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Hanoi (AP) - The National Convention Center in Hanoi is filled to the last seat.
4,000 Vietnamese clap and stretch their arms in the air as Boney M. lead singer Liz Mitchell starts the evergreen "Rivers of Babylon".
"You're going to make me cry, that's great!" She calls out to the crowd, which is singing along the chorus.
That was in 2016. In the meantime, the YouTube clip for the performance of the disco formation founded by Frank Farian in the 1970s has been clicked more than 50,000 times.
That shows the success that the band enjoys in Vietnam to this day.
The enthusiasm for songs from “Daddy Cool” to “Ma Baker” to “Rivers of Babylon” is unbroken in the country on the Mekong.
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Two more examples: At another Boney-M. concert in March 2019, several happy fans jumped on stage and danced with the band to the tune of the catchy tune "Rasputin".
Thomas Anders' Hanoi gig with the super hits by Modern Talking was also completely sold out five years ago, although the tickets cost around 40 euros - a proud sum in the Southeast Asian country.
When Anders starts the super hit “Cheri Cheri Lady”, there is no holding back in the hall.
The audience is no longer very young, rather people came who grew up with the hits of Dieter Bohlen and Thomas Anders.
The clip for this has been viewed more than 150,000 times.
“I'm crazy about modern talking,” says Pham My An, a 47-year-old fashion designer who has seen both bands perform in her home country.
«To see Thomas Anders again in Hanoi ...», she beams dreamily.
"He still has the power to put me in a good mood and make me dance to this familiar, passionate music."
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Boney M., however, was one of the only international bands whose music made it to Vietnam in the 1980s.
"They were the pioneers who conquered the Vietnamese market and stole the hearts of Vietnamese music lovers," says Pham My An.
Then other German pop greats came along, in addition to Modern Talking, for example, Sandra (“Maria Magdalena”).
The shiny, extravagant disco outfits from this period also found an unusually large following.
But how did the western sounds get to the Mekong?
After years of bloody war with several million dead, Vietnam was not reunified until 1976.
In the 1980s, many people in the communist country were still suffering from the consequences of the conflict.
Many Vietnamese born in the 1960s went to study in the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries, where they were confronted with Western music for the first time - especially from Germany.
In 1978, Boney M. even performed in Moscow - but they were not allowed to play the song "Rasputin" there, some people still remember stories.
“The students then brought the music back to Vietnam and let it play all the time.
It is still a tradition today to play this music at almost all weddings, ”says Bui Xuan Loc, the singer of a popular indie band from Hanoi.
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According to local media, Boney M.'s huge fan base in Vietnam goes back to the soccer World Cup in Spain in 1982.
At that time, the radio stations played "Rasputin" again and again during half-time breaks or before the start of the game.
Millions of Vietnamese soccer fans got a taste for it, which led to the fact that disco - especially from Germany - shaped an entire generation.
According to the employees of a record shop in Hanoi, there was hardly a club in the capital in the 1990s that did not dance to “Rasputin”.
The vinyl version of the album "Nightflight to Venus", on which the song can be found, is one of the most expensive records in the business, with a price of more than 30 euros.
Pham My An is talking about the Boney M. concert in 2019. “It was wonderful to relive the dreams of our youth in reality.
I was so happy that I forgot all my worries and only moved to the beat of the music, ”she recalls.
"And it was even more overwhelming to see how these emotions were mirrored by the audience around me that evening."
28-year-old Tran Ngoc believes that the end of the Vietnamese disco fever is not in sight.
Also, or maybe precisely because the genre and its catchy hit songs are, for many, inextricably linked with memories of their youth.
"Even today, it's enough for me to hear the melodies of Modern Talking - and suddenly I'm a child again."
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210121-99-113320 / 2
Video clip of Boney M.'s Rivers of Babylon in Hanoi on Youtube
Video clip of Thomas Anders' Cheri Cheri Lady in Hanoi on Youtube
Clip with Boney M.'s concert in 2019