Nhac Gay Nhac Gay: 年轻的血脉!

The sounds of local and international music spill out into the streets from bars and super clubs in Saigon’s Bui Vien neighborhood. Smaller venues are hidden away within old apartment buildings and tucked behind restaurants. Street food vendors and performers jostle for space with travelers and locals in the narrow streets. On a recent night there, inside a three-story tube house that acts as a hotel, something very different was happening: a new breed of club life called Gãy. This Vietnamese collective is emblematic of the country’s fast-growing youth culture, which has rapidly embraced fashion, photography, graffiti, music, and more.

Gãy focuses on global underground dance music and their events are must-visit destinations for anybody in Vietnam with an interest in what’s new and creative. What started as a night for a couple of dozen friends to party together and listen to the music they enjoy has grown into a regular event with an affordable cover charge that attracts stylish crowds in the hundreds. They also now have a record label, help locals learn to DJ and produce, and bring together the Vietnamese diaspora from around the world.

Anh Phi Trần is one of Gãy’s founders. He’s a việt kiều, or overseas Vietnamese, who grew up in the suburbs of Paris before moving to Saigon as an adult. “Both of my parents are Vietnamese boat people,” he says. “They arrived in France with nothing, fleeing the American war. But they started a restaurant and were able to give us a good life.” Although he visited in the summers as a kid, he found himself curious about what people from his generation were doing in Vietnam. “We have social media now, but as a kid, I only knew about the food and some old-school music.”

As an adult, he decided to move to Vietnam and make a living as a filmmaker. However, he was a little disappointed with the lack of variety in the local music scene when he arrived in 2016: Only the rap scene had momentum, though it was still underground at the time. “There wasn’t much electronic music,” he recalls. “The parties were mostly strict techno and house or top 40 and EDM, and all full of expats.”

He met another of Gãy’s founders, Abi Wasabi, whose real name is Linh Ngô, through mutual friends. They bonded over a shared taste in art and music. Ngô says, “We started hanging together all the time, going to clubs, but there weren’t many places to go. We just went out to go out.” Ngô grew up in Saigon and has been participating in local nightlife since she was 17 years old. She says that club culture in Vietnam has been around for decades, but youth culture is still very new. “Growing up, there’d be like one place for younger people to go that played newer music, but then it would close and another would open.”

For years, the only electronic music that appealed to local crowds was vinahouse, a style of dance music that used to be frowned upon by the more cosmopolitan kids, but is now embraced by many, including the Gãy collective and its regulars. It’s a bright and energetic style with shiny synths and hard beats that started in 2006 and has a number of clubs dedicated to it filled with locals. “It has a cheesy and funny vibe. It’s got all of Vietnamese culture in it,” Ngô explains. “I was kind of prejudiced about it myself growing up but fell in love with it when we went to one of the vinahouse clubs on my birthday in 2019. You really have to experience it in its element. Their lighting and sound systems are as powerful as the ones at festivals; it’s crazy!” The sound of vinahouse is everywhere in Vietnam, filling the streets throughout the day and night via street vendors and passing tuk-tuks, and it racks up views in the millions on Youtube. But you still won’t hear it on the radio because of its association with drugs, which makes it taboo.

To carve out a space for themselves within those limited options, Trần and Ngô—along with the other three Gãy co-founders ​​​​Celina Huynh, Thao Vu and Mike Pham—wanted to throw their own small parties, just for their group of friends on special occasions like New Years or a birthday. “One time we rented a bus and partnered with a street food vendor for catering,” Trần recalls. When his birthday came around in October of 2019, they rented out a small club in Bui Vien, made a poster, and decided to learn how to DJ. “We got a controller two weeks before the party and just figured it out. When I went on stage I was chicken!” Ngô smiles. It was all just for fun with no plans for the future and a group of about 30 friends showed up. “We called that party Gãy because that was the spirit of it; to just have fun even if it’s a mess.” Gãy is Vietnamese slang for “broken,” but in a good way. Like if you’re too drunk, you’re gãy. “If it’s wrong it’s fine,” he explains. Ngô adds that while the name Gãy isn’t a reference to its English meaning, the space is open to everybody: “Our party embraces all the weirdos and the misfits. We do attract a large LGBTQ contingent, partially because of the name, but mainly just because they’re a big part of the creative community.”

