CT Music Fest Goes Legit With a Grassroots Hong Kong Happening

“‘Are you crazy?’ That’s the question I’ve heard the most recently,” grins Joe Lung, the peak of his trademark baseball cap poking up periodically from behind a laptop, where he’s frantically juggling the schedule for his forthcoming CT Music Fest Vol 3.

Lung is perched on a tiny sofa, leaning over a tiny wooden table, on the precarious-looking loft balcony of an open-plan studio flat he requisitioned as an underground music venue, Chez Trente, sometime in the middle of the pandemic. Now, four years and some 420 “living room concerts” later — and just as many informal jazz jams and open mics — he’s going overground and “legitimate,” with a three-day camping festival on a car-free island off Hong Kong. 

“People keep saying to me, ‘Why are you doing this to yourself?’” continues Lung. “I don’t know. It’s just like, you go big or you go home, right? Lots of people play it safe. I want to create something that doesn’t exist.”

A music festival that doesn’t exist — yet

Mounting a three-day destination music festival is not a modest undertaking – especially one at a campsite on Cheung Chau, an outlying island some 40 minutes ferry ride away from Central. When we meet less than two months before gates open, he’s sold just 100 tickets, less than fifth his break-even margin. Not that Lung appears especially concerned. He’s convinced that whoever does make the journey out will have a good time. “I’m paying all the artists, but not enough, to be honest,” he confides. “But everybody understands my vision and why I’m doing this, so all the artists go easy on me.”

Because if there’s one thing Lung is good at, it’s throwing a memorable party. In October 2023, the first CT Music Fest saw those in the know invited onto a privately rented Star Ferry for a shambolic afternoon of music performances, crammed between the built-in seating, that anyone in attendance is unlikely to ever forget. The second one-dayer went overground, with a packed daylong bill of local talent stretching across three stages at The Trilogy nightclub, its rooftop bar Wav and the neighbouring jazz bar, Ella.

This time Lung has gone all out: a three-day sleepover, with 38 different camping and glamping options, spread across the five-hectare area of Saiyuen Camping Adventure Park, with a daytime capacity of around 1,000 punters. “The camping is a big element of why I really wanted to do this,” says Lung. “In many festivals, I don’t feel like bands can really communicate with each other. Imagine if you’re playing Clockenflap — you finish the show, you pop in to say hi to another band, but you don’t really sit down and communicate.” At CT Music, Lung hopes “the audience, artists, organisers, everyone can spend the night together, talking to each other, making good memories, sharing ideas and talking about other possibilities.”

It helps there was a ready-made location for such a happening. Party people will recognise the Cheung Chau campsite as the site of long-running electronic music festival Shi Fu Miz — an occasion where countless late-night, chemical-fuelled conversations have no doubt already taken place — which is notably absent from the events calendar for 2025. Lung was more than happy to fill the void. “When I did the site visit, it’s like, Jesus, this is perfect for a music festival,” he says. “All the things they have already built in. It’s just perfect for the idea that I always have had in my head.”

Moving on out

The music Lung had in his head might be described as a CT dream team, with many of the acts having previously performed at Chez Trente, which can feel cramped when a few dozen people show up (as invariably happens). Among the main stage acts at CT Music on the make-or-break Saturday are neo-soul singer-songwriter Jon Shen, francophone marching band Le Groupe Electrogène Fanfare Club and crowd pleasing surf-pop revivalists Mr Koo — a fitting throwback to the festival’s floating debut event two years ago. 

Much like Chez Trente’s audience, the showbill stretches across communities, cultures, scenes and genres. Sunday headliners include Cantopop survivors Yellow!, and a closing reunion show from local indie legends Teenage Riot, while reggae and Afro-centric band Murphy & the Lawyers close Friday night’s opening festivities. There’s also groovier fare on the second stage, where Jonas & Friends, Swing Pockets and Indigo Town all perform on Saturday, handing over to chill singer-songwriters Tomii and Josh Dionisio on Sunday, while electro-duo JVSY keep things upbeat on opening night. As well as live music, there’s DJs — including party-starting troupe Cantomania and Japanese vinyl selector O-Mori — to keep things going after dark. 

