well as of the singer Thái Thanh, who gained widespread fame performing many of Phạm Duy's works. His eight children have achieved success in music as part of the band The Dreamers who performed around the world. His eldest son was the singer Duy Quang (who predeceased him by more than a month), and another son is musician Duy Cường. His daughters include the singers Thái Hiền and Thái Thảo. Thái Thảo's husband is the noted singer Tuấn Ngọc. Among his nieces and nephews are the singers Ý Lan (daughter of Thái Thanh) and Mai Hương. Legacy Professor Vu Duc Vuong, a director at Hoa Sen University, said that Pham Duy was Vietnam's most important musician of the 20th century, and compared him favourably to Nguyễn Du, Hồ Xuân Hương, and Xuân Diệu. He is considered one of the most prolific and varied musicians of modern Vietnamese music, as well as one of those who molded it from its infancy. Generations of Vietnamese grew up memorising many of his songs and many singers gained fame performing his works, most notably his sister-in-law Thái Thanh. Ethnomusicologist Jason Gibbs described Phạm Duy as "a writer of undeniable sensitivity and created works that Vietnamese will remember for hundreds of years. There is a remarkable directness, honesty and depth of feeling in his lyrics, during a time when many Vietnamese creative figures had to be guarded in their expression." In the last years of his life, he campaigned unsuccessfully to have the entire oeuvre of his works, excepting those that "the government would deem inappropriate", to freely circulate in Vietnam again. Among his strongest advocates are renowned musicologist Trần Văn Khê, historian Dương Trung Quốc, and researcher Nguyễn Đắc Xuân, who wanted the government to allow, at minimum, his song cycles Con đường cái quan (The Mandarin Road) and Mẹ Việt Nam (Mother Vietnam), particularly its concluding song "Việt Nam Việt Nam". The two song cycles, according to Khê, are "masterpieces deserving to be disseminated across the whole country because of their true artistic qualities". With these two cycles, Pham Duy "talked about a totally unified Vietnam, painted a picture of Vietnam complete geographically and culturally, from the breadth of its history to the depth of its soul, from its philosophy to its outlook on life." After his music was banned in Vietnam for more than 30 years, he and his music were considered