Trịnh Công Sơn
Vietnamese singer, songwriter (1939-2001)
Trịnh Công Sơn (February 28, 1939 – April 1, 2001) was a Vietnamese musician, songwriter, painter and poet. He is widely considered to be Vietnam's best songwriter. His music explores themes of love, loss, and anti-war sentiments during the Vietnam War, for which he was censored by both the southern Republic of Vietnam and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Many performing artists, most notably Khánh Ly, Hồng Nhung, Trinh Vinh Trinh (his younger sister), and some overseas singers such as Tuan Ngoc, Le Quyen, Le Thu, and Ngoc Lan, have gained popularity in their own right from covering Sơn's songs.
Biography
Trịnh Công Sơn was born in Buôn Ma Thuột, Đắk Lắk Province, French Indochina, but as a child he lived in the village of Minh Huong in Hương Trà in Thừa Thiên–Huế Province. He grew up in Huế, where he attended the Lycée Français and the Providence school. When he was ten he lived with his father in Huế's Thừa Phủ Prison for a year in 1949. Later he went to Saigon and studied western philosophy at the Lycée Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from which he graduated with the baccalaureate degree. In 1961, he studied psychology and pedagogy in a school for teachers in Qui Nhơn in an attempt to avoid being drafted into the Republic of Vietnam Military Forces. After graduation, he taught at an elementary school in Bao Loc, Lâm Đồng.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Trịnh Công Sơn” is vietnamese singer, songwriter (1939-2001). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Trịnh, Công and Vietnamese, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “vietnamese singer, songwriter (1939-2001)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q513108. The first chronological checks are 1939, 2001, 1949 and 1961.
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This entry incorporates text from “Trịnh Công Sơn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.