Song and Music (This week's Photo Hunt themes)

I'm listening to a CD of Dinah Washington songs -- that includes one that I will forever associate with Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express -- as I write this week's entry for Sandi's and Gattina's Photo Hunts.  However, it's the music that I associate with other Hong Kong movies -- such as Shu Kei's Hu-Du-Men -- that is the focus of this blog entry.

The music of Cantonese opera is one that quite a few people find discordant rather than tuneful but this traditional Chinese art form really does have its dedicated fans here in Hong Kong along with venues dedicated to hosting performances of it (notably the Sunbeam Theatre that has kept on going despite numerous closure threats along with the Ko Shan Theatre and the newly re-opened Yau Ma Tei Theatre).

Cantonese opera also is performed in temporary structures -- known as bamboo theatres -- that are regularly erected on occasions of Chinese festivals such as Taoist deity Tin Hau's birthday.  While visiting Cheung Chau -- a charming outlying Hong Kong island where movies such as the very sweet Just One Look were set -- a few days before Tin Hau's birthday this year, I came across a large bamboo theater located by a seaside temple and, upon stepping inside, found a performance in progress and an audience for it made up of people young as well as old.    

For my part, I have to admit that I appreciate Cantonese opera's cultural components -- and such as the costumes, hand-painted backdrops and the accompanying percussion music -- more than the actual singing and songs. At the same time though, that's truly been enough to keep me entertained through a couple of more than 3 hour long shows that I've attended!  Also, I have grown to enjoy the sound along with sight of middle-aged solitary hikers out in the Hong Kong countryside who often have a portable radio blaring out Cantonese opera music as they make their way along a trail -- and reckon that they add something colorful and special to the overall landscape of the Big Lychee when doing so! :)