Panel A11
Boundaries and Borders of the Hong Kong Indie Music Scene
Jonathan Chan et al.
Summary
Bands and artists from indie scenes in Asia have experienced rapid expansion with the rise of streaming platforms and social media, propelling certain groups to fame across the region and even beyond into the spotlight of the global centres of indie music in the West. In the region, the ability for audiences to access and engage with cultural producers and scene participants in neighbouring and further afield countries has allowed for new flows and movements geographically, transporting music, people and culture across borders and thus opening up new possibilities for local scenes to become translocal scenes. New digital landscapes have also transformed the social fabric of local scenes, on one hand turning previously physical scenes into hybrid scenes relying on digital platforms to disseminate information and even as performance mediums. These digital platforms also bring into question ideas of materiality and place, where the boundaries and borders between the physical and virtual blur and blend into each other. Hong Kong, being a place of blurred borders and boundaries presents an important case study. Political shifts in recent history from the 2019 anti-ELAB protests and the COVID-19 pandemic has made the scene more precarious than ever before, forcing a lot of its infrastructure to move underground and its communications online to become less public. This precarity has also prompted bands and musicians to look further afield for performance opportunities in neighbouring countries in East and Southeast Asia. Hong Kong has also been a node in the regional touring network, hosting many performers from the region in smaller venues, further linking it to the translocal scene that is forming. This roundtable brings together scholars working on the Hong Kong indie scene, and will present examples of the ways that the scene has engaged with the borders and boundaries between the virtual and physical, the local and translocal, and explore the unique ways indie scenes are able to utilise on and offline DIY methods to find novel strategies to maintain resilience and weather socio-political changes.