One of the first things I have done since arriving in Hong Kong is to scour the free English (and some Chinese ones as well) street publications for some possible and interesting leads on almost anything that could take my interest. This has ranged from graf and street art, hip hop, drum and bass, design, video art, art installations, visual art exhibitions, alternative electronic music, dance, so called hybrid performance, and a little bit of theatre (not too much theatre as it tends to rot my brain). The internet has aided my research also as just about every club, band, artist, performance group, artist collective etc has a web site so I have been able to narrow down in a relatively short amount of time the people and places I aim to target. I have made lists of the following…
Alternative book and record stores to visit.
Galleries to visit.
Companies or artists to view their work (and if they are any good…)
People to talk to within those companies.
More or less first off the rank was a night of some Canto Hip Hop. In my second week here I think I managed to stumble upon three of Hong Kong’s more promising hip hoppers and rappers. Hip Hop is just over 10 years old in Hong Kong and has to compete with a glut of Canto pop and mass commercialism – whilst probably not as young as Aussie hip hop, it feels most of it still has a way to go to truly find it’s style, something which admittedly has also taken a while for acts like Hilltop Hoods etc, to do the same back home. The acts I discovered that night however I think go some way to making their style their own style (if you know what I mean).
Ghost Style; released Hong Kong’s first English rap and hip hop album a year or so ago and now he’s just released another one on his own label “Rebel Music”. His production work is quite good and reminiscent of Kayne West but a bit grittier maybe.
Kwokkin; raps entirely in Cantonese. Don’t have any idea what he’s saying but it’s quite musical to listen to and reminded me of some French rap from the early 90’s that I have been exposed to.
Ghost Style seems to have taken Kwokkin under his wing and now the latter not only appears on the formers latest album but is also signed to the new label.
You can check out the web site www.rebelstudio.net and grab a listen to some of the sound bites from both artists.
Fama; are two highly dressed up dudes that again rap entirely in Cantonese but seem to poke fun at anything and everything. Their style seems to be highly improvisational – they name checked Becks beer a few times during their set which got everyone laughing. So me thinks they were taking the mickey out of them…that, or they were giving their sponsors a major plug. Either way the audience were very engaged with these two clown like rappers which reminded me a little of Adelaide’s own Casio Brothers.
It seems that wherever I go ferry services of that region seem to close down. First it was the Berri ferry back in 1997 and I was one the lucky last 500 people to ride that particular service. Now 10 years later I am one of the last 400,000 or so to have ridden the Star Ferry from the Edinburgh Place, Central Terminal to Tsim Sha Tsui. From Friday November 12 2006, you could no longer catch the ferry between these two points. Instead the service runs from a new pier (one that tries to look like the old one but doesn’t have quite the same charm) in front of one Hong Kong’s more spectacular skyscrapers 2ifc and alongside all the other ferry services to the outlying islands.
Many people have voiced their disappointment to this infrastructual streamlining in the papers and street press including a silent and public art protest out the front of the old terminal as depicted in the photos above. There seems to be a growing dissent for this type of rash redevelopment and an urge to hold onto or at least consider the ever-diminishing heritage buildings that remain in Hong Kong.
more soon
Steve
