Hong Kong Morris - Singing

Singing

Singing (mostly of English folk songs) has always played an important role in the apres-morris conviviality of the Hong Kong Morris. Jim Carter, Hilary Blythe and Phil Pimentil, three of the side's early members, were noted singers on the local folk scene as part of the group Mulled Ale, and launched a tradition of powerful singing. Several other regular singers have maintained this tradition, including Mary Read and Amy Hughes (romantic ballads), Mike Greenhalgh (sea shanties), Dave Wilmshurst ('Death to the French' songs), Steve Ford (folksong parodies) and Dave Ellis (drinking songs). Kyoko Fukuda has recently widened the side's singing repertoire with two songs sung in Japanese: one about an elephant, known as The Elephant Song, and one about something else, known jokingly as The Not-the-Elephant Song.

Phil Pimentil used to sing one of the few English folksongs known to have mentioned Hong Kong, about an Irish navvy who found work in the British colony in the late nineteenth century: 'I'm off to be a Chinaman, to Hong Kong I'm bound.' Another song with a China connection, The Chinese Bumboatman Song, also known as The Ballad of Wing Chang Loo, has become a side favourite, and is sometimes delivered with 'an horrible oath' (as the song requires) in Cantonese, depending on the company.