In My Cantopop Nights Emma-Lee Moss, aka singer-songwriter Emmy the Great, has written a memoir rooted in her love of Hong Kong’s east-meets-west pop.
Emma was born in Hong Kong to an English father and Hongkonger mother. She lived there until she was 11, when her family moved to England, one of many who left Hong Kong before its transfer of sovereignty from the UK to China in 1997. In this Guardian interview with Katie Goh, she picks her favourite tracks.
Even as a child, Moss understood the significance of the handover, which returned Hong Kong to Chinese control after 156 years as a British colony. “Thanks to our British passports, we would avoid the greatest schism our city had ever known – and its consequences, which were unwritten,” Moss writes in her memoir, My Cantopop Nights. Later, as a touring musician, Moss played gigs in Hong Kong, where she reconnected with her childhood love of Cantopop – predominantly Hong Kong music that blended Chinese and western pop sensibilities. In 2017, she moved back there to write her fourth album. That year, which marked 20 years since the handover, saw thousands of pro-democracy protesters on the streets after activists including Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow were imprisoned. Amid the unrest, Moss sought to capture Hong Kong’s sound and spirit through her music.
In My Cantopop Nights, Moss tells Hong Kong’s history through Cantopop alongside her own origin story in becoming Emmy the Great. Here are some of the genre’s highlights, with Moss writing about how they touched her life and captured the mood of Hong Kong throughout its turbulent history…
Read the full article here The Guardian