One of Vietnam's best known musicians, Pham Duy, died at the age of 92, eight years after returning from the United States, his family said Monday.
Hanoi-born Duy wrote more than 1,000 songs during his lifetime, from military tunes to anti-war songs and love ballads. He was both a divisive and unifying figure among Vietnamese.
Duy suffered from liver and heart problems and died Sunday in a Ho Chi Minh City hospital. Duy joined the Viet Minh to fight the French in 1945 and wrote songs to boost morale that became popular among the resistance. He later became disillusioned with the Communist Party and moved to Saigon in then-South Vietnam in 1951.
After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, he moved to California, where he remained for 30 years.
He returned with his son in 2005 when the Vietnamese government lifted a ban on his music.
In an interview with dpa in October, Duy said: "I understand that the disagreement between people like me who left Vietnam and the Vietnamese authorities led to the ban on my music, and I think their ban was right. But when I returned to Vietnam to live, the disagreement has disappeared."
But he said his songs were still subject to censorship.
"They [the censors] will not say directly in a written document, but it should be understood that whenever one sends a song for approval, if they do not answer, it means the song is not allowed," he said.