Who is Van Paugam?

Being one of the first DJs to specialize in 70s & 80s Japanese music dubbed ‘City Pop’ in 2016, Van Paugam has built a resume listing over 100 events dedicated to the genre. He’s DJ’d globally in cities like Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo in a range of different venues including matsuri, universities, listening bars, sake lounges, anime conventions, and even for the Consul-general of Japan. While being a student of Japanese language, he also works for the Japanese Culture Center of Chicago, and sits on the board of the Japanese Arts Foundation. He has been written about for his efforts in reviving the genre, inspired a short-documentary on the topic, and also worked with major Japanese recording labels on remixes of popular songs in the style. Van has opened for Japanese bands like CHAI, and DJ’d after-parties at the Chicago Philharmonic for artists like Kishi Bashi.

Going beyond merely just ‘playing records’, Van has developed an entire philosophy tying Japanese ritualism, contemporary thought, and Zen practices into vinyl record culture. Having collected an extensive library of Japanese vinyl while in Japan also, Van hopes to help sow interest in Japanese culture outside of the typical tropes that people tend to associate with the country. His love of Japanese traditions and aesthetics has helped him to create a format for DJing that can be meditative, but also moving, thoughtful, yet deliberate. This dualistic aspect of his style of vinyl DJing has earned him recognition from media outlets like the Chicago Reader, NHK, TOKYOFM, and CNN. Often referred to as a pioneer of the genre’s resurgence, Van Paugam approaches the style with a respect for the past and optimism for its future through unabashed nostalgia and meticulous obsession.

“Van Paugam is an American Chicago-based DJ who creates music mixes of 1980s Japanese City Pop music along with running a 24/7 Radio of this music and many live events around Chicago. He is mainly attributed to the rise of City Pop in mid-2018, being one of the first DJs to start mixing what is now commonly called City Pop—or Japanese disco, funk, and pop music that tended to be a genre blend of many western styles of a particular era between 1979 and 1985. Van's channel previously hit 100,000 subscribers before being stricken off the site on February 14, 2019.” - Wikitubia

“On a hunt for lesser known yet vibrant collecting niches, MAG_BTMMusic Archive Gallery: Beyond The Music asked Far-Eastern music lover Freddie Berman to investigate. Third in our series of interviews to Japanese music collectors, here Berman speaks to Van Paugam, a DJ whose work helps promote the renewed interest in City Pop.” - MAGbtm

“Van Paugam is a DJ who specializes in the 70s and 80s Japanese jazz, disco, funk, and fusion records collectively known as City Pop. In 2015, he started a YouTube channel that helped renew popular interest in the genre, which in turn allowed him to move his musical activities into the offline world when the channel was shut down. For the past three years, he’s maintained Chicago residencies at the Whistler (Lost in Translation) and Murasaki Sake Lounge (City Pop night), and his passion has introduced him to audiences around the globe.” - The Chicago Reader (2021)

“Paugam thinks Americans' surge of interest in City Pop has arisen in part because constant pop-cultural recycling has rendered them numb to nostalgia for their own pasts. Americans are bombarded with their own memories: every film franchise gets rebooted, every band reunites, and there's always another Terminator around the corner. "We've saturated and commercialized our 70s and 80s so much that younger generations can't even form a cohesive impression of what those times were actually like," Paugam laments. "City Pop has just enough Western influence to sound like untouched, untainted versions of what we once had, but without being hyper-commercialized. I think the music's purity is what draws people in. The fact that they can reminisce about a time and place that aren't their own and still feel nostalgic is something new for a lot of people." - The Chicago Reader (2019)

“Much of the credit for Chicago’s embrace of City Pop goes to DJ Van Paugam, who discovered the genre when trying to track down the source of samples from music he liked. Turns out the “vaporwave” samples were from City Pop songs. - Origami Magazine

“For my money, the  Chicago-based Van Paugam (whose work includes a brief history of city pop) has long made the best city pop mixes on YouTube, but earlier this year the Japanese recording industry — an aggressive entity, even by recording-industry standards — had his channel taken down, forcing him to start over again.” - LA Review of Books

“The subgenre of Japanese city pop has also exploded in recent years, thanks to the work of DJ's like Van Paugam...It started with seminal artists like Tatsuro Yamashita, Anri and Mariya Takeuchi...” - Vinylengine

