Vietnamese musician joins int’l effort to highlight high seas crimes

Hoaprox and artists from 40 countries participated in the "Outlaw Ocean Music Project" in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times investigative reporter Ian Urbina.

The project, which melds music with journalism, grew out of Urbina's 2019 book "The Outlaw Ocean," which details the widespread network of crime and atrocities, including human trafficking, that he documented over five years, crossing five seas and 14 countries.

The project seeks to aims to highlight crimes on the high seas, clarify ocean-related issues and lend urgency to tackling them.

The 23-year-old Vietnamese music producer released an album called "Secrets in the Waves" earlier this month, consisting of eight songs that used field recordings such as a machine-gun fired off the coast of Somalia, chanting of captive deckhands on the South China Sea and other rhythmic sounds collected from the vast and open waters.

"This project is incredibly meaningful and special to us. The blending together of images and sounds in this way makes the overall message behind the stories of The Outlaw Ocean even more profound," Hoaprox wrote in statement.

Beside EDM, the Outlaw Ocean Music Project also features other genres like ambient, classical and hip hop music of more than 250 international artists.

Hoaprox, aka Nguyen Thai Hoa, is a native of Ho Chi Minh City. He started learning to produce music on a computer when he was 14 and decided to make a career of it just a year later. He’s been able to produce different sub-genres of EDM including progressive house, trap, dubstep, future house, bigroom and tropical house. His musical style has been described as catchy, colorful and trendy.

In 2018, his track "I Can’t Find You" was among Asia’s 15 best Asian electronic tracks featured in "Billboard Presents Electric Asia Volume Two".

[A video of Hoaprox talking about his track "Secrets In The Waves."]