Happily singing the blues
Friday, November 2, 2018 HK’s first blues music festival wrapped last week. However, the city’s blues musicians have been at it since at least the 1960s, as Rob Garratt found out.
The blues might have been born in the country, on the cotton fields of the American South, but as the music migrated to cities and its players plugged in their instruments, the art form soon evolved into a distinctly urban aesthetic — affording a bittersweet voice to the downtrodden, fighting to be heard over the bustle and divide of city life. This quintessentially American music has found only fleeting resonance in the vertical hubbub of Hong Kong, where the blues remains a distinctly niche proposition. But that could be slowly changing. At least that’s what the responses to The Gloomy Island Blues Festival (GIBF) — billed as the city’s first festival of blues music — seems to indicate. Following a threemonth program of blues workshops, movie screenings and concerts in farflung locales across Hong Kong, GIBF wrapped with a modest finale on Oct 27, attracting a sold-out crowd to a gig by the Taiwanese jug band Muddy Basin Ramblers at North Point’s pokey Mom Livehouse.
Such an ambitious, ambassadorial endeavor could only be fueled by the unflinching intent of real enthusiasts — a charge easily leveled at first-time promoters Tomii Chan, 25, and Andrew Wong, 24. Both also performed at last weekend’s closer. Chan, better known as one-fifth of the engaging indie-folk band Stranded Whale, is in the process of reinventing himself as a blues and folk-influenced acoustic troubadour, showcased on this year’s excellent solo LP Not a Good Day to Die. Wong meanwhile plays a mean saxophone with upbeat covers sextet "Shake That Thing".
“Most of our audience has no idea about blues at all,” begins Wong. “We’re trying to introduce something new — that’s like trying to introduce Chinese opera to Westerners.”
The pair succeeded in unearthing unexpectedly curious ears. In September, more than 100 revelers crammed into the cramped confines of a Kwai Chung warehouse space normally occupied by a local brewery to hear electric guitar firebrand Tommy Chung. Back in August, dozens trekked out to Tai O fishing village to listen to a performance by local acoustic veterans Yank Wong and Bill Loh. Using such unconventional venues, and locales, was a studied attempt by the organizers to demystify and democratize the music.
“We’re trying to define a local Hong Kong blues,” adds Wong. “Most people sing in English, all the traditions come from the States, but if the audience is local, the musicians are local, if we’re all living through the same experiences, then that’s Hong Kong blues.”
The local pioneers
Blues influences were first introduced to the local music scene by pioneering Cantopop singers such as Sam Hui and George Lam who, much like Elvis Presley and The Beatles in the West, sanitized the hard edges of the AfricanAmerican music for mainstream consumption. Later the pioneering Ramband, led by guitarist Peter Ng, brought purer blues-rock flavors to Hong Kong audiences in the 1970s.
Chan and Wong’s research suggests a small but zealous community of blues music aficionados has existed in Hong Kong since the 1960s. The local scene arguably peaked during the brief heyday of 48th Street Chicago Blues, Hong Kong’s “first and only” blues club which opened in Tsim Sha Tsui’s Hart Avenue in 2001. Club founder Tommy Chung credits the venue with inspiring and nurturing many homegrown musicians still playing the music today.
“I don’t think anyone was silly enough to try opening a blues club until I came along — and I don’t think anyone will be silly enough to try it again,” laughs Chung, a former lawyer who closed his practice to follow his true calling. The venue folded in 2004 following the crippling SARS epidemic. “It was a financial catastrophe, but they were probably the four best years of my life,” he adds.
Playing under his own name, guitarist Chung is one of a handful of blues acts, which also includes Blues Espresso and Low Down Dirty Blues Band, who perform regularly at Wan Chai live music venue The Wanch. Elsewhere eclectic insiders gather monthly in Yau Ma Tei at the Centre for Community Cultural Development’s exhibition space Green Wave Art, for a freewheeling unplugged public jam, dubbed DamDangZai Blues-Nite, under the watchful guidance of veterans such as Bill Loh and Yank Wong.
“To jam with other blues musicians, all you need to know is the tempo, the rhythm and the key,” says Yank Wong, a guitarist, writer and visual artist who was recently profiled in
Angie Chen’s I’ve Got the Blues, an affectionate feature-length portrait he hasn’t bothered to watch.
“I always compare blues to calligraphy,” he says. “Once you can read, write and understand the meaning of a word, you can present it your own way, interpret it yourself.
It could be ugly, pretty or whatever — just do it frankly, and you find something out."
Icon of Chinese history
Find out about the life of legendary Chinese historical figure Kwan Kung, who symbolizes loyalty, righteousness, benevolence and bravery. The first part of this heritage exhibition explores Kwan Kung’s life according to historical accounts.
Two films, Kwan Ti, God of War (Taiwan, 1976) and Jiang Hu: The Triad Zone (Hong Kong, 2000), will be screened during the exhibition, and a series of talks, workshops and school programs will also run.