Finally, we’re on the road to airport terminal. The voice behind the song sounds soft and somewhat uncertain. For days we have been counting down. Today I count to zero.
Without accompaniment, the melody sounds green but refreshing. As the one-minute-and-eight-second song comes to an end, the ever-present screechy sound takes over.
No wonder. Aleck Kwong Man-kit recorded his first song, Leaving Toronto, just with amateur equipment. It was written in Canada two years ago when his half-year exchange programme at York University neared its end. That gave him the inspiration to express in melody and lyrics memories and moods that he had to leave behind, in chilly and desolate Ontario, where all-you-can-eat restaurants abounded.
“Music has always kept me going in life. I always listen to it no matter whether I am happy or sad,” Aleck says in Cantonese. “Even though I switched among musical instruments in the past, there was not a time when I ever stopped learning it.”
Hong Kong is easily one of the cities with the most children who play music. But funnily enough, a randomly chosen student on the street holding a large and heavy black musical instrument case is quite unlikely to truly love it, judging from the average turnouts at classical music concerts.
Parents tend to force their children to learn to play music. But what Aleck’s mom thought then was hard to fathom, because it was Aleck who asked for it – violin classes in primary one and piano lessons a year after – after his aunt saw him play the piano for the first time at age three.
With a father who played the keyboard occasionally, Aleck’s upbringing might have played a part in his fondness for music. At other times, it was just a matter of chance.
“When I first started secondary school, my music teacher forced me to choose between the choir and the Chinese orchestra,” Aleck says, then stops for a while and adds airily, “I didn’t want to join the choir, because there were so few boys!”
Boys often feel themselves the odd ones out in school choirs. Not in the Chinese orchestra. Aleck spent five years with the band, and learnt to play the erhu（二胡）, the gaohu（高胡） and the banhu（板胡） and soloed in public performances at times. While he retrospectively thinks the band took too much of his time, it also gave him some fond memories of cool times.
The list of musical instruments Aleck can play just doesn’t end with those cited above. Influenced by the singer-song writer Chet Lam Yat-fung（林一峰） and an intimate, he picked up the guitar at age 16 and fell instantly in love with it. So much so that in his third year at university Aleck went to Canberra and Toronto, on two back-to-back exchange programmes, with his bulky guitar.
During his time at the Australian National University he often carried it to gatherings with friends and they would then sing together. Once they, a group mostly of Chinese origin, wanted to give a party to two friends to celebrate their birthday.
“Many of us are from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia or Singapore and have all at some stage heard of the song Yu Jian （遇見）[Meeting by Chance],” Aleck recalls. “But we have a Thai and an Aussie, who cannot speak Putonghua. We then decided to sing Chet’s English demo version By My Side.”
Mark, Aleck’s Australian friend, also played music and he wrote new lyrics to a song for an impromptu performance for the party. They had everything recorded on a video camera so that everyone can enjoy the songs every now and then.
“You cannot feel stronger for lyrics that are specifically written. Every time you listen to it, the feeling just grows,” says Aleck. “This is part of the reasons why I write my own lyrics now. The other is that you can write a song on your friends’ experiences and give a song to them.”
Fluent in a few languages, Aleck believes that lyrics should not be there just to please the public. Japanese songs, for him, have a tendency to contain English words even though they do not necessarily match the melody.
“Unlike writing in English or Mandarin, it is most difficult to have Cantonese lyrics that go with a particular melody. People are just fastidious about the use of words and their intonations,” Aleck explains.
Contrary to Canto-pop songs in the 1970s, spoken Cantonese is no longer accepted in songs these days. Lyrics are now in Standard Chinese and mostly centre on the topic of lost love and broken relationships. A new generation of singer-song writers, including Aleck’s idol Chet Lam, have tried hard to broaden the scope of lyrics by telling stories about collective memories, adolescents’ problems and the like.
Aleck himself once wrote a song called Mong Tei Hang（旺地恆）– one of the two Hang Seng Bank branches at Mong Kok Station where youngsters like to meet – for an important friend. The lyrics depict for or with whom people are there just changes naturally as they age; yet the very branch itself looks timeless and appears as the backdrop of countless flashbacks.
Recently he sent the song to the Guangzhou-based cultural magazine Rice to try his luck and got a favourable reply from its editor Cha Ji. The email compared his lyrics to the stellar song “Wedding Card Street”（囍帖街） by Wyman Wong Wai-man, which tells the story of how a couple ended up like the Street. Mong Tei Hang is set to appear in the next issue of Rice, after Aleck stepped into a proper studio for the first time to record the song’s final version.
Although Aleck got his degree in Quantitative Finance, a leading finance programme, at CUHK, money is never his priority. Unlike most of his coursemates, he also minored in Japanese Studies, with its more cultural focus. No doubt he acknowledges the importance of having a full-time job for his living, but this young man, now 22, never rules out the possibility of having a job in the music field.
Working as a multiple part-timer these days, Aleck has spared much of his time for music -- and opportunities have been knocking at his door of late. Rice aside, Aleck received positive replies from two other organizations after sending his demos. One was from the managing producer of the radio-play-turned-stage-drama Martians（火星人） and the other was from Music@Youth, a music marathon to be held in March. To Aleck’s excitement, Martians may be using his song Ah Yau（阿優）; Aleck and friends have accepted the invitation and teamed up as a quartet to perform live under the name of CU later during the marathon.
When I meet the person who understands my music someday, I would never forget you are the one who praises me first. The honour will be shared between you and me.（他朝我遇上伯樂毋忘是你先欣賞我 這驕傲不止我一個）
Aleck sings those words strongly and firmly, to end his 25th and newest song The Avenue of Star（星光大道）.
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