Shoulder pads, big perms, analog synths, and drum machines. This is what characterized much of the 80s and 90s Vietnamese New Wave scene in Southern California. Covers of popular songs and original music blasted from boomboxes at house parties and from the speakers of customized cars as a young immigrant community tried to find itself in its new American home; seeking a way to bond together and express their identity to other communities.
Demonslayer, who’s performing at our Block Party this weekend, was a young boy when this whole thing started, and it was his uncles and older cousins who introduced him to these sounds. They weren’t the stereotypical “model minorities;” they were smoking weed and blasting music from custom sound systems in their modded cars, they were getting into fights with racists and getting lit at house parties. “They were just super rebellious,” he recalls. “I grew up thinking they were crazy and cool.” He didn’t know it yet, but those electronic sounds and moods would characterize his musical tastes when he grew up to become a producer and DJ himself.
The music was spread at house parties, where older and newer Viet immigrants would gather to meet, and they would trade tapes and dub them off one another (dubbing, for you youngins, is the act of taping something onto cassette, usually from another tape or the radio). There were Viet radio and TV stations that broadcast the sounds in Orange County, where the scene was incubated and where the Viet community was largely concentrated. The television stations reached other parts of California, including nearby LA and Inland Empire. “Music stores were everywhere, there’d be like five shops to a block selling VHS, tapes, and CDs,” says Demonslayer—whose real name is Dan Ngyuen. “It was such a big thing that even restaurants and water refill stores would have a section for music.
Although Demonslayer was too young to be a part of the scene while it was really popping, Demonslayer always kept fond memories of those good old days. The music was a mix of whatever was popular at the time, and the Italo disco, Eurodance, synthpop that he’s chosen to focus on was just one element of the culture, which he now refers to as Vwave. This electronic-oriented element in the music began in the early 80s and had fallen out of popularity by the mid-90s when Viet-American artists moved on to other genres that were trending. When Demonslayer became a DJ, he started going back to look for these sounds as a way to introduce Vietnamese culture into his sets at clubs and festivals.
To rediscover the music, Demonslayer first started with his uncles’ collection, but the quality of the tapes was terrible. To find a bigger selection with higher quality he started going to the remaining shops. He’d dig through stacks of stuff, but usually he found gems by asking owners if they had anything in back. They often had boxes of the stuff that they never thought they’d get rid of. These tapes were regularly very low quality as well, since bootlegging was something of an epidemic in that era. Sometimes he’d find a tape that he’d been searching for for years, but after closer inspection realized it was just a bootleg. “You’ve got to clean the tape and check if it’s warped or if it’s a bootleg of a bootleg. Sometimes the tape would be covered in plastic with high-quality graphics printed on it, but looking at the back through the plastic, the other side is written by hand under the sticker,” he laughs. “I found a couple of gems and then I’d press play and it’s garbled or something else entirely.” Lately, he’s found serious collectors to buy tapes from who organize their music properly and take good care of them.
To make these songs playable in DJ sets and enjoyable to new audiences with higher fidelity standards, Demonslayer started making edits. He converts the tapes to digital files and then separates the tracks out, cleaning up the drums and synths and vocals. Sometimes he adds new elements and switches up the arrangement so that it progresses like modern dance tracks. He’s even been working on real club edits, taking these tracks and mixing them with modern styles and tricks, but wants to focus on releasing the music that’s true to the era since he’s put so much much time and effort into collecting them and has so many tracks that he wants to introduce to the world.
Vwave never made it to Vietnam because when the music was blossoming, many styles of music were banned. By the time the country started to open up and allow new music to be imported and played in the early 2000s, that moment had already passed. So when Demonslayer drops it in sets, he says the crowd lights up: “The younger kids, like 18-30, they’re really vibing with it because they’ve never heard anything like it. It all has Western chords and sensibilities, so even though the lyrics are in Vietnamese, it’s nothing like Vietnamese music.” The imagery is also totally new to Vietnamese people, since they skipped over that era of style and visuals as well. But these were important parts of the culture, and to make sure that this element was represented there as well, he created a new zine that features his favorite cassette tape covers. Demonslayer himself actually used to dress in the style as a pre-teen before his rave and hip hop days, rolling up his sleeves and pinning his acid-washed jeans. “I even had a perm once when I was eight years old. I don’t remember it but I’ve seen pictures,” he laughs.
