‘Noisy, Dirty, Confused, Low Quality’ may be the comment of major Hong Kong people to Heavy Metal. Probably, people listened to the some music related to band sound who may just think they accept the Heavy Metal music easily. In fact, many people still have negative impression and they do not want to know about the true meaning of Metal music culture.
‘Nowadays, a lot of people do not use their ear to listen the music. They tend to use their eyes to capture the music. Once an artist has a good appearance whether he or she is a male or female, their music will be popular. For instance, something like “PangPangTong”(棒棒堂), if they play heavy metal, I believe many people would love to listen! ‘Nicolas Leung, a music fan, replied at a post in discuss.com. Is it the reality? Let’s see the past record of the recent years of music award organized by the mass media. There are none of the winners playing the metal music. And most of the music group / few people project are mostly the idols that have attractive outlook, dancing competences. Surprisingly, after Beyond or TaiChi, there are none of a band which can attain the publicity as them after 90s.
‘ People in Hong Kong listening Metal is all about trend,’ said Lau Sir, TRHK salesroom manager,’ Movie of “Detroit Metal City” reflects the typical view from public to Heavy Metal.’ In traditional music industry, rocker and people playing band are forced to cut out their long hair, hide their anger and turn to a gentle, clean and healthy style in order to suit the public culture. “D.M.C.” brings out an existing problem: Publics, or even the music lovers, mostly adore the outer level of Heavy Metal instead of the symbolic meaning behind the production. To the musicians who really play the Death Metal, the degree of Japanese visual make up is ‘Arabian Nights’. Perhaps the people play with Black Metal would do something like that. Simply, the key attractive point to the youth is the visual effect, not the music of metal. In 2004, a magazine, ’Milk’, talked about death metal. In fact, there are more than 10 pages shown about the fashion of death metal and just published 1 page to give a brief introduction of the death metal. 4 years later, in the view of masses, Heavy Metal is only a format in culture but not the arts. Lau-Sir claimed, ’actually, “DMC” stimulate the youth care about Death Metal. Someone came for music does not have any knowledge about death metal, even metal. The noise of the music far from their expected standard therefore lots of them just went away; someone came for the make up. Although I have explained with”Death Metal do not make up” many times and introduce them to Black Metal which is a type of the music style playing with corpse fashion. However, they give the same response to the guys asked for music—just go away because of the noisy music.’ In reality, truly participating, analyzing, getting interested in the music’s people is hardly to be found in Hong Kong. You may ask,’ why there are just a few people get interest with Metal in Hong Kong? Haven’t the mass media mentioned something about Metal?’
Surprisingly, there were just little reports about Metal in the media. I have searched the title with Chinese ‘Metal, music’ in wise news in recent 3 years, there are only 2 reports used Metal to be the main theme of it. One is something like press ad which promoted the music concert, and the other is talk about DMC by Nanfangdaily, yet Nan is a China publishing. Further, I searched the same thing with content. It’s quite interesting.
According to The Sun daily,’ Research from Australia, the researcher focus to the secondary school student and showed that the people who love Heavy Metal would relate to suicides, depression, criminals and drinking.’ Additionally, ‘Milor stated when the volunteers were listening some music that they dislike e.g. Heavy metal, their bollod vessels diameter contracted 6% .’ quoted from HKCD. Another news report in HKCD,’ Kelvin used to be an heavy metal lover, however, once he believes in islam….’ It’s not hard to imagine that people is socialized to be have a negative impression on heavy metal. It may be affected by the news organization‘s value or the professional value of the journalists. There is no doubt to claim that the society‘s value or culture do not accept the Heavy Metal too much in Hong Kong. Some may think the metal band do not have a sufficient market value for promotion or capture the profit. It maybe true, however, is there any other reason to explain such kind of situation?
To chase with the origin of heavy metal, the music started with history, political issues. Just listen at Cathedral ‘s Hopkins (The Witchfinder General) in 1968, in the lyrics, you can see the European religion, literature and philology inside. These are all the things that the musician and their society experiencing in the past. The music and the symbolic meaning made resonance effect to the public. Hong Kong has his own music culture and it is mainly affected by mainland china and Taiwan. Since poor technology in 60s to 70s, people in Hong Kong reached the J-rock till 80s. ‘If X-Japan (a visual band from Japan) was not popular in Hong Kong, there would not have people to discover the underground music, even Beyond may not be promoted by big label,’ Lau-sir claimed. When the people in Hong Kong started at listening to the Metal Music, some Europe countries such as Norway, England developed their Metal music culture about 10-15 years. There is a long way for Hong Kong people to learn and develop their own metal music culture in the future.
Bibliography
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1.1劉義 Matto Lau S.H.A.D.O.W. 12/7/2008 SAT
http://www.lau-sir.com/music/projects/blackwine_08/shadow.html
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