Can music perhaps help Hong Kong redefine itself?
- Apr 28
- 5 min read
Every city needs music to help it grow branches and keep evolving. Music, especially ‘live’ music in the right setting, gives those who live in these cities feel alive and energised and inspired and which then becomes a chain reaction of all kinds of emotions that creates a product and brand personality- advertising talk for standing out from the crowd.
It’s something I feel whenever in New York or London or Copenhagen, definitely Paris, and anywhere in Latin America.
The first time I was in Paris was where I consumed so much different music- and red wine-in a very short time by practically living in the Virgin store in the city and being with a German girl who introduced me to music from places like Nigeria, Brazil, and Jamaica and the music of Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel, Charles Aznavour, Serge Gainsborough…
Having a father who had his own part time jazz trio and weekly radio show when we lived in Ceylon, I found the time to embrace all types of music and fall in love with the talents of so many diverse artists like Les Paul and Mary Ford, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, Sinatra, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Fats Domino, Julie London, Ella, Della Reese, Sarah Vaughan…
During my teen years, Steve, my best friend at secondary school KGV and I were somehow drawn to Country music, the soul music of Sam Cooke, every artist on Motown and pretty much everything else long that blew our little minds before music was labelled, became a commodity and lost its way.
Steve and I were rather different kids who seemed to have dropped in on Hong Kong from somewhere else like E.T. did and made the most of our time here before he checked out and I was saved by meeting the pretty Wrangler Girl.
As an international city, Hong Kong has been many things to many people, but other than that the time when nearly every young band was signed to Diamond music and played at tea dances, there’s never been someone in any type of A&R role to help create and shape a music driven culture and musical product personality for this city.
When it comes to music in Hong Kong, for the most part, and because of gigging musicians, it’s been about bands covering the hits of the day with some better at this than others.
Right or wrong, it’s my opinion that because of no real focus on originality, Hong Kong has always lacked a certain amount of soul food that fed it with extra energy.
Other than Cantonese versions of different ponderous ballads built around the Eagles hit “Desperado”, how many truly good original songs have there been?
There have certainly been many happy happy songs professing love to Hong Kong, but weren’t these recorded in English or something bilingual that erred on the cheesy side of corn and shallowness?
For my money, the best contemporary songwriter and easily the best singer to perform in Hong Kong in fairly recent times was Ben Semmens from Wales, who was the first resident singer during those very early Happy Wednesday times.
Ben and I wrote some very good songs together, but never got around to recording many of them. And then, just like that, he was gone.
There’s the feeling by some I know with no emotional ties to the city that this void of original music keeps Hong Kong in its little box with nothing to help it grow and music very much needed to keep hope afloat when the going gets rough and we run into icebergs.
I don’t think he will mind me saying this, but a key reason that Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges, the CEO of the Hong Kong Jockey Club and I became friends is because of our love and knowledge and respect for films and filmmakers and musicians and the music they created.
Winfried was probably at his happiest when at Adrenaline after the races and having the resident band perform their last couple of sets and their own versions of hits by Barry White, Van McCoy, Amy Winehouse, Lou Rawls and others.
All this love for music happened because of the time he spent during his twenties visiting clubs in Germany and happy being the only white person with all those brothers and sistahs.
Who would have thought, right?
When with the Regional offices of Universal Music and then EMI Music, Norman (Cheng) and I made a great team and brought artists from Hong Kong and this region together with international artists while using our A&R skills picked up along the way to move music from the region forward.
Sometimes we failed, but we also succeeded with releases by the original Shanghai divas that were remixed by our friend Morton Wilson and his team from Schtung.
Mort and I also produced some brilliant East/West remixes for David Bowie, Robbie Williams, Placebo, Gorillaz and many more for EMI though the correct credits have not only gone astray online, they have disappeared.
I was also hoping and extremely excited to launch Noodle from Gorillaz in China and came close to doing this, but the timing wasn’t right.
I remain steadfastly optimistic that this would have been a game changer and something of tremendous importance and influence to many of those young Chinese girls, especially in Beijing, making high energy punk and grunge music.
Is it too late to give Hong Kong a musical personality all of its own?
It’s never too late for anything though trends come and go and I wonder if that sudden and recent burst of interest in some ai artists have already run its course? One can only take so much of the same thing before boredom sets in.
As for Hong Kong, finding this music identity isn’t going to happen organically and nor is it going to happen in the hands of those who have been playing with silly putty for too long and with nothing to show or are past their Use By date.
Proven track records open many doors because of buying into credibility.
Ever had the great Quincy Jones spend the day with you and taking you through the making of “Thriller” and the challenges of working with Michael?
Though some have tried for many decades, other than that hybrid I named Canto Pop when writing for Billboard magazine and facing a deadline to give a name for the Cantonese tracks that Sam Hui had started recording, creating original music has, for reasons that I don’t understand, never really “caught on” in Hong Kong.
What did catch on and is still going on is style over substance and which we should know by now has a limited shelf life sustained through smoke and mirrors.
Getting wasted at clubs in Wanchai and Lan Kwai Fong and dancing the night away to “Funky Town” and covers of hits by Guns N’ Roses is not exactly giving Hong Kong something very much needed and from where so much more can grow.
Neither is adding some token erhus and creating a chop suey of ying tong sounds from Hop Sing’s kitchen, something quite a few tried to do almost two decades ago and failed spectacularly.
Has music been, er, silenced in Hong Kong, or perceived to have been silenced?
Perhaps it has more to do with the Fear Factor that some songs might possibly be banned, but, to me, it’s mainly because of too many gremlins who don’t know how to read a room, let alone understand strategic music marketing and how and where to make things fit?
More importantly, isn’t there anyone with the necessary creative chutzpah able to give Hong Kong just ONE big international hit that isn’t something sappy like remixing a couple of tracks by Air Supply with an “Oriental” sound?
Couldn’t, for instance, someone create a character named Tai Kwun, write and produce a Dance track for them and let one’s roller deck do the rest?
Hell, I might as well do it myself instead of dealing with those in the middle of creative menopause and stuck in a city in Reverse.
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