NGÔ THẾ VINH
“The history of my efforts to publish The Memoirs of Phạm Duy, like the history of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union – is an extremely long and extremely complicated history. Where should I start to tell it clearly?” [quoted from Dr. Eric Henry's email, sent to Ngô Thế Vinh on May 4, 2022]
Figure 1: Phạm Duy’s 4-volume Memoirs, with the first 3 volumes published by Phạm Duy Cường, from left, Volume I: Childhood – Coming of Age (1990), Volume II: Revolutionary – Resistance Period (1989), Volume III: National-Communist Division Period (1991); Volume IV: Migration to America: not yet printed, only distributed via PDF. Cover photo by Trần Đình Thục. [Nguyễn Công Thuần, personal archives]
THE BEGINNING OF ERIC HENRY AND ME
The first time I met Dr. Eric Henry, 7 years ago (2017), I was surprised to learn that Eric - a Vietnamveteran of the US in the Vietnam War, did not seem much like a military man. Entering his 20s, when the draft was due, Eric made a simple decision: to join the army to fulfill his duty as a citizen, then return to school. Even during his military service, Eric was still very fond of reading, and had acquired some knowledge of Eastern cultures, especially Vietnam and China. Eric had a gift for languages, speaking Vietnamese quite fluently and delicately.
Figure 2: left, VietnamVeteran Eric Henry, 27 years old, after completing a 12-month intensive Vietnamese language course at the Defense Language Institute, Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas. Eric was sent to Vietnam to serve in the military intelligence of the 25th Infantry Division stationed in Củ Chi. Photo taken in 1970, Eric said: "At that time, I could speak Vietnamese but had not yet started learning Chinese"; right, Dr. Eric Henry, Translator of Phạm Duy's Memoirs, photo taken from Jacket of Garden of Eloquence / Thuyết Uyển, by Lưu Hương, translated and introduced by Eric Henry, published by University of Washington Press 2021. [photo by Nguyễn Phong Quang]
Since 2000, Eric has been constantly researching Vietnamese music. Eric said that he has loved Pham Duy's music for a long time. Around 2002, while visiting a Vietnamese bookstore, Nhà sách Thế Hệ / The Generation Bookstore in Falls Church, Virginia, Eric saw, bought, and brought home Phạm Duy's Memoir I, and immediately saw that this was a work of supreme value for anyone who wanted to understand more about Vietnam in the past two centuries, through the years of war and peace. He then enjoyed reading the entire 4-volume Memoir by Phạm Duy and painstakingly translated the book in over a year. That translation was accepted for publication by Cornell University Press* in 2009, four years before Pham Duy's death, but until now, 15 years later (2009-2024), the book is still in manuscript form.
* It is also worth mentioning that Cornell University with its Southeast Asia Library is the place that most fully preserves the 20-year legacy of Southern Literature from 1954-1975, and even though the "letter fire" of the Vietnamese Communists wanted to destroy that culture, the fire could not spread here.
Figure 3: 42 years after the Vietnam War, I had the opportunity to meet Vietnamveteran Eric Henry, now a scholar, in Huntington Beach, California, for the first time during Eric's trip to meet the children of Pham Duy's family – to discuss a contract with Cornell University Press to publish the book series The Memoirs of Phạm Duy, a project that Phạm Duy had longed for when he was alive but had not been able to realize prior to his death. (January 27, 2013). [photo by Phạm Lệ Hương]
ERIC HENRY FIVE YEARS LATER
Recently in 2022, when I went to the Cornell University Press directory to buy the English version of Phạm Duy's Memoirs to give to an American friend who is very interested in Vietnamese culture, but could not find it, I contacted Eric and learned that the book had not been published yet, the reason being that after Phạm Duy died, there was no will specifying the inheritance rights for any particular child, so until now, because there was no consensus from all 7 children in the Phạm Duy family, Cornell University Press has not been able to publish The Memoirs of Phạm Duy.
And then there was a series of emails exchanged with Eric Henry showing Eric's arduous steps with the Phạm Duy Memoirs, and I promised Eric that I would do everything I could within my ability so that The Memoirs of Phạm Duy could be released soon.
The army veteran, Dr. Eric Henry, who is fluent in Vietnamese, after reading Phạm Duy's monumental Memoirs, commented that this is a literary work, not only fascinating, but also helpful for researchers wishing to learn about Vietnamese society in times of war and peace. His respect for Phạm Duy's musical legacy was such that Dr. Henry completed the English translation of the 4-volume Memoirs in just over a year, but then it took 4 years to find a publisher: Cornell University Press to accept the manuscript. This is also what the songwriter Phạm Duy had longed for when he was alive. But after Pham Duy passed away, due to the lack of consensus among Pham Duy's children, The Memoirs of Phạm Duy has not been allowed to be published until 2024.
Pham Duy's 4-volume memoirs with more than 1,500 pages are written throughout in a simple and straightforward style. In them Phạm Duy quite honestly records the heroic and turbulent stages of his life and also of the country over two centuries. A positive point is that throughout these four volumes, Phạm Duy defames no one, nor does he hide even the most private details. Not only is he a musician with great talent - some people call him a genius - but in his memoirs, Phạm Duy shows that he is also a writer, producing pages full of vitality and emotion, that are very attractive and touching. And his A Thousand Songs, shows that Phạm Duy is also a poet.
Figure 4: Phạm Duy and Dr. Eric Henry, translator of Phạm Duy's Memoirs, met again in a coffee shop in Saigon on July 30, 2009. The photos, along with humorous notes from photographer Nguyễn Phong Quang, Eric's friend, are arranged clockwise, from top left: (a) telling each other stories, top right: (b) arguing, bottom right: (c) it was not easy to convince each other, bottom left: (d) we finally reached agreement. [photo & notes by Nguyễn Phong Quang, documents sent by Eric Henry to Ngô Thế Vinh]
Figure 5: Phạm Duy is showing off to two Phố BolsaTV reporters the English translation of the 4-volume Phạm Duy Memoirs by Dr. Eric Henry. According to translator Eric Henry, after Pham Duy passed away, because he did not have the consent of all of Pham Duy's children, The Memoirs of Phạm Duy has not been allowed to be published yet. [documents from BolsaTV 26.01.2012]
How did Eric Henry meet musician Phạm Duy?
