There’s a reason that art can transcend time, space, and vocabulary. It does so because it can speak to something innate born within us. Perhaps, it’s that ability to empathize, to experience shared emotion through song. It’s what feeds any musician to put their thoughts on instruments and express themselves to others. And, as shown in the expansive music of Hong Kong band, 民藝復興 (Endeavour), it is that outlet that has allowed them to impress the importance of creative freedom…even in the face of impending censorship and unjust fascist authoritarianism. Something, I think, anyone can appreciate in their fascinating 1992 album, 極樂 (Elysium).
Endeavours’s origin story begins not in some school, garage, or stage, it begins in front of their television screen. It was in 1989, at home, where the founders of Endeavour – Elvin Wong, Makin Fung and Thomas Chan – were watching news reports streaming in from Tiananmen Square depicting young students just like them bravely protesting China’s lack of institutional and political reform following the death of pro-reform CCP leader, Hu Yaobang. Basic human rights like freedom of speech, due process, and a free press, appeared to galvanize peers in the mainland (for a brief moment).
Yet, as the promise of mass solidarity and actual momentum began to coalesce, the Chinese government declared martial law and violently clamped down both physically and materially on protestors both within and outside of Beijing. Although, the events in Tiananmen Square would remain in the consciousness of many globally, within China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, it would be the wanton violent escalation of various mainland protest suppression that would culminate as the June Fourth Massacre that would be seared in their memories. It was the death grip of Chinese Communist leadership that wanted to wield to maintain their control over the populace.
It was the days the sight of tear gas, the sound of screams and assault rifles, seemed to assert their dominance.
So, in the face of all that turmoil, these three young 20-something students realized that whatever they were doing creatively had to change. They couldn’t have predicted the future but the future (as they say) tends to rhyme more than repeat itself and in a few short years they would be the ones who’d have to navigate those waters once Hong Kong changed hands to China. As a collective they could use music to keep that spirit going. Their underground had to become overground.
Elvin Wong had grown up listening to terrestrial radio, collecting records by the Beatles, only to fall in love with the English New Wave movement as he entered university. Makin Fung would equally be enamored with that side of music, building an early love for music from the likes of Joy Division, Ultravox, and so on, while exploring experimental and modern art in school. Thomas Chan was this gifted guitarist wanting to explore music outside of genres.
They chose to start a band together and name it “Endeavour” as it was an English word that they could translate to “民藝復興” or a “Folk Arts Renaissance”. Culturally, they felt that their folk traditions had gotten to a dead end, where creating music as it’s always been done won’t speak to the future that was sure to come. Inspired by musicians like Tats Lau, they too wanted to experiment, to make music that could reimagine their traditions with other shapes and palette choices that could give new life to that cultural protest.
Their first album, 1991’s 流 Mind 魂 Music 頌 Collection 1 From Endeavour, would be entirely self-financed and recorded, released in both Hong Kong and Taiwan. To do so they’d found the Rock In Records label to maintain full artistic control over the album. On it they shared forward-thinking songs like “Morning Mercy”, “Born”, and “祭舞” a grab bag of post-rock, wielding ambient, jazz, and folk influences, unlike little else in Hong Kong. Driven by the memory of (and dedicated to the) people who stood up to authoritarian hegemony on June 4th, 1989, Endeavour created a trailblazing, pioneering work for the new Hong Kong underground music scene.
Then, just a year later, their ambitious debut propelled them to go even further. Live performances at that time had become a mix of poetry slams and longform reimaginings of embryonic works. They felt they had something entirely special to build on.
Flying that protest flag even further, the music of 1992’s 極樂 (Elysium) was more confrontational and experimental in a different way. It was sprawling music influenced by global styles and deliberately more outwardly mysterious. Other than track names, the only words found in its CD jacket would be the words to the “United Nations Declaration Of Human Rights” and words supporting the work of Amnesty International. Rather than escapist music, this held music that integrated found sound, lyrics, and atmosphere from their hometown, serving as music for an imagined/free China.
“Fanny & Her Roses” would open the record tipping their hat to Albion brethren (and influences) who likewise tried to reimagine folk tradition in their counterculture movement. For the first time, they would add vocals to gorgeous, heartfelt songs like “地下情懷” and “別要別” giving them another tonal color and immediacy to hook onto.
Their instrumental beginnings, would expand in other ways as heard on songs like “Tom With Cat” and “苦悶之謳”. One would find them further exploring acoustic melodicism while the other dug deeper into their study of environmental and ambient music. The most intriguing tracks would be these longform songs like the title track, “極樂”, that seemingly felt inspired by hip-hop, prog, industrial, and other inspired influences. Heavier, noisier, and sonically denser, parts of Elysium (certainly on songs like “青春祭”) have a darker edge.
極樂 (Elysium) is an album that’s impossible to pinpoint. Running nearly an hour long, most of the ideas hover on moods, only to shift to something entirely leftfield. There’s a point in the latter part of the album where choral-inspired music evolves into a quasi-Balearic dance song – if you can imagine. Then you have a song like “You Never Cry” that sounds like a Joy Division knock up only to be followed by one their splinter group would have swooned to make, “Mystics”. Just six minutes of atmospheric, rightfully, haunting experiential music that’s followed by four minutes of music divined from the ages – that’s just as pathos-inducing, ending the record.
In the end, Endeavour blows past our expectations, squirming through any pigeonhole, just past our fingers, seemingly, as soon as we think we have them pegged. It’s that miracle of music that keeps this album, furtively, free and (still) impossibly speaking to us, even if the country it was made in is trying through impossible ways to stop the impossible. This is the stuff that transcends directly to our mind: another unstoppable work of art.
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