What is Purple music?
[[Image:Hoàng-trọng và ban Tiếng Tơ Đồng.JPG|thumb|222px|[[Composer]] [[Hoàng Trọng]] and Tiếng Tơ Đồng Band.]] '''Purple music''' ({{lang-vi|Nhạc tím}}) is a kind of [[music]] that has been very much at the center of [[Vietnam|Vietnamese]] public life from the time of its first strong emergence in the country in the late 1930s up to the present day. It is known as the origin of [[Vietnam|Vietnamese]] popular [[music]]. Harmonious, sentimental and melancholy, many romantic songs of purple music have become regarded as national treasures and are still performed widely. ==History== [[Image:Máy hát đĩa.jpg|thumb|222px|Record.]] [[Image:Lanngoc.JPG|thumb|222px|[[Singer]] [[Lan Ngọc]].]] Songs of Purple Music carry with them an air of nostalgia, perhaps nostalgia for an era when [[Vietnam]] was still unified, the era preceding nearly 20 years of civil war.<ref>[[Phạm Duy]], ''Memoirs of Pham Duy'', [[Midway City, California]], [[USA]], 1989.</ref> After 1954, the country was split into two very different regimes, the [[communist]] [[Socialist Republic of Vietnam]] or [[North Vietnam]], and the [[Republic of Vietnam]] or [[South Vietnam]]. At that time, some purple music composers went [[South Vietnam|South]], while others remained in the [[North Vietnam|North]]. Most of the Northerners either ceased composing or followed the dictates of the regime for writing songs to mobilize the masses and strengthen the [[revolution]]. Southerners continued to write romantic songs. Since the [[North Vietnam|North]]'s victory resulting in [[Vietnam]]'s reunification in 1975, the country's [[culture]] has continued to be divided between resident and overseas communities. As nearly all [[music]] and [[literature]] of a romantic or sentimental basis was banned by the [[communist]] regime, many of Vietnam's creative minds left the country in 1975 for [[Western]] countries like the [[United States]], [[Australia]], and [[France]]. Although differences between these two communities continue until this time, purple music is one of the few