On the third floor of The Roof, at 1A Vo Nguyen Giap in Da Nang, the cameras are set up so that a DJ from central Vietnam can play a live set, have it filmed, and send it out past the city. Da Nang Community Radio went live on 27 November 2024. The city's underground scene is young and small, and the people behind the channel started it anyway, because central Vietnam had no platform of its own.
An audiovisual channel for central Vietnam
Da Nang Community Radio describes itself as an audiovisual radio channel that platforms the sounds and artists moving central Vietnam. The "audiovisual" part is the point: it is video-first, with sets filmed and posted to its YouTube channel, where they outlast the night. It launched in collaboration with Secret Guests Asia and The Roof Da Nang, the rooftop venue that gives it a home. The station has never oversold the city. As Da Nang Leisure put it around the launch, Da Nang's spaces for underground electronic music remain limited, and the channel exists to change that.
Who played the launch
For a station this new, the launch is still its biggest night. The inaugural broadcast on 27 November 2024 brought Swiss DJ Alex Nantaya in as the special international guest, alongside a run of local and regional selectors: Thamz of Blends, Kaze of PMC and Gatosano, Wander of FlopFlip, and Bipolar Bear of Sonic and Badaboum, all out of Da Nang, with Special T of Rumor making the trip up from Hoi An. That is a young roster, and an honest one. The deeper international guest book is still being written.
What Da Nang gets from it
The work is local first. Da Nang Community Radio gives central Vietnam's DJs something the city did not have before: a platform, and a bridge to the wider scene beyond Vietnam. The launch ran an open call for DJ applications, so anyone in the city could put themselves forward. Because it films and posts every session, a set outlasts the night it was played, and an emerging selector in Da Nang leaves with something anyone, anywhere, can pull up later.
Part of the coalition
That ambition is what makes Da Nang Community Radio a natural part of Airtime Asia: the independent, decentralized coalition of underground radio stations from across the continent. The tie runs closer at Da Nang than anywhere else in the network. Secret Guests Asia, one of the partners that built the channel, is the company behind Airtime Asia, and the man who runs it, Myroslaw Bytz, founded Da Nang Community Radio. Airtime Asia is not arriving in Da Nang as an outside festival; its own director helped build the city's station. From the 13th to the 16th of August 2026, the coalition gathers across Da Nang and Hoi An, on the doorstep of the room where central Vietnam's signal began.
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