“Our crowd is mostly creative people, about 90 percent locals, and they range from 18 to 30 years old,” Ngô says. “They’re very respectful, even though they’re crazy as hell. They’ll jump on tables and take off their shirts, but at the same time if you tell them something they’ll listen. They come there to enjoy the music so they’re very respectful of each other’s space. There’s no creeps at our party. It’s very comfortable and safe. In other clubs, it’s not like that.”

Trần chimes in: “They dance like crazy, sometimes screaming. You get mosh pits, people hanging from the ceiling. It’s pretty wild and expressive. Whenever we play something intense, people really react to it.”

A month after their first party, Trần says there happened to be a bunch of foreign artists and việt kiều in town, so they decided to invite them for another Gãy party at the same venue.”About 150 people showed up,” Trần says. “The club was packed. That’s when we realized we were onto something. There weren’t many events doing what we were doing, playing the genres we’re playing.”

At a Gãy party, party-goers might hear experimental club, vinahouse, industrial techno, or trance—pretty much anything that’ll make a dancefloor move. But they purposely avoid trying to be too purist about any one sound, encouraging a hybrid of styles. “In every set, a DJ will try and navigate through at least five genres,” he says. “I think that’s the Vietnamese spirit. It’s always been a matter of blending cultures and accepting whatever comes its way. Look at the bahn mi sandwich. It’s like, ‘OK, we’ve been colonized by the French, so let’s take all our ingredients and slam them between their bread. Same with American and Chinese cultures, they’re everywhere. You can see it in the architecture too; the first floor of a building will be in one style, and the second story will be done in another sitting right on top of it.”

“We keep learning and changing,” Ngô says. “We keep surprising ourselves. We try to surprise the people and end up surprising ourselves. I discovered a part of myself that I didn’t know because of Gãy.”

Thao Vu has made sure that Vietnamese culture stays central to the Gãy parties since their first event. Vu, who works under the solo moniker mess., mixes traditional Viet music with contemporary dance styles when DJing, a philosophy that she’s well known for as a member of experimental electronic music group, ANNAM. “A few parties later ANNAM actually performed and we played live instruments at the club. I played a flute called the sáo mèo and my team member played a Chinese trumpet called suona. It was very weird at first but people went wild! The Gãy community isn’t the normal club scene; we want to rave in different ways.”

After the second event, they decided to make it a monthly party and began eyeing regional artists they could invite to play, stitching Vietnam into the fabric of the larger Asian music experience. “Vietnam isn’t on the map yet. When international artists go on tour, they don’t stop here,” Ngô complains. They were contemplating booking acts with a similar mindset like Beijing’s Do Hits and Hong Kong’s Absurd Trax. The first overseas artist they successfully brought to the country was experimental club producer Sonia Calico from Taiwan. But the plan was quickly derailed by COVID and they had to reconsider. Vietnam had weathered the first year of the pandemic better than most countries, and they were able to party again once the virus was curbed a couple months after it started. But with their strict border closure, the collective couldn’t invite outside artists as planned. So they decided to focus instead on local talent.

“After COVID, we had to dig more into local artists,” says Trần. “We took some of the profits from our parties and paid for DJ lessons to help people learn and gave them slots at our raves. All the money we make, we invest it back into the community. We want to help people express themselves, grow, and heal.” The move has helped the wider scene grow, and some of these novice DJs have gotten booked at other events. “The scene is very small, so whenever there’s a new DJ who’s good enough and has a particular style they can make a name for themselves.”