“Conceived in the booming Japan of the 1980s, City Pop was born from the neon-filled Tokyo night-time landscape. This music takes you back to a time you never experienced, but nevertheless, feel an unexplainably intense longing for. Its death came just as quick as its birth – during the 1990s, Japan’s global prowess fell into a deep recession known as the Lost Decade, which also culminated in less dreamy, optimistic music. Decades later, it has slowly made a comeback, loosely and intangibly inserted into some Vaporwave and Future Funk tracks, albeit like a faint memory. Luckily, one man was able to rescue it from limbo – Van Paugam, also known as “The Lost City Pop DJ.” - Reel Culture Magazine

“Chicago-based DJ Van Paugam often receives credit for bringing City Pop back to life. His first YouTube playlist from 2016, features Tatsuro Yamashita, Mariya Takeuchi, and Junko Yagami, among others. These names are now synonymous with the genre’s resurgence. The playlist combines music with vibrant images of classic anime and pairs songs with disco dancing, night-driving through Tokyo, and basking in neon. Paugam even borrows images of the timeless Cowboy Bebop, Ghost In The Shell. This format would contribute to the genre’s renewed popularity and act as an aesthetic for future playlists and fans who want to evoke a similar emotional response.” - The Daily Fandom

“Japanese culture has long since surpassed the American influences it absorbed to create hybrid genres Americans have been furiously importing at a seemingly exponential rate. One of the newest such genres was actually created by an American DJ, Van Paugam, who aggregated a collection of Japanese records into what he calls “City Pop.” In another Open Culture post on this YouTube phenomenon, Marshall describes the music as “drawing influences from Western disco, funk, and R&B, and using the latest sonic technologies mastered nowhere more than in Japan itself.” Like Japanese jazz, city pop comes from music that began in the U.S. but becomes globalized and cosmopolitan as it traveled the world.” - Open Culture

“Like chillwave, synthwave, vaporwave, and mallsoft, city pop relies on a listener accepting the reliance on nostalgia; as Van Paugam points out, the sound of city pop resembles that of familiar, nostalgic Western songs enough to connect with listeners.” - Journal of Popular Music Studies

“City Pop has started to make a comeback. Around 2015, Japanese indie music artists started to make music under the umbrella of “Neo City Pop” (The Japan Times). While Neo City Pop as a genre doesn’t seem to have a centralized definition, artists who use the term want to induce feelings of “sophistication, fashionableness, and nostalgia” and still produce the same kind of urban music that other artists did back in the day. On the United States side, 80s City Pop has been rising as an underground genre. Van Paugam, a Chicago-based DJ, has been credited for bringing the genre to the United States and giving it relevance through playing it at DJ sets and ripping old City Pop music, and posting it to YouTube (Chicago Reader). Since 2016, the subreddit surrounding City Pop has moved from 50 to over 12,000 subscribers.” - Twenty-two Twenty-eight

“海を超えた西城秀樹と滝沢洋一の「かぎりなき夏」。シティ・ポップを世界に広めた立役者、DJ ヴァン・ポーガムが語る普遍性 “- Alfa Music

“秋元薫、ジャパニーズ・シティポップとして海外でヒット中の「Dress Down」！ 1986年のアルバム「Cologne」の 2021年 最新リマスターに、DJ Van Paugam によるリエディットを加えた 配信限定 アルバム「cologne+1」が、本日 9月22日 配信リリース!” - Musicguide.jp

“今回の配信アルバム『Cologne』は、全曲最新リマスタリングを施し、さらに欧米に日本のシティ・ポップを広めた立役者の一人であるシカゴのDJ、ヴァン・ポーガム（Van Paugam）が、秋元の楽曲でもNo.2の人気を誇る「我がままなハイヒール」のリエディットを担当しました。今なお話題が継続している日本のシティ・ポップ。今回の秋元薫のリマスター配信とDJヴァン・ポーガムのリエディットを聴いて、海外から逆輸入された80年代の日本のシティ・ポップを楽しんでほしいところです。”- Yahoo News Japan

“なぜ古い日本のシティポップに注目が集まっているのでしょうか。私は昨年の著書『時間とテクノロジー』で、この不思議な現象について考察しました。その中で紹介したヴァン・ポーガム（Van Paugam）という人の視点が、非常に面白く刺激的です。これを取り上げてみましょう。ポーガムは米国人DJで、2019年1月にシカゴで日本人シンガー杏里さんのライブを企画している人です。彼は「シカゴリーダー」というウェブメディアのインタビューで、次のように説明しています。”- COMEMO

