Notes for the Future: Charting Global Pathways in Music’s Digital Age

Speaker
Yatfung (a.k.a Chet Lam) is a Hong Kong-based independent city folk singer-songwriter, music producer, writer and TV presenter. He is a global explorer, travelling to and sojourning in over 70 countries, and connecting a wide range of communities worldwide through music and cultural exchange. He constantly experiments with music, words and different art forms in search of a unique way of storytelling. His major accolades include the Best Folk Singer (2012 and 2016, China’s Top Chinese Music Awards); Album of the Year (Cantonese) for Requiem for Flowers in 2012 Chinese Music Media Awards (China); Best Folk Artist at the 2004 and 2005 Chinese Music Media Awards (China); Song of the Year for Yu Jian at the 2004 Global Chinese Music Awards (Taipei); and Best Original Film Song at the 2003 Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards (Taipei). In 2003, he founded an independent music label LYFE Music. He released 22 studio albums in Cantonese, Mandarin and English, published nine bestselling books, including essay collections, travelogues, guitar scores and a cookbook, penned pop hits for artists such as Eason Chan, Stephanie Sun, Dadawa and Gigi Leung, and held concerts in 2016 and 2019 with the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra to explore the new frontiers of Chinese orchestral music.

Special guest
Dr Liang Wern Fook is an outstanding Singaporean author, poet, lyricist, and singer-composer. For more than 40 years, his words and music have created a Singapore style and carved out a place for Singaporean culture in the world.

Xinyao is a music and cultural movement that began in Singapore in the 1980s, a unique expression of Singapore’s Chinese culture. Dr Liang is one of this movement’s earliest pioneers, having produced iconic works such as Friends Forever 《细水长流》, Singapore Pie 《新加坡派》, The Sparrow with a Bamboo Twig 《麻雀衔竹枝》, One Step at a Time 《一步一步来》, Too Much 《太多太多》 and Before the History Exams 《历史考试前夕》. These pieces have distinct local Chinese traits and a national flavour, reflecting the vibrant linguistic and musical charms of a multi-cultural society. They also reflect the spirit of the era when they were created in, in documenting Singapore’s development and building social cohesion amongst Singaporeans. 

In Singapore, Dr Liang is a household name who is known across different generations and whose work is admired by diverse segments of society. Dramatist Kuo Pao Kun once described Dr Liang’s special role in Singapore’s arts sector as that of a builder of bridges between literature and music. A public poll conducted by the Composers and Authors Society of Singapore saw Dr Liang voted as the person who was most representative of the spirit of Xinyao. After Xinyao’s heyday, he worked with top singers from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, thereby introducing the cultural specificities and literary charm of Chinese Singaporean popular music to the wider Chinese-speaking world. This helped to consolidate and promote the development and maturation of the local Chinese popular music industry. 

Dr Liang wrote his first song in 1980. In 2015, he held a concert to mark the 35th anniversary of his creative journey as a songwriter. Lianhe Zaobao named Liang as the representative figure for the music industry when it published its list of that year’s important cultural figures. 

The muti-talented artist has received many awards and accolades for his achievements. Dr Liang is the only artist who has received the Young Artist Award (Literature, 1992) and the prestigious Cultural Medallion (Music, 2010) across different genres of art. He received the Singapore Chinese Culture Contribution Award in 2021. He has continuously created outstanding literary and musical works which have connected with audiences within and beyond Singapore, helping to mould a unique Singaporean identity and is thus regarded as an iconic figure of Singapore culture.

Monkey is a singer-songwriter and graphic illustrator who joined music production programme My Main Stage by Mr. Chiu Tsang Hei's. Starting from street performances to big stages such as, including Lau Bak Livehouse, Lost Star, Hong Kong Museum of Arts, and Hong Kong Pop Culture Festival etc.

TAOTAO is an all-rounded R&B & electropop singer-songwriter. She has studied vocal music and music production at Musicians Institute in Los Angeles. She served as a guest performer of Terence Lam Ka Him at MDRT with HIM and SO ME SHOW MUSIC music festivals, and composed music and provided backing vocals for Janice M. Vidal in Make Music Work.

mue is a Korean singer-songwriter who grew up in Hong Kong. He is a “bedroom musician” who produces Lo-Fi music through his laptop, launchpad and guitar, and transform the music as a unique language to express his emotion