THEY ARE TO HONG KONG music what John Lennon and Paul McCartney are to British pop. The songwriting team of Joseph Koo Ka-fai and James Wong Jim dominated local music for more than two decades, beginning in the 1970s, and they remained active in later years under the Fai Wong (glorious) banner. But Wong's death from cancer last November has sapped Koo of considerable musical drive.
'I've lost enthusiasm after Jim's death,' says the composer, who lives in semi-retirement in Vancouver. He's back to address a conference, but has cancelled his appearance at a series of concerts next month paying tribute to the songwriting duo. 'I feel a bit anxious [about doing this on my own] because the name Fai Wong has become a brand.'
The shy 74-year-old has always kept a low profile compared with the flamboyant Wong. In concert, he preferred to leave the talking to his partner. Yet, in his quiet way, Koo was a trailblazer. He was the first local composer to merge western music theory with Chinese melodies. And by encouraging TVB to use Cantonese in a series theme song for the first time in 1973, he started a craze for Canto-pop.
He co-wrote 200 hits with Wong during the golden age of Canto-pop until the 90s, and during his long career has composed more than 1,200 tunes of his own, from jingles and nursery rhymes to the torch song The Bund.
But, as prolific as he is, the mild-mannered Koo never set out to be a composer, and only learnt to play the piano at the age of 17. 'In my primary school years [in Guangzhou], everything was so volatile,' he says. 'My family was poor and China was at war. And I didn't know what I wanted to do.'
Influenced by his father, an ink-brush artist, he painted for a while. Then a new path opened in 1948, when his family moved to Hong Kong, where his elder sister, Carrie Koo Mei, found fame as a singer.
