I brought my small ukulele to Germany as a way to hold on to a bit of Hanoi’s sunshine. But between my study schedule and the cold weekends, the instrument mostly sat silent in a corner of my room.
One evening, I opened OVFRIENDS and joined a chat group for overseas Vietnamese. Seeing everyone chatting so lively, I impulsively started a livestream and strummed a few random melodies.
Among the viewers that day was a French guy. He didn’t say much, just listened quietly. The next morning, I received a message: “Your melody is beautiful. Mind if I try adding some electronic beats to it?” Attached was an audio file. His arrangement gave my ukulele’s sound an unusual depth.
We started exchanging musical snippets back and forth every day. I’m in Germany, he’s in France. We’ve never met, but our debut album is almost finished. People call this the benefit of technology; I call it a miracle