Eric Henry said: “In the late summer of 2003, when I was visiting Little Saigon, I met journalist Dỗ Ngọc Yến, editor of Người Việt newspaper, who helped me get acquainted with Phạm Duy's family. At that time, Phạm Duy was visiting Vietnam (2003) and had not returned yet, so I did not have the opportunity to meet him, but I got to know Phạm Duy Hùng, the musician's third son. When we met at his father's house in Midway City, we talked for 2 hours about his father's music, and at that time I also learned that Duy Hùng was a very good guitarist. He invited me to give him the title of any Beatles song, and he guaranteed that he could play it on guitar. So I gave him the title of John Lennon's "Across the Universe", and Hùng, without any hesitation, played and sang the song to me in its entirety – not a single note was played wrong.
Five months later, in January 2004, when I went to California again, I met Phạm Duy for the first time. Two months later, I met him again, and after two months, I proposed to him (by a letter sent by post office) that I translate Phạm Duy's Memoirs into English.
The letter was as follows:
Letter to Musician Phạm Duy:
Enclosed are the first three chapters of Memoirs translated by me into English – please take a look. I find that your four volumes of Memoirs are a work of supreme value to anyone who wants to understand more about Vietnam in the last century.
If you find my translation of these chapters acceptable, I will continue to work on it, and will look for a publisher to print it later – I feel that your approval will help me talk to publishers – but if you do not want me to do this work – perhaps you already have a translator, for example – then I will stop immediately.
I find translating your writing very enjoyable and not too difficult – if I spend an hour every evening on this work, I can finish a chapter within 3 to 5 days, and when I encounter a difficult part, I can consult with some people here. By the way, I would like to inform you that this summer I will be in Vietnam with 10 students from June 13 to August 12 – the location is "Phạm Ngọc Thạch Guest House," Saigon – and then I will be in Orange County from August 12 to 17. I hope the composition of the Ten Homeland Frangance Songs (Mười Bài Hương Ca) is progressing well and smoothly. The echoes of those songs are still in my ears.
PHẠM DUY: BECAUSE I AM TARZAN
Every time I / Eric Henry emailed Phạm Duy to ask a few questions about the Memoirs, he always sent a very quick response – sometimes within an hour or two. I sent him some questions one time, he says, in that email said I knew he was very busy organizing a show – so I thought he need’nt respond quickly – I could wait, that was fine. After an hour or two, I got a reply from him. In it he said, "As you said, I'm very busy right now, but I can still respond quickly, because I'm... Tarzan!" Then in another email he said, "See? Tarzan still swings in the jungle!"
PHẠM DUY: LET ME JUMP IN AFTER YOU
When I first got to know Phạm Duy, I – Eric Henry promised him that I would do two things: the first promise was that I would complete the translation of his four Memoirs, the second promise was that I would find a publisher for that work in America.
A year later I finished the translation, and four years later I found a publisher, Southeast Asian Publications of Cornell University – later Cornell University Press. Then I returned to Vietnam to do a set of annotations with more than 1,500 footnotes on the characters and places in the Memoirs and to sign a contract with Phạm Duy and Cornell University.
As he was about to sign the contract, Phạm Duy suddenly remembered that he had another contract with Phương Nam Cultural Company that he had signed a few years before, stating that Phương Nam had the absolute right to promote and profit in Phạm Duy's works – but the Memoir was a literary work not a song, so he could probably sign a contract with Cornell University without any problem.
But when he consulted Phương Nam about this, he discovered that the term "work" included not only musical works but also literary works. So he had no right to sign a contract with Cornell.
This made me – Eric Henry – very disappointed, and I wrote to Phạm Duy, half-jokingly saying that if there was no way to publish the English version of the Memoir, I would have no choice but to jump into the river and commit suicide. [Sic]
In Phạm Duy’s reply, he said that I should not worry too much about this. Surely in the future there would be a way to publish the Memoirs in English. And he suggested to me a few plans to achieve that goal.
And finally Phạm Duy had a postscript like this: “When you decide to jump into the river, please let me know – so I can jump in after you!” That also showed the sense of humor and the always optimistic attitude of the songwriter Phạm Duy.
Since 2000 I have been constantly researching Vietnamese music in every way. And in recent years I have also tried to understand a little about the singing culture of Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Around 2002, while visiting a Vietnamese bookstore – The Generation Bookstore (nhà sách Thế Hệ) in Falls Church, Virginia, I saw, bought, and brought home Book I of Phạm Duy's Memoirs, and immediately saw that this was a work of supreme value to anyone who wanted to understand more about Vietnam in the past century…
ERIC HENRY AND THE MEMOIRS OF PHẠM DUY
And then the following emails exchanged between Eric and I were all related to the bumpy journey of the English book series The Memoirs of Phạm Duy which has not been able to be published to this day.
Email 1: Dear Doctor Ngo The Vinh, [May 4, 2022]
Thank you very much for your interest in publishing the translated Memoirs of Phạm Duy. The history of my efforts and those of my “allies” to publish this book is like the history of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union — an extremely long and extremely complicated history. Where to start in order to tell it clearly?
Once, Phạm Duy and I were about to sign a contract with Cornell S.E. Asia Publications in 2009 to publish this book — but a Vietnamese company called Phương Nam did not allow it — because Phạm Duy had signed a contract with Phương Nam a few years earlier and given that company exclusive rights to publish and distribute all of Phạm Duy’s creations, including those in the literary field (such as Memoirs, for example).
