Concert «Saigon Soul Revival: Chốn Ta Về»

   The band's third studio album lands digitally on the day of the show, and the same evening the whole record gets played live. Saigon Soul Revival brings back the soul, funk and rhythm and blues that Saigon ran on in the late 1960s, with a guitar and a đàn nguyệt moon lute in the same pair of hands — and the organisers call this their biggest Da Nang show so far.

   Chốn Ta Về, «the place we return to», was recorded in Ho Chi Minh City in late 2025 and comes out on Saigon Supersound, the label that reissues Vietnamese music of the 1960s and 70s; label founder Jan Hagenkötter produced it. Traditional instruments carry more of this record than of the earlier ones: the sáo trúc bamboo flute and đàn t'rưng xylophone of Đinh Nhật Minh, the đàn tranh zither and đàn bầu monochord of Nguyễn Thị Hải Phượng, and a solo by jazz saxophonist Trần Mạnh Tuấn.

   The short version

• — Eleven tracks; Khúc Tình Yên Vui and Trúc Xinh came out first as singles
• — Hoạ Mi Ca by Mộng Long is the album's only song from the pre-1975 repertoire
• — DJ Red opens the night with a set built on old Vietnamese melodies
• — The band takes the stage at 22:00
• — Twelve British and European dates follow, from 23 October to 6 November

   You will get the most out of the evening if you like soul and funk played on live instruments, or if you are curious how half-century-old Saigon pop sits on a modern rhythm section. The venue is a bar in the An Thượng area rather than a concert hall, and the band asks you to bring shoes you can dance in.

   Saigon Soul Revival formed in 2016 and has been digging up what Saigon sounded like before 1975 ever since. The debut album Họa Âm Xưa (2019) was nominated for the UK's Songlines Music Awards, the track Đám Cưới Nhà Em appears in the HBO series The Sympathizer, and the video for Ai Thật Lòng Yêu Ai was taken into the permanent museum collection of the Philharmonie de Paris. KEXP has recorded a live session with the band as well.

   Neither an entry price nor a sales link was published with the announcement, so it is worth checking the terms with the venue.

   After the Vietnamese dates the musicians leave for Europe. Come and hear what Saigon sounded like half a century ago, and what that sound has grown into.