“同イベントにはシカゴを拠点としながら、インターネット上でも数々のDJミックスを発表し、高い支持を獲得しているDJ、Van Paugamが出演する。ジャパニーズ・ディスコ、ファンク、シティ・ポップなどのレコードでDJするVan Paugamは、過去に24時間ストリーミング・ラジオ『CITY POP シティポップ RADIO』の配信も行っており、すでに削除されているが10万人超えのチャンネル登録者数を有していた。”- SPINCOASTER

“Van Paugam è un giovane musicista e dj, conceptualist d’istanza a Chicago. Nonostante il suo canale youtube non abbia numeri impressionanti per quanto riguarda le iscrizioni, le sue playlist hanno accumulato milioni di plays e un seguito affezionato. Tutti i giorni per 24 ore sullo stesso canale viene anche trasmessa la radio dedicata al city pop. È anche l’autore di un video esplicativo, egregiamente realizzato, sulla storia e le origini del city pop.” - Takamori

“Is there any location more glamorous and excessive than Miami during Art Basel? Try Tokyo in the '70s and '80s, where everyone was flush with cash and the music was like nothing else on Earth. City pop — a mix of funk, disco, soft rock, and R&B sung in Japanese and English — was all the rage, and thanks to the internet, it's having a nostalgia-induced revival. DJ Van Paugam, who made a name for himself mixing and streaming the stuff on YouTube, will be your guide at Soundlux Audio and Sweat Records' City Pop: The Sound of '70s and '80s Japan. Refreshments will be provided.” - Miami New Times

“Well, a few nights ago, I encountered "A Brief History of City Pop", a 15-minute YouTube video made by Van Paugam, one of the fellows that I've subscribed to, and it's a nice little course done up as a long-form Vaporwave/Future Funk creation (love the John Travolta commercial in Japan) while sultry narrator Meikonishi gives a description of the genre juxtaposed against and influenced by the history of modern Japan from the mid-1970s and well into the 1980s. A few performances and some of the finest albums of City Pop are shown with the mini-doc even touching a bit upon New Music and technopop.” - Kayo Kyoku Plus

“The sounds of City Pop are a unique blend of funk, disco, pop, soft rock, jazz, and boogie often paired with themes of summer, city life, and good vibes. What distinguishes it from American 1970s and 80s music is that these sounds are used harmoniously in more experimental ways. Van describes it as “a familiar but distinctly foreign nostalgia from a different place and time that is not your own.” - Japanese Consulate of Chicago

“Uno degli attuali massimi diffusori del genere, il dj di Chicago Van Paugam ha colto l’essenza del messaggio di fondo e in una recente intervista ha affermato (a ragione) che una volta che si ascoltano gli originali, tornare indietro è quasi impossibile. Un dj nato proprio con il future funk e la vaporwave che per trovare nuove chiavi di lettura e nuovi argomenti al proprio progetto artistico ha guardato al passato senza – tuttavia – fossilizzarsi su un genere in particolare. Del resto il city pop, del quale oggi è possibile stilare una, seppur generica, catalogazione abbraccia i più diversi generi musicali. In particolare il jazz, il funk, soul e disco i cui precursori vengono comunemente indicati in Tomoko Aran, Tatsuro Yamashita, Mariya Takeuchi, Toshiki Kadomatsu e Takako Mamiya.” - DEERWAVES

“Es así como en un intento de recordar el basado y permear a nuevas audiencias Van Paugam distribuye aquellas pistas que fueron memorables.  Si te gusta este tipo de música o estás interesado en saber mas te recomiendo seguirlo y disfrutar de cada una de las recopilaciones que Van Paugam brinda.” - De Fan a Fan

”Pour le côté plus funky, se diriger vers Toshiki Kadomatsu, Junko Yagami ou Hideki Saijo. En réalité, il n'y a pas de mauvaise porte d'entrée à la City Pop: il suffit de s'y engouffrer avec curiosité. Pour des explorations poussées et exhaustives, les compilations de Van Paugam, DJ de Chicago spécialiste du genre, sauront satisfaire vos envies d'étés japonais pour les mois à venir.” - Slate France