Last week, I posted a video by Thomas Lee in which he asked passers-by on Sai Yeung Choi Street where they would go if they could open a door to anywhere. Now he’s back with another great video, this time a (well-subtitled) Cantonese-language rap by MC Yan, whom you might remember as the founder of Radio Dada and one of the first Chinese rappers.
I helped produce this video (though I can’t claim much credit — after introducing him to MC Yan and participating in a brainstorming session, nearly all of the work was done by Thomas). What struck me from the beginning was how passionate MC Yan is about Hong Kong, despite the cynicism that defines his lyrics. He’s genuinely fascinated by this place, rooted to it not only by birth but by a desire to improve it, and the way he expresses that is through unrelenting criticism of Hong Kong’s government and leaders.
In the video, he takes us on a tour of three important parts of Hong Kong — Causeway Bay, Central and West Kowloon — drawing inspiration from the social, political and cultural geography of each.
Thanks to Montréal Multiple, an excellent blog about multiethnic Montreal written by two La Presse journalists, I came across this video video for L’oubli, the new single off of Dramatik’s new album La Boîte Noire. Dramatik, who suffered a childhood as a rest-avec — a modern-day house slave — in Haiti, raps about Montreal North, the borough that was wracked by riots last year after police shot and killed a young teenager, Fredy Villaneuva. The song’s refrain says it all: “Did you forget that we lived here?”
I liked this song when I first heard it on CBC Radio 3, but when I saw its music video, I liked it even more. “Sweet Sixteen” by Think About Life is light, ironic dance-pop, and the video is similarly fun, especially in the stylized way it reflects the (hipster) Montreal landscape.
First there’s the giant “Ouvert 24 Hrs” sign in the background of the opening scene’s diner, then a poster-clad hydro pole set against a background video of a distinctly Montreal park (look at the benches!), a passing Hassid (who later makes an appearance at the final dance party) and, later, a cameo by Tong, a waiter at La Maison VIP, one of Chinatown’s best late-night eateries. I especially appreciate the detailed rendition of a Montreal bus, right down to the yellow stop-request wire and blue seats.
In the interests of flagrant self-promotion, I’m sharing with you my first foray into the world of francophone music pseudo-journalism. Earlier this summer, Bande à part, the excellent web-based indie music radio station, asked me to do a segment on the Hong Kong music scene for their weekly video podcast, L’actualité musicale. I decided to talk about hip hop. My dispatch took the form of an interview and my photos were remixed by DJ Ma; you can find it 10 minutes in.
Cantonese is a particularly good language for rap, thanks to its many tones, nuances and potential for wordplay, and a number of MCs and groups have taken advantage of this, making what people tell me is some very clever music that reflects Hong Kong culture and is often quite critical of the social and political status quo.
Time-lapse footage of big city traffic is a bit of a cliché, but this isn’t time-lapse: it’s stop-motion. Edwin Lee has managed to capture Hong Kong’s evening energy with this animation made from more than 10,000 still images of the city. It’s meant to serve as a music video for an instrumental piece by the local band A Roller Control, whose song “TV Dream” serves as an excellent companion to the images. The video is also a finalist in I Shot Hong Kong’s MV category. (I attended ISHK’s premiere the other night, incidentally, and the festival’s program includes some excellent short films — but also some that are entirely cringe-worthy.)
Another video by Lee, “The Way Home,” is much more conventional, but pretty enjoyable nonetheless. It reminds me why I always make a point of sitting in the top deck’s front seat whenever I ride the bus.
Since I now live in Hong Kong, I might as well get to know the local music scene. My Little Airport, an indie band that does slight and amusing twee-pop ditties, is one of my favourite local acts. The simplicity of their music and lyrics belies a wry and irreverent take on life in Hong Kong.
“Romance in Kowloon Tong” (浪漫九龍塘) is a song off their most recent album. Kowloon Tong is one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest areas, but tucked in between the expensive international schools and luxurious villas are secretive hotels, where people with money take their other significant others for a bit of love-by-the-hour. “I want to sing you a song / about me and you went to Kowloon Tong / we have to be very strong / if we want to do something very wrong,” goes the song’s English chorus. Its music video is especially adorable.
