Roman Tam, a legendary Hong Kong pop singer who was often referred to as the “godfather” of the city’s music scene, passed away on Friday. He was 52.
Roman Tam Cause Of Death
“Canto-pop singer Roman Tam Pak-sin died of liver cancer in Queen Mary Hospital last night,” the South China Morning Post reported on October 19, 2002.
Roman Tam Career
According to the study, during his 30-year career, Tam “was one of the few Hong Kong singers to become cultural icons, his songs proving particularly popular for a generation who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s.“
Before starting his own band, The Four Steps, Tam worked odd jobs after moving to Hong Kong from Guangxi province in 1962. When he realized he had a voice, the band changed their name to Roman and the Four Steps. During Hong Kong’s “golden age” in the 1970s, when the city was transitioning “from its sweatshop economy to become a financial powerhouse,” he became a household name as the voice of TVB’s theme songs.
“For almost a decade from the mid-70s, Tam’s voice could be heard in streets across Hong Kong come 7 o’clock every night as tens of thousands of families in public estates and densely populated districts – with doors and windows open because air-conditioners were expensive – tuned to TVB nightly soap operas or martial arts dramas.”
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In 1983, Tam “controversially” posed nude for a magazine, and he also made history by doing a drag show, a first for a Hong Kong pop singer. But he was acceptable “in mainstream Chinese culture at a time when homosexuality was outlawed” and “got away with his on-stage flamboyance because of his off-stage discretion.”
On October 28, Tam was laid to rest at the Hong Kong Funeral Home in North Point, and the Post said that politicians and celebrities like “Jenny Yan and Lydia ‘Fei Fei’ Shum” attended the “lavish” funeral.
More than a thousand mourners lined the streets yesterday as the body of the man widely regarded as the godfather of Hong Kong pop was taken to be cremated at Cape Collinson, the Post said. Lyricist and friend James Wong Jim remarked of Tam, “He was an artist.” Although he was not perfect, he strove for it, and that, to me, is the artistic temperament.
