Every Saturday nights, from 8:30 pm to 11:30 pm, a live jazz performance is held at a small ‘jazz bar’, Visage One, at Hollywood Road in Hong Kong. Surprisingly, Visage One is a pseudo jazz bar and it is actually one of the most exclusive hair salon in the city, which only provides haircut service and no perm or hair dyes are offered.
Jazz performances at Visage One
The jazz music performance at Visage One is literally secretive. In the day, Visage One is a one-man hair salon, where only the owner Benky Chan provides haircut service and it can only serve four to five people per day. Benky Chan has been hairdresser over 25 years and he says his main focus is not money, but an attitude, a lifestyle choice. “If a one-man shop does well, it can quickly become two men or 10 men, but he keeps his shop just for himself,” Benky Chan said (Hong, 2016). Benky Chan is also a live jazz fan and he opens the door to the tiny, intimate hairdresser and turns it into a pseudo jazz bar with some of the city’s best musicians playing nose-to-nose with a small group of plucky music lovers that manage to get in.
Benky Chan was doing haircut in the day
Benky Chan was preparing for the jazz bar on Saturday night
Every Saturday night, a small group of people (around 20) come to Visage One, buy a drink and enjoy the live jazz. Benky Chan doesn’t charge the audience for tickets. Instead, the audience needs to buy a drink at the Visage One minibar in order to get in and watch the jazz performance. Benky Chan makes the drinks for the audience according to their different preferences and the price ranging from 60 HKD to 200 HKD (around 9 US dollars to 30 US dollars). The audience includes Hong Kong residents who come to Visage One jazz performance monthly and also travelers who know about the secret performance from their friends or the internet.
Audience sitting on the chairs and stairs, and watching the live jazz performance
Hong Kong’s first exposure to jazz was during the British colonial period. In the 1930s, jazz themed restaurants in Hong Kong started to serve British sailors and other Englishmen in Hong Kong. In the 1950s and 1960s, these restaurants began to evolve and grow, and a large number of jazz bars appeared, which cultivated many local musicians and enthusiasts. However, at that time, jazz was not at the forefront of music in Hong Kong. Cantonese songs were popular among Hong Kong natives, while famous English songs were mainly rock and country music. With the rapid development of the Hong Kong film industry in the 1970s and 1980s, many films began to incorporate jazz music, and the sound of jazz blues gradually gained more and more recognition, if not mainstream (Dunn, 2012).
In 1987, the first jazz festival was held in Hong Kong and it is a pivotal moment for jazz in Hong Kong. This jazz festival brought jazz from dance hall and jazz themed restaurants in Hong Kong to a larger public audience and became individual freedom of expression. The jazz festival was originally sponsored by a Japanese company and lasted five years before coming to an end in 1992 during the economic decline period of Japan. It had been a long time since Hong Kong hosted another large jazz festival. But in 2018, more than a decade later, the Hong Kong Jazz Association decided to give another try and launched the Hong Kong International Jazz Festival. The international jazz festival, held in Hong Kong’s clubs, concert halls and bars, was a huge success, which was thanks to the enthusiastic private patrons. The festival has continued to this day and helped jazz make more inroads into Hong Kong society.
Cue down the street
In nowadays, there are many jazz lovers in Hong Kong, including Benky Chan. He sets a strict rule for the live jazz at Visage One - no talking is allowed when the musicians are performing. Benky Chan would throw the people who talk over the music out and he says it is his way of maintaining a culture of appreciation.
“No Talking” sign at Visage One
When we say the jazz performance at Visage One is a secret, it’s not really. There’s usually a cue down the street, so if you want to see what all the fuss is about. Get there early. Maybe a get a trim while you’re waiting.
References
1.Dunn, E. (2012). Jazz bars in Hong Kong – an introduction. Retrieved from https://mezzaninehk.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/jazz-bars-in-hong-kong-an-introduction/ 2.Hong, B. (2016). Hair and music in a Hollywood Road speakeasy. Retrieved from http://www.ejinsight.com/20160422-hair-and-music-in-a-hollywood-road-speakeasy/
Author & Copyright: Yinwei Sun
Published Date: March 2019
Comments