HONG KONG—The spontaneous “umbrella movement” that has taken over streets in this city is just about two months old, and there is a general fatigue setting in among some quarters. Sleeping in tents on asphalt roads, after all, loses its novelty rather quickly.
Two singer-songwriters, Samson Ling and Anita Chung, a couple, are aiming to encourage and comfort the protesters with a music video and performances of a song they wrote back in September: “The People Under the Umbrellas.”
On a recent evening at Admiralty, the main occupied zone in Hong Kong, the couple organized a number of the well-known student leaders to sing the song, which they will use for an upcoming music video. Their friend, Taft Tsui, an artist and organizer of live performances, also quickly pulled together a live performance (with encores) involving dozens of protesters who learnt the song on the day.
Prefacing her remarks with the ubiquitous disclosure that she does not really concern herself with politics, Anita Chung, a lyricist who had a hand in the song’s composition, said: “Basically the song is about how we’re all gathering together here because the government is not listening to our voice.”
She continued: “We don’t want to do this, but there’s nothing else we can do—that’s why we’re here.”
Samson Ling, her partner and the primary composer of the song, added that “We didn’t really care much about the protests until the 28th.”
Sept. 28 is when the Hong Kong police fired 87 canisters of tear gas into protesting crowds. It served to temporarily disperse the crowd, but the same night tens of thousands of people, shocked and furious at the government, took over the 12-lane highway outside government offices that they now call Umbrella Square.
