Thirty Years of Contemporary Christian Music in Hong Kong

Abstract

Contemporary Christian music (CCM) in general refers to a music genre that carries Christian messages with popular music styles. Today CCM in US has evolved into a genre that has its own magazines, charts, awards as well as being listed as multiple Grammy categories, and certainly also making good sales. In Hong Kong, for 30 years, a creative community has been struggling to find the right mix for the genre and push the music to a secular audience since local CCM took shape in the 1980s. Throughout the years, the CCM creative community has to simultaneously overcome resistance from church traditionalists and handles opportunities and obstacles presented by the mainstream music industry. In this paper, a brief history of Hong Kong CCM is included and mapped against certain trends and changes in the mainstream music business in Hong Kong. Next, the article elaborates four cases of crossover acts between the CCM scene and the mainstream music scene to discuss the possibilities and limitations for CCM to be culturally relevant under the backdrop of the Hong Kong pop music soundscape.