Sonic Multiplicities: Hong Kong Pop and the Global Circulation of Sound and Image by Yiu Fai Chow and Jeroen de Kloet (review)

Much attention has been paid to studies of pop culture in Hong Kong, owing to the intricate cultural currents in this prosperous metropolis with its unique postcolonial status. Yiu Fai Chow and Jeroen de Kloet use Hong Kong’s popular music as the focus for the exploration of the dynamics between pop culture and its social environment. Rather than detailing the elements of Hong Kong’s music-scape, the authors show how the trajectories of Hong Kong Pop affect cultural imagination in different territories, both locally and globally. In so doing, Sonic Multiplicities aims to illustrate ‘how the city and its popular culture is entangled in a complex transnational cultural web between Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China and the world at large’ (p.4). Chow and de Kloet have created vivid and comprehensive profiles of Hong Kong’s pop music from a range of interviews and insightful analyses of lyrics, music videos, online fandom, local pop venues, and the transnational music industry. Looking through the lens of songwriters, lyricists, stars, fans, and researchers, the authors have produced an informative book that greatly enriches our understanding of popular culture in pan-Chinese areas.

Sonic Multiplicities begins by revealing the importance of pop culture in fostering the locality of Hong Kong. No matter how mobile Hong Kong people imagine themselves to be in the international trading system, the sense of being citizens of Hong Kong derives from their everyday life in this urban territory. Such geographical awareness has been actualized vividly in Hong Kong’s popular music.

Chapter 2 discusses the distinct celebrity preferences of Hong Kong’s fan bases. Marco Borsato’s guy-next-door image favoured in the Netherlands is contrasted with Hong Kong star Leon Lai, admired as a distant public figure whose success is a result of diligent work. Since Lai’s characteristics, such as this ‘work spirit’, are valued highly in Hong Kong, Chow and de Kloet argue that it is through this territorially specific fandom that a sense of place is produced (pp. 41–3). The cultivation of locality is also explored in chapter 5, which concerns the public space of Hong Kong Pop concerts. Statistics suggest that the Hong Kong music industry has been slowing down, but Chow and de Kloet argue that Hong Kong Pop has maintained its status by appealing to the local imagination (p. 104). For example, in the early 2000s, several pop stars from the 1970s and 1980s came together for a series of concerts at venues such as the Hong Kong Coliseum. In such performances, cultural heroes evoked the sweet yet fleeting memory of the golden age of Hong Kong Pop. Paradoxically, however, they highlighted the temporality of the city and helped extend it into the future. Hong Kong is a densely populated city with little tradition of outdoor music festivals, and such indoor performances create an atmosphere that is relaxed, warm, and impassioned. By contrast with metropolitan skyscrapers that are iconic only in form, venues like the Hong Kong Coliseum offer an indispensable additional dimension to the city with a locality of its own.

A second theme considered by Sonic Multiplicities is the global/diasporic circulation of popular culture. For example, in chapter 4 the authors present the case of Edison Chen, a Hong Kong pop star involved in a pornography scandal in 2008 that captured the Chinese imagination in a range of geographical areas. Chow and de Kloet argue that the global Chinese reaction to the scandal showcases how pop culture can bring the Chinese diaspora together on the topic of public morality (pp. 88–95). In the last chapter of the book, the authors address the issue of globalization through the story of Diana Zhu, who moved to the Netherlands to start her career, and is now back in Hong Kong. While her...