Passion of the poets
Alex Fung comes out from behind the scenes with an album inspired by great Chinese verse
Local composer-arranger-producer Alex Fung Hon-ming has been one of Canto-pop's "invisible men" for more than a decade.
He has produced acclaimed records for singer-songwriter Ivana Wong Yuen-chi, as well as albums by stars such as Kelly Chen Wai-lam, Joey Yung Cho-yee and Denise Ho Wan-sze, but has rarely stepped into the spotlight himself. Until now, that is: he has just released his first solo album, , an ambitious undertaking that sets 10 classic Chinese poems to a range of groovy beats and melodies.
The biggest challenge in making this album was to be soulfully connected with these great masters
Famed for offering an alternative sound to Canto-pop stars, Fung was initially driven to develop by a project he worked on two years ago. "In the very beginning, this project was done with a group of students in Hong Kong," says Fung, who co-founded The Invisible Men music production house with Singaporean musician Hanjin Tan in 2003.
The poems come from the Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and also from modern China. Verses including Tang dynasty poet Li Bai's and Xu Zhimo's were shortlisted from the school syllabus," Fung says. "The idea was to help Hong Kong students memorise the poems by turning them into songs."
In exploring the enormous world of Chinese poetry for the project, Fung discovered the task was bigger than he had expected. "I'm really thankful for this project. It gave me the opportunity to learn more about Chinese poetry. I was a science student who hated memorising Chinese poems, but I became curious to know more about Chinese culture."
Like most students, Fung learned classical Chinese poems by rote at school and read analyses of the works without really understanding or appreciating their beauty. Today, he has a completely different feeling about these poems.
"To me, is not just a record, it's a cultural product," says Fung, who says he now feels he's on a mission to increase interest in Chinese poetry through contemporary music. "People now read a lot of lyrics by [songwriters] Wyman Wong and Lin Xi, who are regarded as the masters. In fact, names such as Li Bai and [Song dynasty's] Li Qingzhao are actually these masters' masters."