Later, in 2012, a few months before his death, Phạm Duy made a change to this contract, saying that this exclusive right of Phương Nam would only be effective in Vietnam, not in other countries. This measure solved the problem with Phương Nam, but did not resolve the issue with Phạm Duy's children – especially Duy Đức, Phạm Duy's youngest son. Sorry, I have to stop writing for a while, and I will explain more tomorrow afternoon. Best regards, Eric
Email 2: Dear Vinh, [ May 5, 2022 ]
Besides Duy Đức, another person involved in this matter is Tina Phạm, the Phạm Duy family's lawyer – I have corresponded with Tina since 2009. Duy Đức always follows Tina's advice. According to Tina, Duy Dức should demand that Cornell Publishing guarantee that they will "indemnify" (compensate) the Phạm Duy family if they are sued by Phương Nam Company. But Sarah Grossman, Cornell's editor-in-chief, told me that Cornell could not issue a document guaranteeing indemnification. Ms. Sarah Grossman issued another document for me stating that Cornell Publishing House would absolutely not attempt to sell this work in Vietnam. But Tina and Duy Đức were not satisfied with Cornell's official promise.
Eric Henry then contacted the Board of Directors of Phương Nam Company, which now had a new director and deputy director. Eric Henry received a reply letter from Trịnh Hải Phương, deputy director of Phương Nam.
Dear Mr. Eric Henry,
I am Trinh Hai Phuong, deputy director of Phương Nam Books Company Limited, and have received a letter from Mr. Eric Henry requesting permission to publish the English version of "Memoirs of musician Phạm Duy" in the US. After we checked the content of the exclusive contract for exploiting the works of musician Phạm Duy, we realized that Phương Nam Company only has the exclusive right to exploit within the territory of Vietnam. Therefore, Phương Nam Company does not hold the right to exploit the works of musician Phạm Duy outside of Vietnam. Regarding your request, it is up to the family of musician Pham Duy, the heirs. Therefore, you can contact the family of musician Phạm Duy to discuss the matter.
Sincerely, Trịnh Hải Phương
Having received this letter, I send a reply as follows:
Dear Mr. Trịnh Hải Phương,
Thank you very much for your reply. Your letter is very clear and very helpful. I will let Cornell Publishing House and the family of musician Phạm Duy know about this letter immediately. I think everyone will feel more secure; (and in the translation of the Memoirs, I will talk about the important role of Phương Nam Company in the repatriation of musician Phạm Duy. I think that if Phương Nam had not existed at that time, the repatriation would have been impossible.) Once again, I would like to thank you and my colleagues with all my heart.
I wish you all the best, Eric Henry
And Mr. Phương responded as follows:
Dear Mr. Henry,
Thank you for your reply, Phuong Nam Company only contributed a small part in popularizing the artistic values of musician Pham Duy to the Vietnamese people.
Phuong Nam personally also appreciates the work you have done for musician Pham Duy and hopes that the memoir will be published soon.
Sincerely, Trịnh Hải Phương
“Thus”, wrote Dr. Henry, Phương Nam Company not only does not object to this, but also hopes that The Memoirs of Pham Duy will be published soon.
Email 3: Dear Mr. Vinh, [ May 7, 2022 ]
Thank you for sending me the 1996 greeting card, and the 1995 letter, both of which bear the late musician's handwriting. I will continue to provide details about the attempt to publish The Memoirs of Phạm Duy. Sincerely, Eric
…
Thank you for contacting Duy Minh, Duy Cuong and Duy Duc. I see that Duy Cuong, like me, would love to see Cornell publish The Memoirs. Sincerely, Eric
Email 4: Dear Vinh, [May 10, 2022]
Tomorrow, I will write a little more about the publication of “The Memoirs”. Oh, I almost forgot: the 3 contracts that I sent you were not “classified” at all. You can quote any sentence you want! I wish you comfort and peace of mind.
Figure 6: Photo taken in August 2006 at Phạm Duy’s house in Lê Đại Hành apartment building, from left, Eric Henry, translator of Phạm Duy’s Memoirs, musician Phạm Duy was 85 years old at that time, Harry Diakoff was Eric’s best friend, also a big fan of Phạm Duy’s music. Harry Diakoff filmed two girlfriends using dance to interpret two of Pham Duy’s songs: Ngày Trở Về, and Ru Con, when he saw that film, Phạm Duy was very interested. [documents and notes by Eric Henry]
Figure 7: Eric Henry came to burn incense on the unbuilt grave of musician Phạm Duy. Eric Henry wrote: This photo was taken on November 13, 2013. That day, I went with Nguyễn Phong Quang, Duy Cường, and a girlfriend of Duy Cường from Saigon to Bình Dương province cemetery to visit Phạm Duy's grave. The grave was not yet completed, and there was no statue of Phạm Duy. [Photo by Nguyễn Phong Quang]
THREE LETTERS FROM NGO THE VINH TO THE CHILDREN OF PHẠM DUY
By phone, I contacted Phạm Duy Minh, the second son of musician Phạm Duy, who was living in his father's house in Midway City. I told Duy Minh about the great significance of the English Memoirs for Phạm Duy's father's career when it was accepted for publication by the University Press of a prestigious University, Cornell. This was also something that Phạm Duy had wished for when he was alive.
But then through Duy Minh – now the eldest son in the family after Duy Quang passed away, I learned that all seven siblings have the same inheritance rights, if there is no absolute consensus 7/7, there cannot be a contract with Cornell University. And then Duy Minh gave the email addresses of three people: Duy Minh, Duy Cường and Duy Đức so that I can exchange messages with them.
Although I am very busy, but because of my appreciation for the musical / cultural career of musician Phạm Duy, I did not hesitate to share my heartfelt thoughts with Duy Minh, Duy Cường, Duy Đức and the Brothers in the Phạm Duy family, with the sole purpose of overcoming all current obstacles so that The Memoirs of Phạm Duy could be published soon.
And here is a brief summary of the three open letters, in which I address the children of musician Phạm Duy as Anh / Elder Brother, because they are all younger.
