The Gig Week: 26 Hong Kong bands to perform at seven venues over seven days, a mark of city’s growing musical creativity
Whether you’re into punk or hip hop, electro or acoustic, metal or dance – or even French marching bands – there’s something for you at this week-long festival of Hong Kong musical creativity featuring entirely local bands
You might not have noticed, but over the past few years the range and quality of home-grown underground music being produced and performed in Hong Kong has grown beyond all recognition. In much-loved local genres such as dream pop and post-rock through to less predictable excursions into areas like metal, hip hop and minimal techno, it turns out the city’s long untapped depths of musical creativity are coming to the surface.
This is so much so that Hong Kong can now support something like The Gig Week: seven days of entirely local bands – 26 in total – performing at seven different venues around the city from June 18 to 24. The performances are divided up by genre, with acoustic, hip hop, punk, metal, dance rock and electro nights preceded by a mixed-bag opening show. A true festival of multicultural creativity,it features acts composed roughly 50/50 of Hongkongers and Hong Kong-based musicians from overseas.
“I think the local talent has always been there in Hong Kong, but the awareness of it hasn’t been there,” says event organiser Elaine Ip. “With all the big events over the past few years [such as] the likes of Clockenflap, people are more aware how many good bands there are. The talent is here; we want to expose people to it.”
Ip, a Hongkonger who lived in Canada before moving back in 2009, put the event together with co-organisers Paul Sedille and Unmesh Rajendran, with help from Shum Yew Chuan. They got their inspiration from a similar event that has been running in India since early this decade. Rajendran had worked on the event and brought the idea to Hong Kong when he moved here to study.
The organisers figured that an event featuring a range of musical genres would maximise their chances of success – even if it meant facing the challenge of, for example, getting people to come out on a Monday. It also promises to be perhaps the most tiring week of their lives.