Q&A: An Evocative Sound, Effortlessly Delivered by Chanpan
CHANPAN IS CRAFTING AN EXHILARATING WORLD OF SOUND AND WE ARE ALL FORTUNATE TO BE A PART OF IT. The New York City-based trio burst onto the music scene 18 months ago and have offered only the most enjoyable sonic experience so far. Their first two singles, “Jungle” and “ooweeooweeo” are equally hypnotic but have distinct sounds, from the instrumentation, and composition to vocals. Yet, this seamless ability to transition between genres while creating a signature sound makes Chanpan remarkable.
Chanpan is an emerging NYC Asian-American band composed of Grace Dumdaw, identical twins, Lance and Matthew Tran. United by their shared experiences of growing up in middle America and working in their family restaurants, their bond extends far beyond music and simultaneously adds depth to it. This deep-rooted connection fosters a profound mutual understanding, allowing them to create harmonious sounds that resonate with authenticity. Through their music, Chanpan weaves together the threads of their collective experiences, crafting a unique sonic tapestry that echoes their special backgrounds and perspectives. Their name itself, further proof of a beautiful partnership as Chanpan is a combination of the Chinese pronunciation of Lance and Matthew’s surname 陳 and part of Grace’s Kachin name “Seng Hkam Pan”.
Their lyricism is full of unbridled emotions and uninhibited storytelling that is sometimes heavily contemplative but works perfectly with their fun and lighthearted instrumentation because their approach to their overall artistry is not bound to any norms or expectations of what their sound ‘should’ be. ‘Jungle’ starts off with a mesmerizing orchestral sound and slowly crescendos into a drum-filled electronic sound, it is transcendent, and intense but is still fun. “ooweeooweeoo” is chaotic in the best way and the beat is an instant happy-pill.
On the band’s newest singles “air ride” Dumdaw’s voice shimmers over dreamy strings played by Matthew, sweet chimes and pulsating drums from Lance, while singing about their struggles with mental health, maintaining relationships and feeling like a burden to everyone around themself. “❥attack” sees the band offering more of a bossa-nova sound while the beat and the lyrical content match in their turbulence. With combined streams of close to 400k on their two previous singles, recognition from Vogue and New York Times, the band will perform their very first headline show at Red Pavillion in Brooklyn on July 19th.
Luna had the opportunity to sit and discuss the trio’s collaborative process, experimenting with different compositions and sounds, and paying homage to their cultural heritage with their artistry. Read more of our conversation below.
LUNA: Can each of you please introduce yourselves and share a little bit about your role in the band?
LANCE TRAN: The three of us are all involved in the making of the music but the songwriting is pretty split down the middle depending on the process at the time. Matthew and I cover the instrumentation while Grace chooses the melodies and the words. Other times, the songwriting process is a free-for-all. I play drums live, but in the DAW and when writing music I write chords, instrumental melodies. In our earlier days, we were self-producing all of our demos.
MATTHEW TRAN: We kind of do everything between us. Grace plays piano, Lance and I do sing as well, Lance also plays the keys and some other instruments. The same with me.
LUNA: You often experiment with different genres and sounds between your songs and even within the composition and production of the songs themselves, what makes you create music in the manner that you do?
L. TRAN: Our sonic choices and creative freedom are a reflection of three people with diverse and expansive music tastes. We are pretty non-discriminatory listeners and we are not interested in being conventional. For the upright bass in our previous singles, I have always been obsessed with that sound. It was a nod to Herbie Hancock because we all love jazz so much. I loved watching Jojo Mayers beating jungle drums with his hands and I was obsessed with trying to replicate that as a child. For other sounds, Hill, our manager, would point out that we liked using the bell kit and it would remind me of how I used to play that instrument in middle school. Our sound choices are usually made on a whim. We are always just trying out the thing that has not been tried before.
LUNA: How do you balance the heaviness of your lyricism with your vibrant and lighthearted sound?
DUMDAW: It really helps that Matthew and Lance lay down the instruments because they determine what the song is going to feel like first. I can write anything on top of anything, I usually just tap into how I'm feeling, I will ask the room what they think I should write about. What is everyone feeling? What's the mood? And so the lyrics don't always need to match the energy of the song. Sometimes they do come together really well. But I don't feel restricted by the sound. I kind of take in what feels right at the moment. Other times that ends up being a really upbeat song about being really depressed, which is something that I struggle with, and a lot of people I know struggle with. Most of our lyrics are about struggles of being young being in this world where the future is bleak and just unknown at this point. We also talk about living in a capitalist society, all of these things are always affecting us and our emotions, so those little topics come into the music. But beneath all of that we still get up everyday and want to have a good time. We want to have fun and make the most of our youth.
LUNA: I want us to also speak about the things that influence your world of sound. It's a different thing to have a sound, but to create a soundscape is something that I feel that your production process and creative process takes on.
L. TRAN: A lot of Kpop and Pink Pantheress in terms of what is modern. Looking back, it is definitely jazz. I feel like every Nintendo soundtrack played a big role in my journey. Video game music was the first thing we played on the piano just using our ears, it was amazing to see how that music came out as a product of its environment. The tools they were using were non-traditional in terms of texture but made such a unique soundscape.