I mentioned that in the last years of his life, Phạm Duy's father was very interested and had high expectations for the English version of the Memoirs if it were published in the US. In 2012, a year before Phạm Duy passed away, in an interview, he proudly mentioned the book The Memoirs of Phạm Duy. Until now, 2022, 10 years have passed, the English version is still at Cornell University as a manuscript. And the translator of that book is Dr. Eric Henry, whom you have also met. He is 79 years old this year. At such an advanced age, if any health problems suddenly occur to him, all the efforts of Dr. Eric Henry and Phạm Duy's father will be at risk of being forgotten! It would be a pity!
I also mentioned that Duy Minh and his brothers might be afraid of violating the Contract with Phương Nam Cultural Company, but that could not happen – because before Phạm Duy's father passed away, the contract with Phương Nam clearly stated that it was only valid within the territory of Vietnam!
And so, the final decision for The Memoirs of Phạm Duy to be published by Cornell University Press is with the 7 siblings – the children who inherit Phạm Duy's legacy.
I suggested that Duy Minh, Duy Cường, Duy Đức and all the siblings in the family should discuss together to make a right decision for the long-term career of musician Phạm Duy. Because biological time is not endless. I also reminded Duy Minh, Duy Cường, and Duy Đức and the brothers in the family of musician Phạm Duy of another document from Cornell University prepared by Sarah Grossman guaranteeing that Cornell University Press will absolutely not sell The Memoirs of Phạm Duy in Vietnam."
Although from the beginning, Musician Phạm Duy agreed to work together with Dr. Eric Henry to create the monumental English book series The Memoirs of Phạm Duy, now that Phạm Duy's father has passed away, Cornell University Press still needs a permission letter from the children who inherit Phạm Duy's legacy. I have also attached a draft of that permission letter to this third email. This is a simple but important procedure for Cornell University to start printing The Memoirs of Phạm Duy.
“And then I mentioned that January 27, 2023 will be the 10th Anniversary of musician Phạm Duy's death. That upcoming Anniversary would have much more meaning if on the altar of Phạm Duy's father, instead of just flowers, incense, and candles, there will be a set of books called The Memoirs of Phạm Duy, which Anh Vinh knows for sure that musician Phạm Duy really wanted during his lifetime!”
A book published by a prestigious University like Cornell will be stored in major libraries around the world, so that research can be opened up, this is not only the pride of Phạm Duy's father but also the pride of the 2nd and 3rd generations of musician Phạm Duy's family. Let's not let this big project "fall apart halfway" so that later there will only be regrets!
...
At all costs, Duy Minh Duy Cường Duy Đức and all the brothers and sisters need to make an effort to cause and Sisters the dream of Phạm Duy's father to become a reality, so that Duy Minh Duy Cường Duy Đức and othe Brothers will not have to say "sorry"... Last but not least, Think Big, Brothers!
...
I sent all these emails to Eric to read, in a third email that was not shortened, there was this additional paragraph:
...
In the 1970s, when Anh Vinh attended an Asian Student Conference in Japan, I saw billboards advertising the movie "Love Story" modeled after the novel of the same name by Erich Segal, the catchphrase was: "Love means never having to say you're sorry / Yêu là không bao trong phải nói câu là anh rất tiếc". At that time, Vinh thought of the love of his children for Phạm Duy's father. By At all costs, Duy Minh and the Brothers need to facilitate the dream of Phạm Duy's father to become a reality, so that Duy Minh and the Brothers will not have to say "sorry".
Those are the heartfelt things that Anh Vinh wants to share with Duy Minh, Duy Cường, Duy Đức and the Brothers.
...
Eric Henry wrote:
Dear Vinh, Actually, I really like the draft email [3] that you sent me yesterday — while reading it, I found that its writing style was so eloquent that it "moved the heavens and the earth", with enough power to make gods and demons shed tears, however, if you think the latest draft will be more effective, then I will also comply. I trust your judgment.
These three heartfelt letters sent and received, but in the end, there was still silence from the children of Musician Phạm Duy.
I don't know what tomorrow will bring to that Memoir: Que Sera, Sera... And then, in trust, Eric Henry later also sent me a copy of the manuscript of The Memoirs of Pham Duy as "This little note is for your reference / Của tin gọi một chút này làm ghi." [Nguyễn Du]
A LITTLE PRIVACY
Eric Henry gave me the massive book “"Garden of Eloquence / Thuyet Uyen, by Luu Huong”, translated and introduced by Eric Henry. As a return gift, I sent Eric the book series Portraits of Literature, Art and Culture I & II via Amazon. Just 3 days later, I received a reply email from Eric:
“Hooray! Amazon is on time! I just received Portraits of Literature, Art and Culture, Volumes 1 and 2. While reading Volume 2, I was pleased and especially interested to see that you paid attention to the visual arts in the articles about painter Tạ Tỵ and the two sculptors Lê Ngọc Huệ and Mai Chửng. I also wanted to see what you wrote about John Steinbeck. For many years I have been passionate about the beautiful language created by Steinbeck in his (almost first) novel: Tortilla Flat. With two of your books, I now have the opportunity to be educated about many aspects of Vietnamese culture. This is a great joy!”
Then came the next email:
“Like you, I have been fortunate over the years to become quite close to many “uncommon people -- still Eric’s words”. Unfortunately, they are gradually becoming “people of the eternel past”. I should imitate you and try to write “portraist” to honor them.”
And unexpectedly, from here a new relationship blossomed between the two of us, with a new project: Dr. Eric Henry planned to translate into English more than a thousand pages of my two volumes of Portraits of Literature, Art and Culture. I also understood very well that Eric was also busy with many other unfinished works of his.
Not long after that, I received the first translated chapter of the book Portrait of Mặc Đỗ of the planned English book series titled: Creative World of the South Vietnam 1954 - 1975. And then continuously after that, every two weeks or ten days, I received a translation of a new Portrait. And today is Dương Nghiễm Mậu: “Forty Years of Dương Nghiễm Mậu And the “Autobiography of Nguyễn Du” is also the sixth Portrait that Eric has just finished translating, along with a letter from translator Eric Henry, which I would like to share with readers, instead of a conclusion of this article.
