu, ‘Không thể tung hô’; and Khánh Thy, ‘Nhạc Phạm Duy và những điều cần phải nói’.

104 ‘Văn bản của Công ty Phương Nam’ [Letter of the Phương Nam Company], available on vietbao website, http://vietbao.vn/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45188072&pop=1&page=0 (last accessed 25 Mar. 2010).

105 Phạm Quang Tuấn notes that the online journal Đầu tư [Investment] abruptly put an end to online debate about Phạm Duy on their website. ‘Có nên cho tranh luận về Phạm Duy không?’ [Should we have a discussion about Phạm Duy?], http://www.tuanpham.org/PDtranhluan.htm (last accessed 25 Mar. 2010). This article originally appeared on the website talawas (http://www.talawas.org) on 28 Mar. 2006.

106 Ibid.

107 Jason Gibbs, ‘Shocking music: Popular song and Vietnam's generation gap’, unpublished manuscript.

108 ‘Dự thảo quy chế băng đĩa mới: ca từ “gây sốc” đã nằm trong khung “cấm”’ [Draft regulations for new recordings: ‘Shocking’ lyrics lie within the ‘prohibition’ framework], Sânkhấu, http://sankhauvietnamcom.vn/printContent.aspx?ID=1762 (last accessed 1 Feb. 2011).

109 Duy, Phạm, Phạm Duy nhớ [Phạm Duy remembers] (Ho Chi Minh City: Nhà Xuất Bản Trẻ and Công Ty Văn Hóa Phương Nam, 2005)Google Scholar.

110 Henry, ‘Phạm Duy and modern Vietnamese history’, p. 102.

111 See vol. I, i, 84–5.

112 Henry, ‘Pham Duy and modern Vietnamese history’, pp. 90, 102.

113 Phạm Duy admits that ‘the song created an anti-war atmosphere’ (III, xxii, 174).

114 Đặng Tiến quotes the opening line from the second song in Phạm Duy's collection Ten songs of the heart [Mười bài tâm ca], a song called ‘A loud singing voice’ [Tiếng hát to]. See ‘Trịnh Công Sơn: đời và nhạc’ [Trịnh Công Sơn: Life and music], Văn học [Literary Studies], 53–4 (2001), p. 186Google Scholar.

115 Nguyễn Văn Lục ‘Phạm Duy còn đó hay đã chết?—phần 2’ [Is Phạm Duy still there or has he died? — Pt 2], http://tranquanghai.info/index.php?p=104 (last accessed 14 Oct. 2008).

116 Von Drehle, David, ‘More than myth’, Time (7 Sept. 2009), p. 7Google Scholar.

117 Thu-hương, Nguyên-võ, The ironies of freedom: Sex, culture, and neoliberal governance in Vietnam (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008)Google Scholar, throughout, but especially chapters 1 and 8.