The Hush! Beach Concerts lit up Macau once again in November
Attending a music festival feels like participating in an exciting sport, jumping and cheering amidst the crowd, as the music gets louder and louder and the crowd gets more and more into the melodies and rythms. These days we all need to take off our headphones and immerse ourselves in some live music, and once a year on the black sands of Hac Sa Beach, the Hush! music festival offers locals a great opportunity to do just this.
Since last year, with the support of MGM Macau, the Hush! Beach Concerts x Yo~ga Wellfest have included live stage performances, music workshops, masterclasses, music camps, sharing sessions, and booth games, as well as “Macau Cruise Concerts lineup,” combining elements of sightseeing, transport, and music all together.
As one of the organisers of Hush!, artistic and technical coordinator John Vu’s job is to present the “right music at the right time on the appropriate stage” for audiences to enjoy: “Any form of performance is possible; we don’t let space, venue, or funding limit our imagination!” he says.
Include Everything
“The aim of Hush! is to embrace all live music,” says John, who firmly believes in the value of live performances. “Without live music, it becomes no different from just an ordinary karaoke show.”
However, when it comes to balancing the audience’s enjoyment of both “new musical discoveries” and “music people’ll definitely love,” John admits it can be a challenge. To begin with, each year, the organising team establishes a main theme for the festival, such as jazz, soul music, blues, etc.
“The world of music is vast; even within rock, there’s hard rock, country rock, pop rock, punk rock… We hope to introduce different music genres each year, allowing the public to discover new surprises in music, even within genres they thought they already knew.”
At the same time, Hush! must also keep up with musical trends. To this end, John explores currently popular music genres and bands, engaging with various forms of musical performances. He reveals that sometimes he poses informal questions on social media to gather feedback and suggestions, openly asking friends in the music industry what music they enjoy and which bands/musicians they want to see perform in Macau.
This year’s impressive lineup included singer-songwriter 9m88 from Taipei, renowned Japanese funk guitar master Tomo Fujita, legendary Macau musician Jun Kung, and emerging music band Lola Amour from the Philippines, amongst others, attracting a solid number of music fans to Hac Sa Beach, despite the sometimes rainy weather over the weekend.
More than just Rock
The inaugurual Hush! Music Festival was held in 2005, when it was known as “HUSH!! Full Band Marathon Rock Festival”. From 2005 to 2014, the festival was organised by the then Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM), running for ten consecutive editions. In 2015, Hush! was paused for a year and then in early 2016, IACM proposed to continue holding it at Hac Sa Beach, scheduling it for May 1, the same date as previous beach concerts.
“Although we knew that May 1 wasn’t an ideal day for a band show, we didn’t want Hush! to disappear, so a few colleagues and I decided to take over.”
After assuming the organising responsibilities, John’s first idea was to remove the word “rock” from the title, to accommodate a wider range of music genres: “Removing the inherent label of ‘rock’ allows for more possibilities at Hush!”
Thus, starting in 2016, the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC) began hosting the festival, rebranding it as “Hush! Beach Concerts”. Subsequently, John officially joined the Hush! organising team in 2017, and over the following years, the team has sought to find suitable spaces to set up stages at Ha Sa Beach, establishing the Upbeat Power Stage, Summer Chill Stage (later renamed Music Chill Stage), and Hush Kids Stage.
This year, the Hot Wave Stage remained the main stage of Hush, and to diversify the experience for the public, elements like creative markets and food stalls were also added. For the second year in a row, the music performances were also held concurrently with Yo~ga Wellfest, organised by MGM Macau.
The Vitality of Music
Preparations for hosting an outdoor music festival by the beach are not always smooth sailing, and each year brings unexpected challenges, some of which can be discouraging. For the Hush! team, this year’s biggest concerns were the limited venue space and the impact of the weather and tides.
The team had to quickly search for new venues, repeatedly measuring up new usable spaces, adjusting stage sizes, and negotiating with equipment companies to level the ground. However, the tide issues really caught them by surprise — typhoons combined with astronomical tides brought waves high up onto the shore, almost damaging the equipment. Fortunately, staff managed to evacuate the equipment just in time.
“During the years affected by the pandemic, we did our best to overcome venue and audience number limitations by holding concerts in various locations, such as the Rooftop Sunset Concert on a real rooftop, ‘Coastal Rock Concert’ on a barge, and the ‘Hush Online’ concert.” The team’s efforts to keep Hush! going provided venues and opportunities for Macau’s bands and musicians to perform even under pandemic constraints, demonstrating the resilient vitality of live music in the city.”
“We hope everyone can make good use of the official Hush! platforms online to share their creative, music-related ideas with us. Through Hush!’s music expansion programs and workshops, we aim to turn these ideas into executable live music events, bringing original music from Macau to the public in various forms. Next year, Hush! will celebrate its 20th edition, and we are looking forward to even more great live music acts and events.”
