Eshin Direct

I went to the Sammi Cheng Sau Man concert on Saturday and finally fulfill my wildest dreams come true. Only except without the whips. Or the chains. Or even the candles. To be honest, I wasn’t really planning on going since most of the people I know either wouldn’t be caught dead there or, for those that would suffer a Sammi concert for me, weren’t in the country. However, turns out my friend could snaggle some discounted tickets at $100 and after some convincing managed to get her to come along with me to keep me company. Turns out she did enjoy it after all.

There were other reasons for going to. As one other friend pointed out to me, Sammi seems to be winding down her career in music for the moment, so this might be her last concert for some time. So it might have been my last chance to see her while I was in HK or anywhere. I also felt that I needed to see what a Canto-pop concert is like so aside from the oggle factor, it was also a cultural observation.

While enjoyed the concert, I did feel it was a little more of a show rather than a concert. This had impact on the overall experience in some strange ways. Firstly, it meant that while there was singing, there was also a lot of time spent talking. This would be Sammi either chit chatting with the four walls of the audience or, at times, with her guest singers. The guest singers would come on and do a duet, chit chat and do a solo performance while Sammi went to change costume. We had the privilege of Juno, Candy Lo, Denise Ho (I believe), and some other woman sing with Sammi. They managed to also drag down Miriam Yeung from the audience for a “impromptu” performance.

For me, the show was a little stilted. While I do take into account that I couldn’t understand the conversations (hey, foreigner like me likes to listen to the melody, look at some eye-candy), I did think that the show was more of an opportunity for Sammi to interact with her audience rather than belt out all of her popular old songs and new songs like in a Western concert. It sort of explained why most people stayed in their seats for the whole concert and why my ears weren’t ringing at the end of it. All in all, rather civilised and subdued.

Apparently, if we screamed for her enough, she would come back and do an encore presentation. I guess this was the only time it really seemed like a concert with people shouting for their star and, the Chinese favourite, glow sticks waving in the dark. In this segment, she managed to get off her popular signature songs from her various movies over the years. One wonders if the audience members, a girl and a boy, and the celebrity who was sitting in the VIP section, were all plants a la Cox/Springsteen.

By Western standards, this was a show more than a concert. Any band or singer who deigned to talk as much and sing as little at their own concerts would be lynched. A conversation with the audience would last maybe five minutes while the singer caught their breath but even that would be considered long. But by Chinese standards, I believe this was the norm and it just re-affirms my suspicion that many of Hong Kong’s celebrities are more about performance than just singing. But who cares, I got to see Sammi.