The search for sound in Saigon leads to HỢP 合 – where house music has found an unlikely sanctuary in our city of perpetual motion. At this dramatic rooftop spot, DJ WAAI and his Người Nhà Collective have crafted something that transcends the typical nightclub template. Tonight, as the last rays of sun filter through the city’s endless horizon of apartment blocks, HỢP 合 is about to demonstrate exactly why it’s become more than just another club in Saigon’s ever-shifting nightlife scene. And it starts, as these things often do, with a piano loop that’s about to change everything.
The piano wanders in as if from a different song before it’s trained by the bass drum. Caught up in the drum’s rhythm the piano brightens, rolls and revives until its locked into a loop – the kind that has parishioners going ape-shit in those videos of Baptist ministers preaching or traders on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade in the 80s, their bodies twisted into primal shapes as they scream buy and sell orders in an ecstatic frenzy – each loop feeling a little more intense, a fraction more urgent, and only 30 seconds of Marshall Jefferson’s ‘Move Your Body’ has passed.
It just gets you.
The music. It just gets you. And it doesn’t let go. “One day it just came to me, and it never left,” DJ WAAI squints, through shades-obscured eyes, the memory still fresh, even though he can’t quite recall which song it was.
Marshall Jefferson’s ‘Move Your Body’ is a good example of the kind of gateway drug he’s talking about – once it hits your bloodstream, there’s no going back. “I rarely leave that track out of my sets, even now,” he adds.
There’s a visceral kick to the track as persuasive as the drum, something inexplicable, but irrefutable. When they first heard it – on cassette tape – Marshall Jefferson’s coworkers at Trax Records, and even the label’s founder Larry Sherman, were said to have been unimpressed with it when they first heard it in 1985 – but when DJs like Ron Trent began dropping it into Chicago’s nascent house clubs like Music Box the reaction led to its release the following year.
“Gimme That House Music, Set Me Free…”
It’s kind of a manifesto for house music itself – the first track to deploy a piano sample, one that was recorded slower in the studio, pitched up for the parties, with an incendiary vocal sample: “House music,” the voice prowls, “gimme that house music, set me free…”
You can picture the scene in Chicago. It’s the same one DJ WAAI describes happening in places like Hop – where we’re catching up as the sun sets right now beyond the nondescript apartment blocks on the horizon. It’s a sight that he adores: “A big sound, booze, and people losing it to the groove,” he grins.
That groove has been with him since the beginning. Compulsive creator DJ WAAI cut his teeth as a reggae and dub DJ, chasing those earth-shaking sound systems that Hanoi’s Skank The Tank and Sub Elements collectives paid homage to circa 2010.
By 2014, his sound had evolved, embracing wider dance territories while keeping those basslines front and center. That same year found him at Paris’s “big, crazy” Techno Parade, commanding 350,000 people alongside DJ Jase and DJ Jin.
These days he’s content to direct music and culture programs, like his live-jazz oriented CỘI Saigon – a warmly-lit the wood-heavy space, where cellos and vintage pendulum clocks adorn walls lined with carefully curated vinyl, permeated with the sounds of Daisuke Yasukochi and Mike Le working their magic at this essential stop on the city’s acoustic jazz circuit.
A Way Of Life
Or he’ll be pulling together his own collectives, like the Người Nhà Collective formed with Dekay and Fanglanx – now the beating heart of HỢP 合’s resident crew.
“DJing is more than a job; it’s a way of life,” Dekay concurs. “I think, at some point, like DJ WAAI, I fell in love with sound and the way it connects people.”
“That’s the thing,” Fanlangx nods, “the connection feels deeper and more meaningful. We get to create this space that’s free of judgement where you’re freed of inhibitions too.”
“I’m not a doctor,” DJ WAAI continues – stating the obvious, “But I’m certain that listening to music is one of the best things you can do for your mind, body and soul.”
Nights, like the ones they host at HỢP 合, feel authentic and organic too – a symbiotic relationship between the DJ and crowd. “You’re always observing,” Fanlangx nods, “playing with the tempo to keep the energy up, mixing genres and styles to keep the audience captivated, building moments of tension and release…”
“I go in with 30% of what I’m going to play roughly planned out,” DJ WAAI explains, “then you read the crowd, and increase the momentum accordingly, and make sure the 70% is more fire that even the part you had all planned out.”
“Yeah, something like walking the line between the expected and the spontaneous,” Fanlangx shrugs. “Plan the core elements and leave lots of room for improvisation.”
That Moment When Everything Clicks
“And when everything clicks — when your track drops at just the right moment, and you feel the room explode with energy — that’s when it becomes pure emotion,” Dekay joins in.
Ask them to describe HỢP 合 and three different visions emerge: “It looks like a home, with curated house music, and it tastes like a meal your mom cooked that you’ll never forget,” Fanlangx laughs. “HỢP 合sounds like a club, and feels resolutely neo-retro – if you know what I mean – and it tastes…like a cherry!” DJ WAAI opines. “Nah, HỢP 合 sounds like a soulful record, and it feels like paradise,” Dekay corrects them.
Later that night, as Marshall Jefferson’s piano loop starts to wind its way through the speakers, you can see it happening again – that same conversion moment DJ WAAI spoke about, when the music first got him. Bodies begin to twist and turn, not unlike those Chicago traders, as the bass drum kicks in. Another batch of souls about to discover their own gateway drug, all set free by that house music.
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