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Your guide to gigs, concerts and music festivals in Hong Kong
Saw some top-notch music in town last week, starting with jazz piano-god McCoy Tyner, who brought his musical virtuosity and weight of history to a hungry local audience. The grand old icon, whose massive crashing chords and keyboard runs were once an integral part of John Coltrane’s wildest, most extreme musical journeys, wowed the local crowd with beautiful melodies and nerve-wracking rhythmic adventures.
It may seem like a far cry from the local indie scene, but that all depends on the angle you take. A couple of nights later I got a text message about a visiting Filipino band. The text mentioned punk and be-bop – an intriguing combination.
Radioactive Sago Project were playing in a small art gallery just off Caine Road. Sure enough, the attitude was punk and the brass section certainly had its be-bop moments, but they also owed a lot to Maceo Parker and The Horny Horns. The grooves wandered from Afro-beat to funk-infused New York Latin, then from marching band comedy stomps all the way back to vintage James Brown. Add to that a bit of Linton Kwesi Johnson – as he would sound in Tagalog – and you might get the picture.
El Destroyo bass diva ‘Da Countess’ took a reality check: “Aren’t they great?” she said. No argument there, but the music had stopped so it was time to move on to HK Live! at the Fringe. Local dudes The Lovesong provided something different.
Creative lynchpin of the foursome Ben Tse told me afterwards that Fugazi was one of his influences. But I thought Ben’s jagged guitar craft, tightly counter-pointed by a sweat-soaked Ephraim Bano, also on guitar, might even have had the edge over the raucous American skinheads who emerged from the dark end of the 1980s.
The Lovesong made a massive, glorious racket with their unison vocals and a stop-start wall of sound, but the musicality of the songs was never lost. It was a long journey I had made in a couple of nights, from the sublime heights of the jazz innovator to the nervy cacophony of a punk-spawned rock band. But in some ways, maybe it’s all the same – people howling and thrashing out on their instruments with a craving to create, reaching for the stars.
Catch the next HK Live! on Saturday 4 at the Fringe Club, 10.30pm. $150 (door), $100 (adv).