A new week on Sound Travels means a new theme and this week we're getting retro again, this time for some hidden pop treasures from Southeast Asia. Today we started it all out in Vietnam.
Music from the late 60's and early 70's in the noontime feature, Vietnamese rock and soul from a nice comp put out by one of my favorite labels, Sublime Frequencies. These cats are some serious purveyors of global sounds, digging deep for sounds from scenes that barely were. Going to countries to find music that wasn't big at the time, nor now. A labor of love, guided by a passion for its history and I imagine, that this music not be lost to the vissitudes of time and market-driven fads.
That said, they've got a nice clutch of new releases and comps from unheralded scenes, Vietnam apperently one of them. This one, Saigon Rock & Soul: Vietnamese Classic Tracks, is pure psychedelic gold. All the songs are gems on this comp; a bit rough on the sound quality side but that can be forgiven given these songs' obscurity and the fact that for all intensive purposes, this work they've taken on is essentially cultural musical anthropology, a musical connection that is deeper than just digging for the recordings, but also digging the scene. This is what I played for you today...
Carol Kim "Cái Trâm Em Cài"
Bang Chan "Nh?ng ?óm M?t Ho? Châu"
L? Thu "Sao Bi?n"
Thành Mái "Tóc Mai S?i V?n S?i Dài"