Jay Forster
One of the pioneers of Hong Kong’s modern clubbing and music scene, Jay Forster is the co-founder of Clockenflap, the hugely successful annual music and arts festival. He talks to Andrea Lo about his experiences setting it up and the state of live music in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong didn’t have an outdoors arts festival, and I felt like it should have one. My friends and colleagues were interested in music, art and film, so it seemed like an obvious thing to do—to bring it together in a music and arts festival format.
There have been some hairy moments. For example, last year, we were planning on selling tickets, and quite late in the game, certain things happened and we ran into a little bit of red tape, which meant that we couldn’t. That was the only reason why it was free.
I think people assume we have a huge amount of sponsorship, or that somehow things didn’t cost us that much.
The truth is we actually invested a lot of money from our own pocket just to make it happen.It’s $590 for the weekend with 80 to 90 performances [taking place], which is about the same price for a single ticket to a show at AsiaWorld-Expo.
So from where we’re sitting, it seems like a bargain. We feel that it’s totally fine for people to pay an amount of money to receive a great experience like that.
If you make it free, then chances are you rely more on sponsorship, which means it becomes very commercial, which is not really what it’s about. The whole point of it was to do a grassroots event, and have an underground vibe to the place. That’s always been the goal. I guess it’s quite tricky to do.
I’ve been here for 15 years. There seems to be more live shows, more Hong Kong people forming bands. With the way that people use social media, it is easy to promote yourself. You don’t need to be signed to a label. There is more scope in Hong Kong for these things to happen.