Every Punch Line is in Cantonese

So, remember a few posts back I mentioned this really cool opportunity I received that was wreaking havoc on my internship schedule? That opportunity was to host this awesome Jazz A Cappella/Choral concert the CYMCA (Chinese YMCA) was producing with a group called the Oxford Gargoyles, who made the trip from the UK to sing for 500-ish people last Friday night in a beautiful music hall at Hong Kong University.

The other American intern and I were to MC the concert in both English and Cantonese (as an “ABC” (American Born Chinese), he speaks fluent Cantonese). They wanted bits and jokes as well…bilingual bits and jokes. Comedy on stage is like a fragile little fairy creature to begin with, but when you’re working in two languages (and only one of you understands both), it’s more like a football player with Osteogenesis Imperfecta. 

So we’d speak back and forth, setting up the joke, me in English and Brian in Cantonese, and we’d have to rehearse it over and over again because I had no choice but to memorize the exact timing and wording. But somehow we made it work (even though to this day I don’t know why any of the jokes were funny).

The concert was received very well, and even the General Secretary of the entire Chinese YMCA said he was very impressed.

But the most awesome part of the whole thing was actually the part I’d anticipated being the most painful: The Gargoyles arrived in HK a few days early to lead a 3 day workshop with local kids, who would perform the songs they’d learned in the concert. Hong Kong kids are ultimately superior in musicianship to American kids. Sorry, but it’s very, very true.

I think it has something to do with Chinese and especially Cantonese being tonal languages; since a child has to recognize that the same word or sound can have several different meanings based on pitch and inflection, I think their ears are automatically more tuned to melodies. These kids learned an incredible amount of (fairly challenging) music, and performed it on pitch, and with (well executed) harmonies.

On that note, I leave you.