I took a walk through Kowloon Tong not too long ago. It’s a bit of a strange experience to suddenly leave the noise of Mongkok, pass under the KCR tracks and emerge into a suburban enclave of pastel-coloured walls and broad vistas. The love hotels make it even more bizarre: as posh as they are, they very concept is kind of hilarious, especially after you walk past a few and notice all of the luxury cars parked in front, their licence plates concealed by special little signs or curtains.
“Les peaux de lièvres” is quintessential Tricot Machine. Deliberately innocent but twinged with melancholy, it revels in the simple pleasures of life, like wandering through a snowy, nighttime Montreal. I have to be honest when I say that I probably wouldn’t have remembered it if it weren’t for this music video, which is probably the first stop-motion animation I have seen that uses knitwear as its medium. It also features a nice visual narrative that takes us past Mount Royal and the downtown skyline and up the side of the Olympic Stadium, weaving between the intimacy of personal life and the greater experience of the city.
Music videos and urban issues are not a likely combination. Most videos are daft things intended merely to promote a pop single of dubious musical value. Some are works of art in their own right. Rare, however, is the videoclip — as they are called in Quebec — that has a unique or interesting perspective on public or urban space.
One of these is the video for indie songstress Arianne Moffatt’s song Montréal. The video takes a fairly literal approach to the song’s content — it’s about returning to Montreal from Paris — but what makes it fascinating is the way it plays with the relationship between maps, signs and public transportation. One of the best sequences is when the headlights of an RER train morph into stops on a map of an RER line; the camera follows the line, pulling back to reveal the train’s interior. Also memorable are the scenes from Charles-de-Gaulle airport, the landing in Montreal and the closing shots taken along the Ville-Marie Expressway heading into Montreal, the concrete overpasses of the doomed Turcot Interchange looming overhead.
Another video I like comes courtesy of Lily Allen. It’s an alternate MV for her hit LDN. Although the mise-en-scène is completely straightforward — it’s just Allen riding around London on her bike — it is more effective than the more heavy-handed original. The cheery, colourful visuals are the perfect accompaniment to Allen’s sarcasm… and who doesn’t like looking at some street-level footage of London?
“Ain’t no streetcar, ain’t no subway car, it’s the Spadina bus!”
You know, it occurred to me the other day that when I made my first City Music post last month, I never bothered to define what I hoped to achieve with the series. So here goes: “City music” is pop music with a distinct sense of place. While the literary and cinematic landscapes of our cities have been well-charted — think of the Montreal of Mordecai Richler and Michel Tremblay, or the New York of Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee — the musical landscapes remain, for the most part, terra incognita. So think of me as a navigator (half-blind, perhaps, but with a good sense of direction) who will seek out and record the places found in music.
With that in mind, I present to you two songs, one from Toronto, the other from Calgary, one from 1986, the other from 2002. Both are about bus lines: Toronto’s fabled Spadina bus and Calgary’s less-hyped but no less interesting number 2 bus.
This is the first in a series of posts on city-related pop songs.
Photo by Chiron Bramberger on Flickr
Owen Pallett doesn’t like condos. This is abundantly clear in “This Lamb Sells Condos,” a song on his most recent Final Fantasy record, He Poos Clouds, winner of this year’s Polaris Music Prize for best new Canadian album. The Lamb in question is Brad Lamb, a Toronto condo broker whose billboards, including one with Lamb’s face photoshopped onto the body of a sheep, are found throughout the city. “The lyrics of Pallett’s song are a scathing psychoanalysis of Lamb and his colleagues in the loft and condominium development business, as well as a critical look at the costs — emotional and communal — of urban growth,” Torontoist informs us. Pallet himself elaborates, explaining that “these condos make me wickedly mad. It is turning Toronto into the architectural equivalent of a Glade Plug-In.”
But don’t expect a polemic in “This Lamb Sells Condos.” Instead, its lyrics are decidedly off-kilter and tongue-in-cheek, set to a gorgeous piano composition. The song isn’t so much a personal attack on Lamb as a poke at condo promoters in general, big-ego characters who have gleefully reduced urban life to a kitschy brand. “There’s a merchant in our midst and with a barrel fist / He’s coloured every surface, he’s slapped up a portrait / And yes, it is his own! He’s gonna take your home!” sings Pallett. “Look! Over the treetops! / Newly conjured erections are making him a killing / And Richmond St. is illing, so the graduates are willing / To buy in to the pillage, now there is no hope for the village.”
Click here to download “This Lamb Sells Condos.” The lyrics are after the jump.
Montreal Apartments