Dear Vinh, You are truly “a journalist of journalists – Eric used the phrase in the article about Portrait of Nhu Phong”. For you, this world has no way to keep any secret – I am afraid that soon your understanding of Eric Henry’s past will surpass Eric Henry himself!
I am now thinking of a letter describing your works to a publisher. “Chân Dung volume 1” I tentatively called: "The Creative World of South Vietnam, vol. 1: Eighteen Literary, Artistic, and Cultural Portraits”. I made a list for publishers to easily see what the content was like (and will make a similar list for volume 2): I started thinking about contacting publishers. Eric
…
To complete the translation of more than a thousand pages of the book, and then find a mainstream American publisher like University Press, was still a long and arduous journey, as in a poem by Tản Đà: Two shoulders carry the burden of the long road, and then we wish each other, to keep our feet strong and the rocks soft.
Also during this time, I completed two more portraits: one of musician Phạm Duy, one of veteran Dr. Eric Henry. As for the article “Love of the Homeland in Phạm Duy’s Music and Portraits”, perhaps because of his love for Phạm Duy, Eric was most satisfied. Eric wrote: “I think that your portraits, the portraits of Phạm Duy, are probably the most wonderful in terms of content and quality, and the key part of the whole article is this passage: A Phạm Duy who has lived through two centuries, he carries all the weight of the tragedy of a country with four thousand years of ups and downs – the whole tragedy of a Vietnamese person, both great and small, both beautiful and ugly.” [quoted from an email on October 6, 2024]
And both of us never forget, how to at all costs publish the book series The Memoirs of Phạm Duy as soon as possible, one of the dreams of musician Phạm Duy that is still unfinished.
A HAPPY ENDING 20 YEARS AFTER
On October 25, 2024, I unexpectedly received a very short email from Eric:
“I would like to share with Anh Vinh the good news about Phạm Duy’s Memoirs: The translator (me), Phạm Duy Đức, and Cornell have established a contract signed by all three parties. I see that one of the factors that led to this result is Anh Vinh’s efforts two years ago on this matter”. [excerpt from Dr. Eric Henry’s email, sent to Ngo The Vinh on October 13, 2024]
Page 1 of 4
MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT
THIS AGREEMENT is made the 20th day of September 2024
between Eric Henry, whose permanent home address is now
106 Jones Street
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
(hereinafter “the Translator”),
and
the Estate of Pham Duy,
as represented by Duc Pham, whose permanent home address is now
8821 Mac Alpine Road
Garden Grove, CA 92841
(hereinafter “the Estate”),
and Cornell University Press, a division of Cornell University, an educational
corporation, organized and maintained under and by virtue of the Laws of
the State of New York, with offices located at
512 E. State Street
Ithaca, NY 14850 (hereinafter “the Publisher”),
regarding The Memoirs of Pham Duy in four volumes (the “Work”) to be translated from the Vietnamese language into the English language (hereinafter “the Translation”).
1. ESTATE'S GRANT
A. The Estate hereby grants to the Translator the right to translate the Work into English and to prepare the Translation for publication, including the preparation of any critical materials, including but not limited to an introduction and annotations, in accordance with the guidelines established by the Publisher.
B. The Estate shall have the right to review and approve the Translation prior to publication. In the interest of assuring prompt publication of the Translation, the Estate agrees to convey to the Publisher its approval or corrections within twenty business days of its receipt of the Translation and further agrees that the Publisher shall have the right to reject any alterations, other than corrections of typographical or factual errors.
C. The Estate grants to the Publisher an exclusive license to publish and sell each volume of the Translation throughout the world, except in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam or to organizations, institutions, or firms that do business online with a .vn domain name, and to register copyright of the Translation in the name of Cornell University.
Figure 8: 4-page Contract between Pham Duy Duc the Estate, Cornell University Press Director Jane Bunker, and Translator Dr. Eric Henry signed a contract on September 20, 2024, agreeing for Cornell University Press to publish the English translation of The Memoirs of Phạm Duy. [Document Dr. Eric Henry sent to Ngo The Vinh].
D. The Estate guarantees that it is the sole owner of said Work and has full power and authority to make this agreement.
E. The Estate guarantees that said Work does not infringe any copyright nor violate any property rights, nor invade the privacy of any person, nor contain any scandalous or libelous matter; and that the Estate will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless said Publisher against all claims, demands, suits, losses, damages, costs, and expenses that the Publisher may sustain or incur should any court of competent jurisdiction rule to the contrary in any respect.
2. TRANSLATOR’S GRANT
A. The Translator will faithfully and accurately render the original Vietnamese language volumes of the Work into the English language, and will provide critical materials in the English language,
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including but not limited to an introduction and annotations, if deemed necessary by the Publisher. It is understood that the Estate’s guarantee in §1D above does not extend to said critical materials.
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Eric Henry
THE TRANSLATOR
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION TO THE MEMOIRS OF PHẠM DUY
Phạm Duy: The Man, the Musician, and the Memoirist
Basic Biographical Data
Phạm Duy (1921 – 2013; real name Phạm Duy Cẩn) is both Vietnam’s most prolific song-writer and one of the most discussed public figures in Vietnam’s recent history. Born in Hanoi, by Sword Lake, he was the youngest of the five children of the early 20th century journalist, reformer, and fiction writer Phạm Duy Tốn. The eldest son in this family, Phạm Duy Khiêm, was a distinguished diplomat and writer, and another son, Phạm Duy Nhượng, was both a song-writer and an educator.
Phạm Duy wrote his first song, “Cô Hái Mơ,” (“The Young Lass Picking Apricots”) in 1942, while still an amateur singer and guitarist. He got his professional start early in 1944 when he joined the Đức Huy Charlot Miều opera troupe. He toured the length and breadth of the country for two years with this troupe, entertaining audiences as a between-acts singer of tân nhạc or “new music,” while in the meantime gaining a familiarity with the folk music of every region through which he passed.