One DJ they put through classes and who’s gotten other bookings is Keikk0. She’s now a resident DJ at the Gãy parties as well. Keikk0, who’s real name is Tôn Tôn Bo, grew up on the outskirts of Saigon and got involved in the local electronic scene during her university years. Like many of those involved with Gãy, her creativity isn’t limited to music alone—she’s also a visual artist and is an accomplished photographer and director. “I saw all my friends were going to Gãy and I wanted to go too,” she recalls of her introduction to the scene. “By that time I had been to some good clubs in the city, but Gãy was such a new feeling. It was the music that I would listen to at home by myself. To see all the people dancing to the music I loved was amazing!”

At their third party, Ngô met Bo in the crowd and asked if she’d do the flyer for the following event. She agreed and they became friends and partners. “Then they asked me if I wanted to DJ, and I was like yes! I didn’t have to think about it at all, I was ready to throw out my whole life, I was ready to show off. I’m still not a good DJ, but I have a fun playlist.”

Another DJ who started with Gãy and has gone on to play at other parties is Puppy Ri0t, whose real name is Nguyễn Linh Nhi. She moved to Saigon from Hanoi at 15 and started producing on Garageband and taught herself to DJ on a controller at 20. But she had lost interest for a while until Gãy inspired her to try again. “I started going out in high school. I was pretty much all over the place, hanging out on street corners,” Nguyễn laughs. “I got into the party scene when I was 18 but got bored with it quickly. It was very unchanging until recently with Gãy, which was very inspiring. The parties used to be hosted by expats and foreigners and not a lot of Vietnamese people were there. They all went to vinahouse clubs but I wasn’t interested in that at the time.” Nguyễn—who recently put her spin on vinahouse for a new compilation of Southeast Asian club music titled Redline Legends—says that since she’s started producing music, she’s found a new appreciation for the genre, noting that it has great production quality and a wide range of sounds.

“My first Gãy party was chaotic but beautiful,” Nguyễn recalls. “It was the change in the scene that I wanted. Young and energetic. When I got there, I was trying to get a drink outside and heard them playing music by Shygirl. It was the song I wanted to start whatever my first gig would be. What a coincidence! When we went inside, there were all these fashion students, everything was colorful, people were dancing. I wanted to be a part of it immediately.” She had friends who introduced her to the founders, and she joined in the regular jam sessions where they’d all hang out and play music on the controller at their home. “Trần took an interest in what I was playing even though I really sucked at the time and I played at the next party. A lot of my friends came, which was scary, but they told me I did very well.”

Despite the new challenges brought by the pandemic, Gãy parties continued growing and they soon needed a bigger venue. “Because of safety reasons, we stick to legitimate venues,” Trần says. “In Europe you can be sneaky and the cops will be chill, but in Vietnam I don’t want to put our audience at risk.”

Bars and clubs had closed down and reopened a few times, but people still wanted to party.  During the first year of the pandemic, their parties were whittled down to being held once every two or three months. One of their more memorable parties was the one held at the family-owned backpacker hotel. “I was walking around and the family was just hanging out downstairs, playing cards while selling drinks and nitrous balloons,” Trần recalls. “Because of COVID they didn’t have any guests, so we asked if we could throw a party and they were like, ‘Sure.’ It’s basically just a house, but the ground floor has this huge sound system… which was really bad. We brought our own system and put it at the bottom of the stairs. The hotel is surrounded by all these big bars and clubs blasting their own music super loud. It was fun to compete with them!”

In June 2020, they made a new home at the 350-person capacity club Arcan, a club that previously focused more on psytrance. After Mixmag Asia first wrote about Gãy, the owner reached out and the collective quickly settled in. “We redecorate every time. Every party is a different set design,” Ngô says. “It takes two to three weeks to put one together. We come up with an idea and find artists who can realize it. Once I hung a bunch of construction mesh. It felt like a construction site. Another time we covered the space in graffiti. We had visuals projected onto the ceiling at another one.”

