Sounds nothing like us
Western pop music's typical depictions of Hong Kong have been shallow, ignorant, ludicrous and worse, writes Charley Lanyon
Hong Kong: exotic port of call, dangerous, romantic, glamorous.
Regardless of whether the global perception of the city has any basis in reality, it has maintained a hold on the popular imagination for centuries. However, the West's fascination with Hong Kong has often been reductive. As interest in the place has grown, the more Hong Kong - as it appears in music, literature, television, works of art and video games - becomes less like a city actually populated by human beings. Nowhere is this more clear than in the portrayal of Hong Kong in Western pop music.
Even the expected Western stereotypes of Hong Kong - conical hats, rickshaws and junk boats - are mostly absent here. Sometimes, the only real allusion to Hong Kong identity comes in the form of imitation Chinese language; in these instances, it seems Hong Kong is a popular song topic thanks more to the sounds of the words "Hong" and "Kong" than for its identity and reputation.
It seems Hong Kong is a popular song topic thanks more to the sounds of the words "Hong" and "Kong" than for its identity and reputation
Hong Kong by Screamin' Jay Hawkins is, unfortunately, typical of the genre. The song features Hawkins in his trademark guttural yowl ranting in faux Chinese. It's easy to dismiss the song, which was released in 1958, as a product of its time, but Hong Kong gets an almost identical treatment in 1980 from experimental lunatic Captain Beefheart in Sheriff of Hong Kong.
Hawkins and Beefheart are not your average pop stars: the first is famous for his often nonsensical novelty songs and the Captain is an undisputed genius who elevated spastic incoherence into an art form. But the question is not what the songs are trying to say, but why the artists were drawn to Hong Kong in the first place. It seems the answer is that it afforded them both the cover to make funny noises.
Giorgio Biancorosso, associate professor of music at the University of Hong Kong, sums up Western pop music's use of Hong Kong: "I think the references are tokenistic and wilfully superficial - as if parading their ignorance of the actual place [and its music] and treating it as a mere cipher or metaphor for an unknown, if reassuringly Westernised, faraway place," he says. Even songs that deal with Hong Kong more literally, with actual words for example, still often only touch on the place tangentially.
Countess from Hong Kong by The Velvet Underground, for example, is a reference to the Charlie Chaplin movie of the same name, not to Hong Kong itself. Even Hong Kong Garden by Siouxsie and the Banshees, perhaps the most famous pop song which mentions Hong Kong, is not really about our city at all, but a Chinese restaurant.
The songs that seem to put the most effort into portraying Hong Kong as a real city are instrumental. Take Les Baxter's Hong Kong Cable Car for example. Baxter is one of the originators of exotica music and although the entire intention of the piece is to present the city as the exotic other, it does at least portray Hong Kong as a destination with a real and unique identity.