In 1946 he joined the Việt Minh resistance, first as a guerilla fighter and then as a member of various arts units whose mission was to entertain and inspire the soldiers. In this period, he wrote patriotic songs, such as “Xuất Quân” (“Bringing Out the Troops”), songs in folk style, such as “Ru Con” (“Lullaby”), and songs of romantic yearning, such as “Bên Cầu Biên Giới” (“By the Border Bridge”). These songs all achieved instant popularity. It was in this period also that he met and married the singer and actress Thái Hằng (the sister of the song-writer Phạm Đình Chương and the singer Thái Thanh), with whom he had eight children, six of whom became musicians in their own right.
He left the Việt Minh at the end of 1950 so as to remain free of ideological control, and settled in Saigon early in 1951. For the next twenty-four years he dominated the musical scene in the South. He made a number of trips to other countries, first to France, to broaden his musical education, and later to other Asian countries and to the U.S. to make contacts and promote his music. He was instrumental in establishing the Thăng Long singers, perhaps the most professional of the many performance groups that appeared in the South in this era. He excelled both in writing lyrics and in setting poems written by others. He was active in film-making in the 50s and 60s; and in the 60s did much to promote public awareness of indigenous folk music. In the late 1960s, he spearheaded the Du Ca or “Troubadour” movement, the aim of which was to combat commercialism in popular music by involving college students in the creation and performance of songs. Over the course of his career, he made hundreds of foreign songs available to Vietnamese audiences by providing them with sets of Vietnamese lyrics.
In 1975, just days before the fall of the South, he relocated to the U.S. and after two years in Florida settled in Midway City, California, next to Little Saigon. He is the author of about two dozen song-cycles on varied themes, each bound up in some way with the culture, history, or fate of Việt Nam. Two of the most well-known of these are Con Đường Cái Quan or “The National Road” and Mẹ Việt Nam or “Mothers of Vietnam.” Subsequent to 1975, he wrote many dozens of songs reflecting the refugee experience. He also wrote many new song cycles, which included a setting of five metaphysical poems by Hoàng Cầm, a setting of twenty prison poems of Nguyễn Chí Thiện, a setting of nine poems by the Christian poet Hàn Mặc Tử, and a set of ten songs on Zen themes, the lyrics of which he wrote himself. In the late 1990s he began writing Minh Hoạ Kiều or “Illustrations of Kiều” using as texts excerpts from Nguyễn Du’s celebrated early-nineteenth century poem “The Tale of Kiều” (Truyện Kiều). Throughout the period from 1975 to 1999, he went on international tours as a lecturer, singer, and guitarist to promote his song cycles.
In 2000, after the death of his wife, he began making return trips to Vietnam, where, even though his music had been officially banned since 1975, he was warmly welcomed by private people and government figures alike. In May, 2005, he returned to Vietnam for good, and the government began the process of lifting restrictions on the performance of his music. By then in his late eighties, he continued to compose songs, helped run a music café in Saigon, and went on tours to appear before audiences who came to hear his music. In January, 2013 he suffered a physical decline due to cardiac insufficiency, and died on the 27th of that month.
Aside from this set of memoirs, he was the author of about eight hundred songs, about three hundred sets of Vietnamese lyrics for non-Vietnamese songs, numerous articles, a guitar method, a book on the early history of popular music in Vietnam, a book of vignettes of people he had known, and several books on Vietnamese folk music, including, in English, Musics of Vietnam, Southern Illinois University Press, 1975.
Phạm Duy the Songwriter
Vietnam abounds in music of all kinds. Its major categories include court music, music favored by the literati, several varieties of traditional opera, a dozen or so regional varieties of folk music, many varieties of quasi-musical poetry-intonation, music of sixty-odd ethnic minorities, and tân nhạc, or “new music,” which refers to western-influenced popular music. New listeners to this music will notice at once that Vietnamese vocalists fluently engage in a kind of microtonal ornamentation that makes their singing sound quite different from that of China, Korea, or Japan. The listener may also notice the presence of the mournful, velvety sound of an instrument unique to Vietnam: the đàn bầu or monochord, which produces the same quavering ornamentation that is used by singers.
Phạm Duy is among the founders of tân nhạc, which came into being in the late 1930s, spurred on by the increased availability in Vietnam of French and international popular music made possible by the radio. Since its advent, tân nhạchas been at the center of the self-transformative efforts of the Vietnamese, as they have sought ways to throw off the twin yokes of feudalism and colonialism and to forge a kind of modernity that would be suitable and advantageous to their nation. There is no issue related to national identity that is not reflected or discussed in the lyrics of Vietnam’s popular songs.
Tân nhạc follows many of the same routines, and appears in many of the same kind of venues, as popular music in other countries. Tune writers and arrangers, for example, are usually different people, so a given song will appear in many different guises. More often than not, the tune writer is the author of the lyrics as well as the melody; in Vietnam most tune-writers are in this sense poets as well as musicians. Though the term tân nhạc refers to music that would not exist without the example or stimulus of western popular music, the term actually covers a huge variety of styles. A given example of tân nhạc may sound totally non-western, or it may sound totally non-Asian, or it may fall at some point between those two extremes (which is the case in the majority of instances). There is no defined membrane that divides tân nhạc from traditional music. Its songwriters are free to allude to traditional styles as much as they wish. There is likewise no defined membrane within tân nhạc that divides the serious from the frivolous, or the commercial from the artistic. Much of the musical territory covered by the term tân nhạc is perceived by the Vietnamese as possessing artistic value, and the songs and lyrics concerned are the subject of much esthetic discussion. Many Vietnamese tân nhạcaficionados, for example, profess a fondness for nhạc tiên chiến, or “pre-war” music. For the Vietnamese, “pre-war” means prior to 1946, the year the Resistance War against the French began. In actual practice, however, this term is used very loosely; music-lovers tend to characterize any song that they like as “pre-war,” regardless of the year it came into world.