But for many day-trippers the weekend will be about more than music, with indie film screenings, a drum circle, morning yoga, a weaving workshop, kids’ disco and a family musical, DJ Junk! and the Disco Defenders, mainly taking place on the third stage. Technically there’s four performance areas in total, although the smallest is simply a ready-set guitar and mic busking station where anyone can perform. It all adds up to Lung’s immodest claim to recreate “Fuji Rock style in Hong Kong,” he says, referring to the beloved — and very large — Japanese music festival.

The French connection

If you’re wondering, the festival’s name comes from Chez Trente’s original location near the PMQ, an area that was historically known as 30 Houses. (Trente is French for 30.) Today just one of the original houses is still standing — and this is the building Lung chose to open a modest neighbourhood drinks shop in the late 2010s. He called it Chez Trente in honour of the neighbourhood’s heritage, but regulars quickly began referring to it as “CT” for linguistic ease. 

The quiet street Chez Trente called home became a lively hangout for artsy types following the closure of Sense 99, a long-running jam spot on Wellington Street, in the summer of 2019. (A smaller, cleaner, more-organised Peel Street incarnation of the same venue closed amid pandemic woes in 2022). The original Sense 99 was more like a common room than a bar — the kind of place anyone could swing by after dark and find themselves jamming with like-minded boho souls until the early hours. 

“Every city will have one or two places like this, it’s more like a community base than a venue – a place where artists and people hang out,” says Lung. “And eventually, you get to a point that, the owner gets old and kind of wants to retire or whatever, right? And then you pass it to someone that always hung out there.” 

Joe Lung at Chez Trente – Courtesy Joe Lung

In this case, that guy was Lung, a drummer who had been losing out on sleep at Sense 99 since soon after it opened in 2004. Soon crowds would congregate on the steps outside Chez Trente, then officially just a bottle shop, while occasional exhibition openings would give guests an excuse to mingle inside. Playing by the rules was not part of the plan: when Clockenflap 2019 was suddenly cancelled amid anti-government protests, Lung assembled a tiny makeshift festival entitled Plan B featuring many local acts that were meant to play the larger festival. It wasn’t ideal for business. “Because the shop became the stage, the people were outside in the street, and then no one could get inside to buy drinks,” he laughs. “It’s quite funny, right?”

During the years of Covid lockdown, Lung began hosting private jams and shows to give musicians a vital space to just keep playing. Then, when a friend suddenly relocated to Singapore, leaving an open lease on a prime Soho studio apartment, Lung saw the opportunity to upgrade. He acted quickly, shuttering Chez Trente with a loud, teary closing party, before cheekily announcing the upgrade to a new address a week later. “I remember I just announced, with two days’ notice, ‘Sorry guys, we’re closing.’ People were crying, they were so sad,” laughs Lung. “And then a week later, it was, ‘What the fuck?’” 

With a designated private space to party out of view, the shows got a lot more regular — and a lot more serious. Originally, the weekly living room concerts were shared covertly on an informal WhatsApp group with a few dozen members; today that group still exists, but the hundreds of members are hidden and muted, and many shows are also shared on Instagram. For licensing reasons, Chez Trente still operates as a speakeasy and its exterior door remains completely unmarked, but the location now appears on map apps and today welcomes a growing flow of tourists. “It’s a bit of a grey area, but basically it’s a private thing,” says Lung.

Staging a thousand-capacity music festival means reaching out beyond CT’s community base. It also means playing by the book. “With CT Fest, everything is legit,” affirms Lung. “That’s also why I want to do it, because I want to try to do a legit thing. So this time, we’ve got all the licences. That’s why the cost is so high.”

While it remains uncertain if Chez Trente Vol 3 will be a commercial success, it feels unlikely anyone attending won’t hail the event’s ambition – nor leave with some fuzzy memories of a happening wilder than the city’s regular roster of government and corporate al fresco musical offerings. 

“There’s too many festivals in Hong Kong actually,” says Lung. “Right now, I don’t know which ones are good, which ones are bad anymore. There’s so much — I mean, that’s good for people.” Lung admits it’s stressful knowing he will have to compete with bigger and better financed festivals. But that doesn’t deter him. “These independent community-driven events carry a unique emotional warmth that cannot be replaced.”

CT Music Fest Vol. 3 takes place at Saiyuen Camping Adventure Ground, Cheung Chau, November 21–23. Find out more on Instagram and purchase tickets.