Word: cantopop
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Nurtured by a growing number of live venues, ever decreasing barriers to recording and a broadening disenchantment with Cantopop - the city's dominant music form to date - Hong Kong's independent-music scene has suddenly become crowded. As you would expect, a great number of the bands that comprise it are vehicles for the subpar songwriting and cack-handed guitar playing of solemn undergraduates, chubby expats and the sort of people that have fabulous haircuts but dreadful day jobs. But a handful of ensembles are worth crossing the street to see. And a very few - perhaps no more than...
...curious, the number of people who bemoan Hong Kong's independent-music scene. Critics (and expats in town for brief, superficial sojourns) adopt a default posture of digit-pointing, waving jaded index fingers at a concert calendar crammed with Cantopop and mainstream international acts. But even the most cursory probing reveals plenty of homegrown edge. Consider the Underground, a fortnightly indie-music night that takes place in venues across town, whose organizers have showcased more than 300 bands in its five years of existence. That's irrefutable evidence that if you're looking to tap into live, original music...
...sunny Thursday in Hong Kong when Carmen Wong takes the mike in a dimly lit room at a karaoke lounge. As she belts out a number by Cantopop (Cantonese pop) star Sammi Cheng, her colleagues bounce to the beat, waving forks in the air between bites of udon noodles, pork cutlets and potato salad...
...city blocks. The bedding is arranged in its corridors so tightly packed that it is difficult to walk. On the walls are homemade signs - some with photos, some with elegant Chinese calligraphy - listing the names of the missing, many of them likely dead. In normal times the stadium hosts Cantopop concerts and tennis tournaments. Today it's hosting thousands of survivors from last week's devastating earthquake...
...persona, of restrained brooding and worldly-wise resignation, has won him five Hong Kong Film Awards as Best Actor, two more as Supporting Actor, as well as Cannes' actor prize for In the Mood. Lau, whose retinue of teen fans follows him everywhere (he's also the most successful Cantopop singer of his generation), has been a lucrative movie commodity for two decades; in the early '90s, Triad bosses reportedly fought to sign him for the films they financed. Long considered a lightweight presence, Lau belatedly graduated from teen fave to compelling actor...