Another term often encountered in discussions of tân nhạc, is nhạc vàng, or “yellow music.” In a narrow sense, this refers to cosmically sad, formula-driven, commercial music sung in cafés to soothe the tired nerves of customers thirsty for oblivion. This type of song has been enormously popular in Vietnam every since the advent of tân nhạc. It has also been a particular object of attack by Vietnamese communist ideologues, who maintain that nhạc vàng is the music of defeat, a kind of music that must inevitably cause the listener to go into a moral decline, and which must inevitably cause nations in which it prevalent to go down to destruction. The Vietnamese socialist regime has accordingly made vigorous efforts to suppress nhạc vàng, and to promote instead what people call nhạc đỏ, or “red music,” which in essence means “happy-comrade music.” But alas, red music lacks the deep allure for listeners of yellow music, and few people bother with it, aside from the few for whom it might evoke nostalgic memories of their days in the army.
Another often-mentioned category is nhạc quê hương, or “native-land music.” This refers to folk-influenced songs redolent of the countryside, or of some particular region that casts a nostalgic spell on the song-writer. An important subset of this category consists of songs written in central-region style, characterized by broadly-flowing major-mode melodies with delayed cadences. Many of the finest examples of tân nhạc belong to the nhạc quê hương category.
Of course much tân nhạc, particularly nowadays, consists of commercial music of no artistic value. This kind of music is typically referred to as nhạc trẻ, “young music,” or nhạc thời trang, “fashion music.” Any song with a techno-beat in the background and with no identifiable Vietnamese characteristics is apt to be of this type. The best thing I can say about songs of this type is that they self-destruct—they are never around for more than a few years.
Phạm Duy is the most prolific and stylistically varied of all the composers of tân nhạc, having created over eight hundred songs in the course of a long career. His styles and moods are so varied that it took the present writer many months of listening to his music before he could begin to say with confidence that some particular turn of melody was “typical of Phạm Duy.”
For Phạm Duy, songwriting is a form of exploring and recreating the world; hence he goes through phases; when he finishes exploring one area of experience, he goes on to another. As a consequence, Phạm Duy means many things to many people; everyone has a Phạm Duy whom they particularly admire or particularly abominate. Some people, for example, will say that they are particularly attached to the songs he wrote while participating in the Resistance, and will profess indifference to everything he wrote thereafter. Others will say that his love songs of the 50s and 60s are the most memorable parts of his production. Others say that the songs in which he celebrates Vietnamese ethnic identity played a key role in their own formation as nation-loving individuals. Others are especially attracted to the settings he made of the work of particular poets, or to those of his songs that express a yearning for transcendence. Others cherish most the anti-war songs that he wrote in the 60s and early 70s. Still others are attracted to his work in the realm of folk song, sometimes writing renovated versions of traditional tunes, and sometimes making expanded versions of rural folk verses, which he then set to music. For others, his many post-1975 songs concerning the refugee experience represent the height of his production. In short, whether people speak of him in praise or disparagement, he remains a favorite topic of conversation. This would not occur if his songs were not memorable.
Phạm Duy the Memoirist
A celebrated Vietnamese documentary film-maker with whom I am acquainted remarked to me some years ago in Hanoi that he had recently been thinking of writing a set of memoirs. His own career, no less than that of Phạm Duy, had been intimately bound up with the modern fate of his people—but when he read the four volumes of Phạm Duy’s Memoirs, he felt a sense of defeat—how could he ever hope to match Phạm Duy’s endlessly detailed recall of people, places, and events? Or the unflagging verve and incisiveness with which he presents them? At the time I had this conversation, everyone in Hanoi was reading the book—it was banned, but the city was nevertheless awash with privately produced photocopies. The readers felt that it told the truth about historical events and gave expression to views that they themselves had held throughout their lives, but had never dared express.
There is in fact no other set of Vietnamese memoirs known to me that provides the reader with a more richly documented social and political history of Vietnam in the century just past. There is nothing that escapes the author’s notice, nothing in which he does not take an intelligent interest. Thus, if you wish to understand anything about the evolution of Vietnamese sports, fashions, technology, cinema, street-talk, fine arts, literature, journalism, and countless other spheres of activity, you cannot do better than to regard these Memoirs as the place to turn to first.
Running through these recollections is a credo defiantly and insistently maintained from beginning to end, a credo that might be expressed as “Nothing is more precious to the individual or the nation than complete personal freedom.” The author defines himself throughout as a quintessentially modern man opposed to all feudal restrictions, whether of the traditional type, the modern socialist type, the right-wing ideologue type, or any other type. As he remarks in the epilogue to the entire work, “I am a fellow who never listens docilely to other people’s words, but instead roams at will along free roads of my own choosing.” In accordance with this fundamental stance, he insists everywhere that patriotism, by its very nature, cannot consist of loyalty to some particular regime or some particular set of sociopolitical theories; it can consist only of devotion to the language, customs, scenes, and culture amid which one has grown to maturity. A concomitant of this stance is that the division of Vietnam into communist and republican blocks has always been anathema to him; and, to the limit of his ability, he has always behaved as if no such division existed. In choosing poems to use as song texts, for example, he never paid any attention to the political affiliation of the poets—as far as he was concerned, the authors of the poems he set were simply Vietnamese poets, not Northern-regime or Southern-regime poets.
Another concomitant of this stance is a determination to present a real, rather than an air-brushed, version of his private life—thus his numerous affairs, both before and after his marriage, all appear in the Memoirs. He is only moderately apologetic about them; often, in fact, he appears to feel that these episodes were important to his life as a songwriter. Other details that most Vietnamese memoirists would be at pains to conceal appear as well. He admits, for example, that his success as a touring singer of “new music” in 1944 led him to forget totally about his mother and other family members, to whom he never wrote a single letter; and he admits to a love of bourgeois comforts and distractions even when, as a devoted revolutionary, he served the Việt Minh in the liberated areas during the Resistance.
