HOANG LAM - NERDY DREAMER
- Dung Le
- Mar 19, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 31, 2019
“Come and pass rushly like a late monsoon I'm waiting for you, who are you waiting for?"
The line above was taken from "Mua" (Rain), the very first single published by a soft-indie-rock band called Di Thoai (Weird Conversation). Right the time the song was on-air, Indie Vietnam audience, especially girls, have gave Mua and the band Di Thoai big applauses.
'Mua" is the very original song written by Le Nguyen Hoang Lam - vocalist, guitarist and front-man of Di Thoai. Together with his "sweet but not cheesy" songs, Lam represent for a generation of young indie musician in Saigon.
THE BEGINNING
In my previous blog, I mentioned that Cu first started chasing his dream of becoming a musician when he was at 10th grade. The same for Lam. It seems like high school is most likely the time when the internal instinct and passion of young indie musician start to rebel.
It all started when Lam received 15th birthday gift from his parent: an old acoustic guitar. Lam began to learn how to play it "for flirting with girl" (as he said). The more Lam learn about guitar, the more his became passionate with music. Through oldie rock artists such as The Beatles, Nirvana, Chuck Berry,... Lam found out that he also want to express himself through his original songs.
At his 12th grade, Lam began to write his first songs. Those songs, however, will never be released. As Lam describes, those songs are all about her ex-girlfriends along with shitty love memories that he would rather bury them forever.
Day by day, Lam listened to more oldie music to to improve his taste. Finally, he came up with the first compose that he considered good enough in early 2018. During this time, he also started his band - Di Thoai.
4 GUYS, 1 DREAM
Before Di Thoai, Lam was more likely to be an introvert guy who prefer to write music and sing them alone. However, his mindset changed when he first met Tuan - the bassist of KLAF at that time. As both of them shared a same love with the music of The Beatles, they became soulmates almost immediately. Day by day, they nurtured a dream of a 4-man band play their original songs. Finally, Di Thoai was born in early 2018 with 4 members: Lam (vocalist/guitarist), Tuan (Guitarist), Hoang (bassist) and Sung-oh (Drummer).
Like many other indie artists, Di Thoai silently write, practice and self-record their songs when they first started. They encourage each other to overcome personal's problems to play music and dream about a bright career together.
In November 2018, Lam and Di Thoai published the debut single - Mua. The single - came from a strange band nobody knew before - immediately receive thousand of applauses from the Saigon music community. Concert invitations and recording contracts from labels started come to them. The 4 dreamers put one step closer to their dream: become "someone" someday.
BIGGER AND BIGGER
Calling himself a perfectionism guy, Lam never feel fully satisfy with himself, especially with his music. Lam know that his voice still have weaknesses that will need to fix by practicing. In addition, Lam also wants to step out of his "comfort zone" by challenging himself to write new songs through the lens of a mature man, not just a teenage boy with fanciful dreams as before.
In a near future, Lam and Di Thoai are going to publish a new single and album, which they are currently working on. He promises to bring Indie audiences a completely different music taste from Di Thoai.
"Let's wait for our new single, "Bao" (Storm) coming up this April" - an newest announcement posted on Di Thoai's fanpage.
To hear more from Lam and his band Di Thoai, find them on: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYCtygDTutcE_23nsM1EVfg
Single "Mua": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq6KyZisY2c
To join our Indie music community: https://www.facebook.com/Codongpage/
Hear more music from us: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZvVPPpbvROqgkGHgZ9BBpQ
Catch up with our next story: Thanh Tung - Once a rocker, forever a rocker.
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