Oh Sài Gòn! Farewell [Sài Gòn ơi! Vĩnh biệt]

Nam Lộc (given name Nguyễn Nam Lộc) is a famous musician, community activist, and familiar television host in the Vietnamese diaspora. Born in 1944 in Bắc Ninh, he migrated to South Vietnam in 1954, in the wake of the Geneva Accords and the division of Vietnam. His activism began during his student days in Sài Gòn when he worked with other music enthusiasts to organize youth concerts for charity. He later opened a performing coffeehouse in Sài Gòn named Hầm Gió [The Windy Cave] and invited famous musicians to perform, including Phạm Duy, Khanh Ly, Trịnh Công Sơn, Từ Công Phụng, Nguyễn Đức Quang, Đức Huy, Lê Uyên, and Phương. Yet charity concerts remained his calling, and he continued to organize numerous youth concerts in the late 1960s and early 1970s to help military widows and orphans, fire or flood victims, and other victims of war.

Nam Lộc was among the first Vietnamese to leave Vietnam, fleeing three days before the fall of Sài Gòn on April 30, 1975. He spent his first months in the United States at Camp Pendleton, a military base in California that sheltered Vietnamese refugees after the evacuation. Nam Lộc worked as a translator and placement coordinator for other refugees in the camp who were seeking American sponsors. His experience at Camp Pendleton opened up a new career as an advocate for refugee communities, and he served as the director of the Immigration and Refugee Department of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for four decades.

Nam Lộc’s journey to America also marked the start of his career as a musician, and “Oh Sài Gòn! Farewell” was his first original song. The inspiration came to him during his flight from Sài Gòn as he bid farewell to his homeland and worried about the safety of his family. He began composing the song at Camp Pendleton and did not finish until November 1975, after the camp closed.¹ “Oh Sài Gòn! Farewell” was first recorded by the singer and fellow refugee Khánh Ly in 1976 and immediately became popular in the Vietnamese diaspora. The gentle tune and plaintive lyrics captures the pain of family separation, the loneliness of life in exile, and the deep longing for home that so many refugees experienced. Nam Lộc went on to write more songs about the refugee experience, but “Oh Sài Gòn! Farewell” remains uniquely resonant among Vietnamese refugees and is commonly performed during commemorations of the fall of Sài Gòn.

—Vinh Phu Pham, Yen Vu, and Nu-Anh Tran