Hong Kong Film Award winner, Peter Kam
Four-time Hong Kong Film Award winner Peter Kam is one of the city’s most prominent composers. He talks to June Ng about his path from Christian music and commercial jingles to propaganda songs, and hitting it big time with movie scores.
As a kid, I was never quite sure what I wanted to be when I grew up, though I thought it would be quite cool to be a policeman or a detective.
Strangely enough, music was never an important part of my childhood, even though my dad played piano in a nightclub band. I didn’t even teach myself to play piano until I turned 17.
My whole family then moved to America. When I had to choose my subjects for college, I decided to remain true to myself and study something that I enjoyed. I turned my back on subjects that focused on money and chose to study music instead.
“Freelancing” is another way of saying “unemployed.” When I graduated, I did a lot of freelancing, mostly composing Vietnamese songs. Did you know that South California is a huge base for Viet pop?
I came back to Hong Kong in 1990 because I got an offer to make Christian music for a church. But that adventure was over before it began. There was a change in management and my position was made redundant before I even started.
By sheer luck I got to work in a proper studio. From there, I learned how to make “practical” music, such as commercial jingles. From there, I got to write songs for Cantopop stars, and finally, I started to pen movie scores.
When writing a score for a movie, you have to take into account the plot. But really, every song has a tiny plot in itself—the emotion that the singer tries to convey is a distillation of a story.