Music industry insider DA Vo on the biggest festival ever to happen in Vietnam
DA Vo, co-founder of Hanoi Rock City, is usually running the show. At Monsoon festival he got to kick back and enjoy it as a member of the audience, albeit one privileged to hang out backstage with friends in the crew and friends performing in the show. DA Vo shares his thoughts and photos with & Of Other Things
DA (on the right) with Bảo Trần and Phương Mai
This was the first festival in Vietnam, ever, proper, by the definition of festival. Yes we have Rockstorm every year, and Quốc Trung is the director of that whole show as well, but that’s one day, one genre, and all Vietnamese bands. When you have djs, live bands, jazz, rock, pop, everything in one event, that’s when an event becomes a festival. It was amazing.
The Music
The acts ended up being great. Although I prefer particular genres of music, the diversity is the beauty of a festival.
The band that surprised me the most was the Korean band – progressive, jazz fusion, rock – I don’t even know how to describe their genre. It was great because it was different. You know what we associate with the Korean scene, K-pop and commercial. But when they came on I was really surprised. One of the members lives in Korea but he’s Vietnamese played the Đàn bầu, which is a super traditional instrument and they put a bit of distortion on it so it was really new and exciting for me. I was proper vibing to them.
Another great use of traditional instruments was in Quốc Trung’s electronic set. As in, you’ve got people playing very old school traditional instruments, like the Đàn nhị, but with an electronic synthesizer and drumbeats. You still have that feeling of traditional music in a really modern way, a mix between generations
The headliner on the last day was Hà Trần (Trần Thu Hà) who showcased her new album of progressive, psychedelic, energetic rock. She’s always a diva, one of the four divas of Vietnam, singing proper ballads, you know that sort of song. But this time she went pretty heavy and she rocked out. I think the crowd responded the most during her set as well. It was crazy. From playing pop ballads in music venues like the Opera House, to playing progressive rock live in front of 10,000 people jumping around and screaming her name, she said that was her first experience like that. And the band she put together was amazing, supported by guitarist Thanh Phương, Hải Bằng on the bass, Hùng Cường on the drums, Quốc Trung on the keys, and my friend Dương 3D with the beats and scratching. Practically an all-star line-up.
Stresses
Of course there were some difficulties, for example the time constraint. And the Citadel being a really historic place meant you don’t have free access all the time, so setting up wasn’t easy. And in Hanoi you can’t play for too long, so I know there may have been a lot of people who had to have their set cut short.
Overall I think they did an amazing job. I mean, it seems as though they pulled it out of thin air. I know it was really tough for everyone in the crew; Bảo Trần, the production manager and a friend of mine, was there for four days straight. He didn’t get to go home once. He and everyone else were really stressed, they really didn’t know if they would be able to pull it off or not. But they did, and by the last day, it was clear it was really a beginning, not the ending.
DA with Giáng Son, his first piano teacher and original member of 5 Dòng Kẻ
DA with light director Julian Hodgson, singer Bảo Trâm and his friend John Pratt
The Vision
Quốc Trung has been wanting to do this since 2006, but it wasn’t until now that he was able to put it together. I think his only intention this year was to make a really good festival in terms of quality. The ambition sprung from a need to let people in Hanoi know that this is what a good festival feels like; you have this amount of acts, they’re all amazing, and you get to hang out with thousands of people in an open space. For this reason, and because they were targeting the youngsters—the present and future festival goers—tickets were really cheap. Trung used a lot of his own money to make sure that this happened. And it worked. I haven’t seen that many people at a festival here, so that was amazing. In three days there were 30,000 people coming and going. The last night the tickets ran out before the show started. And the other two days were really crowded too. Hopefully in the future they can provide even more quality acts and then can be financially self-sustaining. But yeah, it was amazing to see.