Another perk to moving in is that the owner of Arcan is an accomplished DJ, and during the pandemic, he decided to start teaching lessons. “We send people to him for classes, we can’t teach anyone even though we try,” she laughs.

Gãy also expanded into Hanoi, throwing several parties in the northern city, and the energy level there matches the parties in the south. “I’m a tourist now when I visit Hanoi, but when I played at the Gãy party there, I was very surprised, because people were so reserved when I was a kid,” Nguyễn says. Vu, who lived in Hanoi for five years before moving to Saigon in 2019, says life in Hanoi was still a bit slower when she lived there as well. “Experimental music is stronger there and the scene is tiny. We generally worked lowkey, making music and releasing it online. There are some good clubs there now; it’s a bit more humble than Saigon but still growing.”

The pandemic was not entirely bad for their scene, and the collective actually feels that the lowered frequency of their parties makes each event that much more special. “The scarcity amps up the energy,” says Trần. “People get excited to show up and dye their hair, get all dressed up super fashionably. It became kind of a ritual.” Originally, the parties spread by word of mouth, through people within the collective’s circle. But it’s taken on a life of its own. “It’s still mostly creative types but has become more diverse. There are a lot more students. I’ve even seen some random CEO types, like advertising dudes just hanging out.”

When they started reorienting towards a local approach, the collective also started thinking about inspiring more local producers. “​​I realized that while most of the crowd is Vietnamese or việt kiều, most of the music we play is made by foreigners. So I really wanted to inspire locals to start creating music,” Trần says. This is when the idea for the Nhạc Gãy Tổng Hợp Số 1 compilation started to take form. “We invited producers to make club tracks, because most of the artists we approached were making experimental or pop music. Some people were making stuff but didn’t dare to release it. They’re mostly our friends and some of them are part of the collective. More than half have played at the rave already. I didn’t only want Vietnamese artists to be on the compilation though; I wanted to connect with việt kiều from around the world as well.”

Listen to select tracks from the compilation below:

Trần says they just gave the artists a couple themes and let them express themselves in their own style: “That’s why each track is different. One is baile funk, one is gabber, one is techno. It’s not exactly the type of music we’d play at our raves, but it fits in terms of the type of melting pot, hybrid ideal we have. In a way, it was sort of an experiment to see how each artist would translate the Vietnamese spirit into their music. Some played old stuff, some used language. Larria, Nodey, and I each blended vinahouse into our tracks.”

New events and clubs have also recently emerged, mutually influenced by Gãy, often booking their DJs. Upcycled fashion label TÁ LẢ invited Nguyễn to play at a recent release drop. Error 102 is a new club that attracts a similar crowd and taps DJs from Gãy as well.

“When I was a teenager I wanted to move, to study abroad like some of my friends, but I couldn’t,” Ngô says. “Now I’ve realized there’s a lot of freedom here. Things are not well established yet in everything from fashion to music to design. You can open any business because things are still fresh and new. There are no rules yet.”

Bo agrees: “In the past few years things have grown so fast. It’s very exciting but can also tiring. Especially in fashion, you need to keep up. If you leave for a couple months, when you return it’s completely different.”

Although Vietnam has gone into lockdown for the first time in over a year while the Delta variant rages across Asia, Gãy is ready to go again as soon as possible. And even under lockdown they’ve been no less active, with a full-day livestream on Aug. 29 in addition to the release of their compilation. “The raves are a physical outlet for all of us, but now we’re reaching the rest of the world by releasing music online,” Trần says. “Now maybe people will see us as more than some kids partying and instead see us as building a new identity. It’s still just art and partying, we’re not essential workers or anything, but it has real meaning. We’re bringing people together from across the globe.”

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Contributor: Mike Steyels
Chinese Translation: Olivia Li