Most Vietnamese not only do not share Phạm Duy’s radical devotion to personal freedom, but have difficulty even imagining what such a devotion might involve—it runs against all traditional notions of proper behavior—and they therefore have difficulty accepting him as a public figure and as a memoirist. Phạm Duy grates on the nerves of his countrymen; he is, in a word, too modern, too unfeudal. Almost everyone regards him as politically suspicious. The communists hated him in the 50s, 60s, and 70s because he left the Việt Minh. His colleagues in the Southern Republic distrusted him because he had once worked for the Việt Minh. Many of his fellow Californian refugees, who had accused him all along of being devoid of political principle, felt betrayed in 2005, when he chose to return to Vietnam. A great many people seem to be a bit bothered as well that Phạm Duy has not only been an avid self-promoter throughout his life, but is not even ashamed of this—his activities in this regard are fully portrayed in the Memoirs; they are a part of his modernity. But to many Vietnamese, such self-promotion seems improper, un-Confucian. And of course many Vietnamese are scandalized as well by the sexual revelations in the Memoirs—some, however, appreciate the fact that here, at last, is a set of memoirs by a Vietnamese personage in which the author doesn’t seek to portray himself in a falsely perfect light.
I do not mean to suggest in any of the above that Phạm Duy is the only modern man in Vietnam; he has allies and soulmates; and eventually these people will turn into a majority. The Memoirs may for the present be banned in Vietnam; the day will arrive, however, when they will become part of the ordinary curriculum of Vietnamese schoolchildren; for they tell the tale of Vietnam’s emergence into modernity more completely and truthfully than any other contemporary document.
The credo underlying these Memoirs (“Nothing is more precious to the individual or the nation than complete personal freedom.”) may be regarded as a useful counterpoise to certain other credos sacred to the Vietnamese revolution. Hồ Chí Minh, as we are ceaselessly reminded, said that “Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom” – but everyone senses that the “independence and freedom” referred to here are of a national or collective nature, and have nothing to do with the life of the individual. The constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam promises its citizens “Independence, Freedom, and Happiness,” but many Vietnamese are coming to see that these terms will remain devoid of content until they can be given a personal meaning.
A Note on This Translation
The four volumes of Phạm Duy’s Memoirs originally bore titles somewhat different from the ones I have given them in this English version. Volume One, “Coming of Age in the North” was entitled “Thời Thơ Ấu—Vào Đời” or “The Period of Childhood—Entrance to Adulthood.” Volume Two, “The Resistance,” was entitled “Thời Cách Mạng—Kháng Chiến” or “The Period of Revolution—Resistance.” Volume Three, “The Period of Division,” was entitled “Thời Phân Chia Quốc-Cộng” or “The Period of Nationalist-Communist Division.” Volume Four, “My Sojourn Abroad,” was entitled “Thời Hải Ngoại” or “The Period Abroad.”
The first three books of the Memoirs were written in the period from 1989 to 1991 and were self-published by the author under the imprimatur of P.D.C. Musical Productions. The fourth book was written in c. 2001 and was published electronically on Phạm Duy’s website, which also had electronic versions of the first three books.
In this translation, the first draft of which was completed in 2005 after thirteen months of steady work, I made use of both the paper and electronic versions of Books 1 and 3, and of the electronic versions of Books 2 and 4. I have benefited throughout from Phạm Duy’s suggestions and corrections, for he went over the translations chapter by chapter, as they were produced, often responding within one or two hours to my emailed queries. Also very useful to me were Phạm Duy’s huge archive of photos and sound recordings.
In accordance with the suggestion of several readers, I have added a feature to this translation that does not exist in the original: a set of footnotes that, so far as possible, provide background information on all the many hundreds of people, songs, books, and poems mentioned by the author. Here again, Phạm Duy himself has done much to improve the adequacy of this annotation, and I hope that these notes will prove useful, not only to English language readers, but Vietnamese readers who heretofore have had access only to the original, unannotated text. I have also, for the reader’s convenience supplied each chapter with a title.
This translation in general follows the original very closely; a few abridgements, however, have been made in certain places. Sometimes this is simply to avoid repetition. In other places articles written by others about Phạm Duy are summarized rather than given in full, because I felt that these chunks of text impede the forward flow of the narrative, and are moreover on a lesser literary plane than the rest of the book.
The original text is full of quoted song lyrics. Much of this material is retained here, but in some places the quoted lyrics are given in part only, or else summarized or paraphrased rather than translated. Song lyrics often resist coherent conversion into English, so I felt that a description or summary would provide a more faithful representation of the lyrics than an attempt at English re-creation. It seemed to me also that in certain chapters, the quantity of quoted lyrics slowed the author’s story, so here again some abridgement seemed desirable. Should any reader wish to know more about any of the omitted or abridged lyrics, they are most welcome to get in touch with me through the publisher. ERIC HENRY, Translator
NGÔ THẾ VINH
California, 08/08/2022 – 08/11/2024
THAM KHẢO
- “Phạm Duy and Modern Vietnamese History.” Eric Henry. Southeastern Review of Asian Studies 27 (2005, pp. 89 – 105.
- The Memoirs of Phạm Duy. Translated from the Vietnamese by Eric Henry. To be published by Cornell University Press.
- The curious memoirs of the Vietnamese composer Phạm Duy. John C. Schafer. Journal of Southeast Asia Studies. Feb 2012. The National University of Singapore, 2012.
- Việt Nam – Những Ngày Trở Lại của Cựu Chiến Binh Eric Henry. Ngô Thế Vinh
https://vietecologypress.blogspot.com/2022/08/viet-nam-nhung-ngay-tro-lai-cua-cuu.html - Tình Quê Hương Trong Nhạc Phạm Duy Và Những Chân Dung. Ngô Thế Vinh
https://vietecologypress.blogspot.com/2022/07/tinh-que-huong-trong-nhac-pham-duy-va.html
