Paris does goosebumps like nowhere else. In Van’s full-length YouTube video, an orange upright piano is wheeled into a busy square, and a gentle intro blooms into a soaring street performance of “We Are the World.” Posted on May 30, 2025 to the channel “Van” (@vantoan_), the clip has racked up well over 2.3 million views as of this week—clearly, word got out.
The pianist is Van—short for Van Toan Lam—a Vietnamese-French musician whose social feeds are packed with spontaneous Paris moments and collabs. Around him, singers begin to stack harmonies one by one; you can spot the Sankofa Unit choir adding gospel weight and sparkle as the arrangement swells. Van’s own posts credit Sankofa Unit directly for the flash-mob vocals, and the choir’s pages show them to be a fixture of the Paris scene, from club stages to big-ticket collabs
Halfway through, the groove deepens: a drummer locks in the heartbeat, and a cellist threads warmth through the chord changes. Those aren’t anonymous ringers. The sticks belong to Stéphane Avellaneda—best known as the long-time touring drummer with blues-rock star Ana Popović—whose résumé spans stages across Europe and beyond. The cello lines come from Charles Gaugué (yes, with the accent), a Conservatoire-honed player whose feed swings from Brahms to pop collabs in Paris. Both artists are tagged by Van around the flash-mob posts, making their cameos more than hearsay.
