"Little character" persists in a singing career

By Iris Lo, Ella Sio

Can you name a local singer or an original piece of music from Macao? As becoming the richest city in the world in 2020, the cultural development especially in the musical field is not going as well as the GDP of the city, and the market for Local music and musicians is not as big as the neighboring city of Hong Kong. While the world only recognizes Hong Kong musicians and seldom mentions any Macao musicians, what makes local musicians persist to fight for their dream in this industry?

In Macao, people rarely listen to the music from local singers and mostly listen to the Hong Kong music. There is also another fact that most well-known local singers are active in Hong Kong such as Siufay and Vivian Chan. Unfortunately, there are fewer platforms for them to perform and publish their own work locally, so they choose to develop their own career in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, there are still some local singers who are passionate to sing and create original songs; some of the "little characters" are chasing their singing dream in their own way. All of them are contributing to the local music development. We cannot help but to wonder what makes them stay for the local industry and how they make a living under such a limited market.

A "little character" in Macao

Kenny Chit, is a talented 22-year-old man who loves singing. He was passionate about singing on stage when he was young in order to gain people's attention and listen to his song just for once. He worked hard to practice and also participated in various singing competitions in Macao, mainland China or overseas. Up to now, he indeed gained lots of performance experience, got some music awards and made friends with many local singers. Also, he has published his own songs and different cover songs.

"When I was 12, I found that I loved singing and enjoyed being on the stage during performances. But I'm just a 'little character' who loves singing in Macao, not a singer," said Chit with a humble tone during the interview. However, Chit has been struggling hard to become what he is. He had participated in many local or mainland singing competition such as "AECM Singing Competition", "Sing Arena", "Sing! China" and so on. Not only has he earned good grates and become a winner in various singing competitions, but also gained more performance experience so that to improve his singing career in the future.

After that, some of his peers suggested him to leave the comfort-zone and develop his own music. "I am glad that I obtained an opportunity to publish my new songs, some of the songs were awarded in Macao music events," said Chit. Although he had "little success", he was never arrogant. At present, he keeps practicing and releasing different cover songs online in order to attract more people's attention, click links and enjoy his music.

Challenges of local singers in Macao

Asked about challenges in being a singer or creating music in Macao, he said that there is a phenomenon that Macao citizens do not know much about local singers and locally made music, they would prefer listening to music from neighboring places such as Hong Kong or Taiwan. He explained the main reason is that Macao is such a tiny place with little market demand and limited promotional effort, it is really hard for singers to increase their exposure rate and attract people's attention even though they might be very talented or come out with really good songs.

On the other hand, although various music companies exist in Macao nowadays, there is a lack of professional training which provides young singers with quality singing technique courses. In addition, resources to support a promising music industry which include musical instrument, funding or creativity expertise could not satisfy the needs of local singers, especially independent singers, who are inadequately publicized and lack of a platform to develop better music and to gain more performance opportunities.

Under this circumstance, Chit was lamenting about the development of the Macao music industry. He recognized the improvements of Macao music industry in recent years, more and more singers published their own music and participated in Macao music events. However, the development of Macao music industry is still relatively backward and suffers a chronically slow growth when compared with mainland China or Hong Kong, which leads to the consequence that local singers would rather develop their career or music in Hong Kong than in Macao.

Although it is still a "hard time" for local singers who continue developing a music career in Macao, Chit never gives up singing, "I really love singing, at the same time it is important that I see people supporting my music, which could encourage me to keep singing." He hoped that more and more local singers and music could be recognized by different audiences so that the Macao music industry would become better in the future. People would not only concentrate on gambling or tourism in Macao, but to appreciate local music, he said. To achieve this, in addition to the effort of singers, it also depends on the support and promotion of the government and media.

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