Bob Dylan played China. Next stop: VIETNAM.

Music legend Bob Dylan performed in China and heads to Vietnam to play for the first time ever. He played in Beijing on Wednesday, April 6 and in Shanghai on Friday, April 8. Choosing a less controversial path than Bjork did with Tibet sentiments at her China show, he apparently “’charged through’ his set list… leaving out any banter with the audience between the songs…” according to The Telegraph. His set included “Tangled up in Blue” and “Simple Twist of Fate” but intentionally void were popular protest tunes “Blowin' in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. As expected, especially with foreign acts, a set list and program have to be submitted and approved beforehand and during this extremely sensitive time of crackdowns on activists, artists and writers, it was probably a good move on Dylan’s part to keep things kosher.

Similar to China, Dylan’s set will have to be pre-approved for his upcoming Ho Chi Minh City show today, April 10. However, as there may be a stronger connection among the Vietnamese with his romantic anti-war songs along with the special tribute to Trinh Cong Son, it will be interesting to see what Dylan's set will actually consist of today.



During these exciting moments of massive progress for Vietnam economically and culturally, indeed “The Times They Are-A Changin’”. Hopefully different than China, this song will actually get stage play!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCWdCKPtnYE

Onra on Vietnam

Our resident DJ Jase was mentioned by Parisian beat maker  Onra in an interview on Juno Plus.  Onra grabbed the attention of many when he after the critically acclaimed 2007 release of Chinoiseries, an album strung together using samples from old Chinese and Vietnamese records he found while crate digging in Vietnam.

L'Usine Music | Vietnamese Electronic Music Production

A few years ago if you asked us what was the local Vietnamese electronic music scene was like we would say 'what scene?' or 'say what?!'.  Lately we are seeing local interest with young Vietnamese making their own electronic beats other than terribly remixed rap- techno songs.  The most recent discovery is the cre­ation of the first Viet­namese dub­step track pro­duced by a local producer called Solid Machine 666. Solid Machine 666 was a VJ on local music channel Yan TV.

This marks a whole new excit­ing move­ment in pro­duc­tion scene for Saigon. This means there is interest in bass culture music from local Vietnamese and they are diving right into it creating, creating and creating.

Here are some tunes pro­duced by local talents

I Rape Your Ear by solidmachine666