M. TRAN: I grew up not listening to a ton of pop music until later in life. I was interested in alternative music, rock music, R&B and instrumentals that go into production, which shaped what I think is cool out of a song. I think about what's interesting in chord progressions and how to structure songs. Artists like Stevie Wonder for example, are ones that I look up to—I’m a terrible jazz musician, but I'm a big fan of it. You might notice a lot of the underlying chords and melodies in all of our songs take a lot from that genre and bossa nova. Even just seeing live music during summer here in New York, and walking past Madison Square Park and seeing a jazz combo playing with a person on bass, another on drums and the other on a horn. I feel like that's some of the moments when I feel most inspired and put me into a songwriting groove.
DUMDAW: I feel like I'm always trying to bring out a melody that is not expected and has a sort of dissonance from the beat. I'm really heavily influenced by folk music. I'm from Louisiana so I grew up around jazz which is a great foundation for me. I think a lot of my influences are more visual. I handle the visual aspects such as the music videos for Chanpan. When I'm writing a song, I have a visual first, and I build off of that. The topics that I write about are things that affect me all the time. I grew up with a lot of conflict and war. And knowledge of war, from a really young age. So that has always been on my mind and omnipresent. When I write I ask myself how I am going to bring the feeling of that and that topic into the song without really being too deep into it or making it too melancholic. That is where “jungle”, the lyrics and the feeling of it are influenced by visions of war and having a red side and the blue side, and there's just a lot of chaos in between. The lyrics there are, ‘I need to get them out of the jungle.’ There's also a happier side to our music where I am imagining the world that I want, where we're all united, nature provides, and we are determined. So there's the idea of the world that we want in my head. And I think Chanpan can address both sides and create a soundscape that encapsulates both.
LUNA: You’re Asian-American artists in the United States and your band name is a way for you to embrace your identity or identities. Is there any way that your cultural backgrounds, heritage and ethnicities, influence your musicality or artistry?
DUMDAW: It absolutely influences everything. I am Kachin, which is an ethnic tribe in the north of Northern Myanmar, near China. And that ethnic identity has been a very important part of my life because Myanmar is home to the longest ongoing civil war in the world. And there's a bunch of different ethnic groups at war with an oppressive government. So that is a very big priority, and having a platform and wanting to be a good representative of my people, because there aren't many Kachin people with platforms who influenced me. And I think it's important to consider that whenever I'm making music, because when the world hears Chanpan I feel like the world is hearing a Kachin person's music, and I want to honor my people with the sound that I'm making and the topics that I'm talking about. So that is always at the forefront of my decisions but that also comes with a lot of obstacles and boundaries and baggage. Kachin people are also really Christian. American and Swedish missionaries brought Christianity to us in the late 1800s and now it’s almost like 99% of our population is Christian. That is a challenge for me as someone who is a queer non-binary artist in 2024, who wants to talk about subject matter that is usually more taboo for that community.
However, it has forced me to express myself without fearing judgement from my own community, but I also acknowledge that using my platform and my music to speak for my community is very important. Essentially, that is the tightrope that I walk on but I am just glad Chanpan gives me the opportunity to use my voice to speak about the experiences of my people.
M. TRAN: It is so much of our identities that I think it would be impossible to keep the two separate or not be influenced. Even as individuals Lance and I, and our dad’s family all came from Vietnam. They came as refugees on boats in the 70s, and if life was better back home, we might not be in the US right now. We are making living despite the situation that our people have been put into. Where we grew up as immigrants and refugees, having a different culture but also being exposed to things that we had never been exposed to before. Our dad knew and listened to Michael Jackson but we were not put on to rock records like everyone around us, for example. As a result, we have an eclectic kind of music taste and it mirrors our experiences growing up in this country.
We are lovers and appreciators of a lot of music from around the world. And as listeners, we also want to infuse a lot of different music from all over the world into our own while giving acknowledgement to them, too.
L. TRAN: We're all Asian people who grow up in places with barely any Asian people. So I feel that's also something hyper specific to us that we have in common. We do not have the California Asian experience where everyone around you is also Asian. So maybe we avoided the EDM, rave influence. I think also, our backgrounds are also why we exist as a unit. I met Grace in 2018, in Philadelphia, and we really connected because of our shared values and principles that come out of our shared background. So obviously, now I think all of us have principles and attitudes about the world that are so strong that they come out in every aspect, not just music is just one of those places where it comes out, right. We go to protests together and we talk about this stuff all the time and we do it. You know, whether we are representatives with our music or whether we do volunteer work in our spare time, our identity just in so many different capacities in our lives.
LUNA: How do you feel about your debut performance and what are your hopes for Chanpan beyond your upcoming show?
DUMDAW: We are so excited. We have so much lined up, and we have so many dreams and hopes for the band. This first headline show marks the beginning of something and there has been so much effort and energy put into everything so we cannot wait to present it to our audience. We have two new songs that are very different from our previous songs. I can’t get my mind off of world domination, we just plan to bring Chanpan to the rest of the world. We want to go back to Asia and bring our music there, and be accepted back into our community after being in the US for our whole lives. We just have so much excitement and hope that this is the beginning of hopefully very long careers for us.
