Concert «Saigon Soul Revival: Chốn Ta Về»

   The soul, funk and R&B that filled Saigon in the late 1960s usually reaches listeners as a reissue of an old tape. In Hội An it gets played live, by the same musicians who have just committed that sound to a new record, on a stage the town has only recently gained. The album landed on streaming a day earlier, and here it is performed in full.

   Chốn Ta Về — "the place we return to" — is the third studio album by Saigon Soul Revival, out on Saigon Supersound, the label that has spent years reissuing Vietnamese music of the 1960s and 70s. It was recorded and mixed fully analogue in Ho Chi Minh City between 20 October and 24 November 2025, produced by label founder Jan Hagenkötter. Eleven tracks, and only one pre-1975 song is covered: Hoạ Mi Ca by composer Mộng Long. Traditional instruments carry more of the record than before — bamboo flute sáo trúc and xylophone đàn t'rưng played by Đinh Nhật Minh, the đàn tranh zither and đàn bầu monochord by Nguyễn Thị Hải Phượng, and saxophone by Trần Mạnh Tuấn, while guitar and the đàn nguyệt moon lute stay in the same pair of hands, those of Indy Laville.

   Worth knowing
The album was trailed by two singles, Khúc Tình Yên Vui and Trúc Xinh
After the band, Bamboogie takes over the decks with vinyl funk, disco and soul
The early tier is capped at 50 places
This is the second of three Vietnamese nights before the band heads to the UK and Europe in late October

   The night suits anyone who likes soul and funk played on live instruments, and equally anyone in Hội An used to hearing nothing louder than acoustic covers in an Old Town café. If you want Saigon's golden-era repertoire as a performance rather than background music, you are in the right room: the venue stands on the An Hội side, across the water from the ancient town.

   The band formed in Ho Chi Minh City in 2016 and has been bringing pre-1975 Saigon rock, soul and nhạc vàng back to the stage ever since. Their debut Họa Âm Xưa (2019) was nominated for the UK's Songlines Music Awards, the song Đám Cưới Nhà Em features in the HBO series The Sympathizer, the video for Ai Thật Lòng Yêu Ai was taken into the permanent museum collection of the Philharmonie de Paris, US radio station KEXP recorded a live session with them, and one of their tracks went into the James Bond video game 007 First Light.

   OTA Playhouse is a new stage in Hội An and this concert falls in its opening days. The band goes on at 21:00 for about ninety minutes, and the rest of the night belongs to the turntables. Tickets are handled through an online form: pick the number of places, pay by QR transfer and attach the confirmation.

   Three Vietnamese dates and the group flies out to Europe. Come and hear how Saigon sounded half a century ago, and what that sound has grown into.