PROJECT INTRODUCTION

The Story of a Virtuoso Blind Musician is the result of the tireless research of Professor Bell Yung and Sonia Ng. When The Hong Kong Memory Project approached soundpocket, we went through the textual and audio materials and coordinated with web design team XEX group and our audio editor on making a meaningful web presence for the materials. The experience conceived emphasizes the speaking and singing voice of Douwun. Dr. Sonia Ng’s narration offers an important layer (orientation) to the way Douwun’s story is experienced. The role of soundopcket, with the assistance of Natalie Lo as our editor, is to include a contemporary angle of analysis from Professor Yu Siu-wah to the articulation of the materials, and to offer advice, where needed, on the configuration of the listening experience. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Sonia Ng and Bell Yung for their guidance, Patrick Mok of Hong Kong Memory Project for his constructive comments and patience in leading the project, and their tireless effort in balancing loyalty to the historical materials and ingenuity.

Yeung Yang

soundpocket
February, 2014

Research and Curatorship

Dr. Sonia Ng
Sonia Ng holds B.A. in History and Ph.D. in Chinese Language and Literature from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and M.Ed.in Higher Education from the University of Toronto. Currently, she works in the field of translation, culture exchanges and advertising.

Prof. Bell Yung
Bell Yung is an eminent scholar of Cantonese opera and Guangdong song-art. Born in Hong Kong, Yung graduated from the Wah Yan College Kowloon and furthered his study in the US, where he received two doctorates: first a doctorate in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then a doctorate in music at the Harvard University. Yung returned to Hong Kong in late 1970s and became a Professor of Music at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and the Chair of Music Department at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). At present Yung is a Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh in the States.

Bell Yung left the States for Hong Kong in 1974 to undertake his research on Cantonese opera. He happened to have heard Douwun’s nanyin for the first time in the Goethe-Institut. After that he watched him perform in various places like the Art Museum of CUHK and the St. John's Cathedral. Profoundly impressed, Yung decided to make a recording of Douwun’s performance so as to preserve the first-hand experience of nanyin song-art.

Hong Kong Memory Project Team
Hong Kong Memory (HKM) is a multi-media web site that gives free and open access to digitized materials on Hong Kong’s history, culture and heritage. The materials include text documents, photographs, posters, sound recordings, motion pictures and videos.   HKM is Hong Kong’s response to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme which calls for the preservation of valuable archive holdings and library collections all over the world through digitization to guard against collective amnesia.

Collaborate with
soundpocket

Website concept

XEX LTD.
XEX is an interdisciplinary creative studio based in Hong Kong. It focuses on brand imaging design with cross-media platform. XEX leads the visual communication from the elements of imagery and interactive design. XEX means creation on non-existence.