The Vietnam War and The Contemporaneous Pop Music of South Vietnam

Proceedings of The 4th International Conference on Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts

Year: 2023

DOI:

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The Vietnam War and The Contemporaneous Pop Music of South Vietnam

Ly Quyet Tien

ABSTRACT: 

Forty-eight years have passed since the Vietnam War, one of the world’s most atrocious conflicts ended.  This bloody tragedy with the Americans and their allies cost the lives of 5,146,000 victims including 3,146,000 Vietnamese. The sad memoirs of the war have been expressed in the works of artists throughout the world, but none so effectively as the songwriters who lived in the South of Vietnam during the war. Among them, these are Trinh Cong Son, Pham Duy, Tran Thien Thanh, and Anh Bang who composed songs that captured the feelings of a generation of Vietnamese that experienced first -hand the atrocities of the war.  It has been four decades since peace has returned and a wounded country has healed. This history is, nonetheless, still immediate and very much a part of Vietnam’s consciousness. The Vietnamese understand what war means and the value of peace and have a profound sympathy for the suffering experienced by the people in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Yemen and Ethiopia. The sorrowful melodies of Trinh Cong Son, Pham Duy, Tran Thien Thanh, Nguyen Van Dong and Anh Bang remind all of us of the nightmare of war. This article examines the works and artistry of these composers, a voice of sorrow and peace, dismissed in official circles as mere pop culture and maudlin songwriters.  But by millions of others they are a testament of suffering and a profound expression of the aspiration for peace.

keywords: pop music, Vietnam War, peace