By December 2025, Hanoi Rock City (HRC), one of Vietnam’s most beloved grassroots music venues, is to close its doors for good.
The official reason was the end of a 15-year lease. However, the final blow has come 6 months early. A neighbouring building started demolition, ultimately damaging HRC’s structure, possibly beyond repair. Planned shows have either been postponed or cancelled. The venue owners released a statement that there was hope to rebuild to have a final farewell.
But is there any reason to spend valuable resources for a few months only to demolish it again? Deep down everyone knows this is the end and the end, when it came, was sudden—and devastating.
Having been in Vietnam for only 8 years, I don’t claim to fully understand the impact of HRC on Vietnamese people, but my 30 years in the music industry gives me a different perspective about this closure. I feel both sad and frustrated.
HRC was founded by a group of Vietnamese student who bonded during their studies in the UK and dreamed of bringing the spirit of the British music scene back to Hanoi. That dream, against many odds, became a reality. For 15 years, HRC nurtured a generation of artists who might otherwise have gone unheard.
HRC was never just a venue. It was a rare and vital cultural incubator—one of the few places in Vietnam where independent artists could find a stage, a community, and the freedom to experiment.
The loss of HRC is more than sentimental; it speaks to a broader and more troubling trend. Around the world, music ecosystems rely on grassroots venues as the starting point of every cultural movement. Without The Cavern Club, there would be no Beatles. Without the 100 Club or CBGB, punk might never have broken through. These spaces are where artists cut their teeth, where genres are born, and where communities coalesce.
Vietnam is no exception. While the mainstream music industry in the country has increasingly leaned into influencer-driven marketing, polished visuals, and spectacle over substance, HRC carved out space for something more authentic. Here, indie musicians wrote their own songs, played their own instruments, and created their own shows. They rejected the glitz of modern V-Pop in favour of raw expression. This was their world.
Artists like Ngọt, Thái Vũ, and Vũ Thanh Vân all emerged from this ecosystem. So did southern bands like Cá Hồi Hoang and Chillies, who found in HRC not only a performance venue, but a validation of their craft. These musicians carry the torch of Trịnh Công Sơn—Vietnam’s most revered songwriter—more faithfully than today’s mainstream pop stars.
But venues like HRC are vanishing. The reason is painfully simple: money. Landowners can earn far more by replacing music spaces with retail, parking, or high-rise developments. Without government backing or philanthropic support, small venues don’t stand a chance. And while there’s no shortage of public figures claiming to support “the youth” and “the arts,” the rhetoric often masks an insistence on profitability. Culture becomes a branding tool, not a cause. The landowners where HRC stood, couldn’t even fulfil the promised time for a proper farewell.
What Vietnam’s music industry truly needs (and any music industry for that matter) is more HRCs—intimate, affordable, artist-led venues that serve as launchpads for creativity. These spaces are essential not just for the artists who perform in them, but for the entire cultural landscape. They allow young musicians to take risks, to fail, and to find their voice. They foster collaboration, experimentation, and community. And they often do so on a shoestring budget.
There has long been a perceived split in Vietnam’s music geography: Hanoi as the artistic heart, and Saigon as the commercial engine. Yet this dichotomy has softened over the years, thanks in no small part to HRC. The venue became a bridge, where sonic boundaries were pushed and new partnerships formed. Genres that had no name elsewhere found a home on its stage. It took 15 years, but a new generation of artists was born—and HRC was their cradle.
The hope now lies with the next generation. But visionary leaders like Vo Duc Anh—one of the founding members of HRC, who juggled full-time work, family, and the immense demands of running a cultural space, are few and far between. They're tired. Understandably so.
The question is: who will step up next? HRC’s immediate team are young and hungry but also inexperienced and now seems too early for them to carry the burden of the financial responsibilities. Sadly, no qualified candidate comes to mind.
If there’s one truth the story of HRC teaches us, it’s this: every great movement in music starts small. Lose the small, and you risk losing the future.
To end this op-ed with hope, a simple message to the next generation: create or find your new home. “Rock n roll” was a youth movement, not just a music revolution.
And to my generation: We need to wake up. We might not be killing the golden goose, but we certainly aren’t feeding it.