Đoan Trang

Cao Thị Đoan Trang (born 4 February 1978 in Dong Nai, Vietnam) is a contemporary Vietnamese pop/Latin-influenced singer residing in Vietnam.

Generally, she is referred to as Đoan Trang.

Doan Trang was born on February 4, 1978, in Dong Nai.

When she was little, she lived in Long Khanh commune of Dong Nai Province in a family of 6, including her parents, one elder sister and two younger brothers.

One of her younger brothers whose named Cao Minh Trung is a drummer of Microwave band.

She was exposed to have interest in music since early age, as she performed many children songs at many different stages when only 5, she was also a key member of the province's culture house as well as some music contests right where she was studying.

She didn't seem to miss any single singing activities during her time at school, and she always won at any cost.

In 1992, at 14 years old she had to leave family to enroll at a highschool in Ho Chi Minh City.

In 1995, she passed Technical Department of Vocal – Ho Chi Minh City Music Institute, she also enrolled at Pedagogic English of Ho Chi Minh University of Foreign Language and Information Technology (HUFLIT), although studying at two universities at the same time, she still managed to participate in many activities, especially Green Summer Campaign and other society activities.

She was voted to be one of 10 excellent student of HUFLIT (class of 1995–1999)

Not only participating in activities at schools, she also competed "The Voice of Ho Chi Minh City Broadcast Station" in 1997, this was highly rated contest at the time in Sai Gon and further regions of the South as it used to discover many famous singers in Vietnam music industry such as: Thu Minh, Dam Vinh Hung, Duc Tuan, Thanh Thuy...In this contest, she made to the final round and won supplementary prize which was pretty remarkable to a new face like her.

In 1998, she competed in the contest "Voice of students of City", which was for students at highschools, colleges and universities in Ho Chi Minh City.

In this contest, she won first prize and later became representative of the city to join National Voice of Student contest in Ha Noi where she was a runner up.

In spring 1999, she was chosen to be one of many students to have a visit the troop at the border for her enthusiastic contribution.

Thank to be advantaged in singing and experienced in stage performance, she was still a familiar face of many music shows for student at universities and won many prizes.

During this time, she also performed at bars and music rooms in the city to earn extra for the school fee of two younger brothers and for her school fee also.

In 1999, post graduation with excellent degree of vocal – Ho Chi Minh City Music Institute, she was offered to work at Singapore Airline, which was suitable to her English ability with high salary.

However, she decided to pursue professional singing as she registered Green Rhythm Club and performed at some entertainment spot in the city.

Starting career by participating in many music shows and winning plenty of prizes when she was a student of two universities (HUFLIT and Ho Chi Minh City's Music Institute), however she only became well known when she was the runner up of The Voice of Ho Chi Minh City Broadcast Station 2001 contest.

Beside her real name which is also stage name Doan Trang, she's also referred as "Chocolate" by the press and audience for her tanned skin and it was one of her hit songs.

In 2001, once again she competed in The Voice of Ho Chi Minh City Broadcast Station and was a runner up, this time, she performed the song Vo Tinh written by Tran Tien, the song was a success and highly rated with the nearly same score of winner Tu Anh, this could be said to be one of new chapters of her career.

She continued to get many offers from producers and entertainment agencies.

However, she pursued to be an independent singer and developed her career in her own way.

In 2002, she introduce a series of hit songs at that time including: Forget Me Not, Khi Ta 20,...Especially, the song Forget Me Not written by Quoc An was recorded and produced into three different version including techno, slow and electronic.

For this song, she was nominated for New Artist of The Year award of Green Wave Awards.

In 2004, she held first liveshow Khi Toi 20 at Hue, as the liveshow was carefully prepared, alongside the attendance of many singers like Ngoc Anh, Tran Tam, Nguyen Phi Hung, Ly Hari...the liveshow was sponsored and live aired on 7 big channels of Vietnam: Hai Phong, Ha Noi, Hue, Da Nang, Nha Trang, Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho.

In the liveshow, she performed 10 songs as they were songs that made her name well known: Khi Toi 20, Vo Tinh, Cam On Mot Doa Xuan Ngoai, Forget Me Not,...

The liveshow was expected to boost her reputation.

However, it was not as successful as expected, due to miscommunication between singers as they didn't have proper rehearsal together, some guest singers like My Le, Thu Minh, Tuan Hung didn't make it due to their personal schedules, later she admitted: "All the guests are specialized in pop while I pursue energetic Latin pop. It's why I didn't get to active in many performances".

Besides, the overall script of the liveshow was also cut to many individual parts as well as the distribution of the performances was not really well prepared.

In 2005, she received award from 7th Green Wave Awards, as being one of 10 Favorite Artist of The Year Awards for two songs "Toc Hat" and "Bang Khuang", as they were charted in top 5 of Green Wave music chart for many weeks.

This was the first time she won Green Wave Awards.

However, some newspapers shared opinions that she didn't deserve the award but singer Thanh Thao instead who had more successful songs and suspected that the vote was not fair.

The statement was about: the songs in the album of Nhat Thien Bao was mostly house, trance and hip-hop of 90's while Socodance was under the influence of 50-70's slow, tango, valse, chachacha,...Moreover, the idea of Socodance had been firstly discussed back in December 2005 while she was still being in the process of making album single Da Khuc, therefore Socodance was initiated following the suggestion of Tu Phi and her brother Cao Trung Hieu (one of the member of SoCo Production).

Beside the statement, SoCo Production also sent an email to the press saying "I'm the person who is responsible for the idea of SoCodance as well as produced the album of SoCo Production" by Tu Phi.

In May 2006, she released the album titled Socodance, which consisted nine dance songs.

However, shortly after, it was rumored that the idea of Socodance was originally from singer Nhat Thien Bao without his permission, things got more complicated as one of the articles of Vietnamnet titled "Stealing music ideas, this couldn't be a joke" on the Internet, the articled wrote that singer Nhat Thien Bao had invited her to be featured in his album Bao Dance in the process and she took those songs for later albums without permission.

After the article's release, the spoke person of Soco Production which was the crew to craft and produce her music projects sent a message to many presses and newspapers with the titled "Official statement of Nhat Thien Bao and Doan Trang" (along with the signatures of both).

In July 2007, she had a short term course in the US for 5 weeks at University Berklee which is a famous music university in Boston, Massachusetts.

The course was called "Summer Performance Program" where she studied about vocal, music theory, stage performance skill and R&B with Latin Pop genres.