Vietnam musician Trinh Cong Son dies

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The Vietnam News

Vietnam musician Trinh Cong Son dies

HANOI - Vietnam's most beloved singer-songwriter, Trinh Cong Son, who opposed the Vietnam War and sought postwar reconciliation, has died after a long battle with diabetes, an official said Monday. He was 62. Dubbed the ``Bob Dylan of Vietnam'' by American folk singer Joan Baez for his anti-war songs during the height of the Vietnam War, his music is still widely performed in Vietnam and in overseas Vietnamese communities. Son, who was persecuted by the South Vietnamese government in the late 60s and early 70s, wrote more than 600 songs over his career.

``His death is a great loss for Vietnamese music,'' said Ca Le Thuan, secretary general of Ho Chi Minh City's Musician Association. His pacifist songs about the futility of war were banned at the time, but bootleg copies made their way throughout South Vietnam and overseas. One of his most famous songs, ``Lullaby'' (Ngu Di Con), about the pain of a mother mourning her soldier son, became a hit in Japan in 1972. When the war ended, most of Son's family fled overseas, but he decided to stay. He was equally unpopular with the new Communist government for his songs about reconciliation and spent 10 years in forced labor ``re-education camps'' as a result. But by the late 80s, his popularity returned, and his songs are still performed by some of Vietnam's biggest pop artists, including singer Hong Nhung.

Born in the Central Highland province of Daklak in 1939, Son spent many years in the ancient imperial capital of Hue. Trained as a teacher, Son quit his job to begin composing love songs in the late 1950s. Son, who was admitted to Cho Ray hospital last week, slipped into a coma on Saturday and died Sunday, Thuan said. He is to be buried Wednesday in the province of Binh Duong.

The Associated Press - April 2, 2001.

Vietnam's Bob Dylan dies at age of 62

HANOI - Trinh Cong Son, the man whose voice the powers on both sides of the Vietnam War tried and failed to silence, has died at the age of 62. The singer-songwriter, whose wartime songs earned him the name of the Bob Dylan of Vietnam but the wrath of both the pro-US Saigon regime and the victorious communists, died in the Cho Ray hospital in Ho Chi Minh City Sunday, his brother Trinh Quang Ha told AFP.

He had been taken to the hospital a week earlier after suffering liver and lung complications from his long-running diabetes and collapsing in his home, Ha said. His funeral is to be held in the commercial capital Wednesday. More than 200 delegations numbering thousands of people have already indicated they wish to pay their last respects, Ho Chi Minh City Musicians Association deputy general seceretary Tran Long An told AFP.

Son's failing health had already landed him in hospital several times in recent years. A legendary drinker and smoker, he told AFP last year that he had given up his five-pack a day cigarette habit, but not the whisky. A survivor of four years in a reeducation camp on the Lao border in the years after the communists' victory, Son had been left alone by the authorities in recent years. Government surveillance "stopped a long time ago," although "they always seem to know what you are doing," he told AFP. But he is to be denied the accolade of a burial in the city's Martyrs' Cemetery normally accorded to the singers and composers of the regime. Instead he will be interred at the Go Dura graveyard in Binh Duong province north of the city.

His death was reported in two of Vietnam's mass-circulation dailies, although not in any of the main official newspapers. "Crying for Trinh Cong Son," said the headline over a tribute penned by his longtime friend, Buu Y, in the youth daily Thanh Nien, which gave over a full page to reports of his death.

Agence France Presse - April 2, 2001.