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Charmaine Mok

DJ Kulu, the legendary Hong Kong born musician credited as the godfather of jazz and soul DJing in the city, has died at the age of 79.
Tributes from the nightlife world poured in for Kulu on Wednesday.
“You were such a special, stylish, and beautiful soul – someone who never had a bad word to say about anyone,” wrote photographer Gavin Mills.
“You radiated joy and good vibes wherever you went, touching everyone’s life with your warmth. I feel incredibly lucky to have called you my friend.”

Vita Henderson-Chan, who previously worked with Kulu at nightlife hotspot Salon 10, shared her memories of the DJ in a social media post.
“Kulu was the coolest person in HK, an amazing DJ and wonderful human,” she wrote. “So many late nights smoking cigarettes and swapping stories at Salon 10, grooving throughout the city and he was always out and about with his signature swagger. A real Hong Kong legend. Thanks for sharing your light with us.”
Throughout 2024, Kulu remained an active member of the nightlife community, DJing at festivals including Clockenflap and CT Music Fest, and doing regular stints at Cardinal Point and The Aubrey After Dark series.
A familiar face on the nightlife scene, Kulu rose to fame in the early 2000s after returning to Hong Kong from the UK, where he worked as a commercial photographer until he was in his fifties.
Born in 1945, Kulu grew up in Wan Chai, and was influenced at a young age by the bars in the neighbourhood that he would pass on the way to school.
“The bars were open all day,” he told the Post in 2001. “Music would be blasting out and I would stop and listen for a few minutes.”

It would be his first exposure to the works of saxophonists Stan Getz and Paul Desmond, and Kulu identified it as the “beginning of [his] love for jazz”. In school, he joined the harmonica band and began learning the basics of reading music.
It was his interest in music that also helped him improve his English in school. “I bought a Stan Getz album and was so eager to understand what was written on the sleeve that I looked up every word,” he said. He would collect Blue Note records from the Tom Lee store.
Thanks to his artistic inclinations, he began taking photos in his teens, later going to England for his A-levels, where he also found work as a photographer’s assistant.
It was the 60s, an era that he says was the most creative. Kulu would end up at Leeds University studying graphic design, and later set up his own photography studio after graduating.
Although photography was his bread and butter, he never strayed far from music. “I’d always have music playing during shoots, and I took a lot of pictures of jazz musicians, which I sold to a jazz record shop in Paris.”
Among his subjects were jazz legends Chet Baker, Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner and Roland Kirk, as well as Boy George.

He worked as a photographer up until he was 50, after which he realised that it was music, not pictures, that was his true calling.
“I believe everybody is deeply influenced by some image they pick up when they’re younger,” he said. “That image stays with them for a long time, until they have a midlife crisis. Then they wake up and start doing what they really want to do.”
That would set Kulu on the path of DJing, starting with a stint running jazz nights at a Chinese karaoke bar in Scotland. He set up Jazz Joint UK, an underground contemporary jazz club in Edinburgh as “a place for musicians to practise, play and perform”.
He returned to Hong Kong and began his career as a DJ in 1999. He became a regular name on the circuit, spinning jazz, funk, soul and hip hop tracks at numerous venues including Kee Club, Liquid – the site of his iconic Sunday night Ultra Lounge sessions – Phi-b and Amnesia.
He was a promoter and someone who rallied the DJ community as much as a performer himself; in 2001, he was the catalyst for Hong Kong’s growing grass-roots jazz-funk scene, bringing together talented young acts and local DJs at the club Amnesia on Hollywood Road.

“I’m blown away by it. I didn’t expect to find a vibe so rich in this town, but there’s definitely a new spirit of creativity coming through,” he told the Post back then. “It’s pretty unusual for this place.”
He started the project Brothers’ Keeper, a seven-piece jazz band that includes Mark Henderson, with mixing and turntable scratching from Canada’s award-winning DJ Casual, aka Daryll Power.
Henderson joked then that he and Kulu had become “Hong Kong’s jazz mafia”.
“That cat knows his music, and meeting him through [Amnesia] was a great moment for jazz in this city,” he said.


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Music

‘The coolest person in Hong Kong’: tributes for DJ Kulu following his death aged 79

DJ Kulu has died, aged 79. Photo: Facebook/ Melody Hong Kong

DJ Kulu, pictured at Liquid nightclub in 2002, has died aged 79. Fans and friends pay tribute to the “godfather of jazz and soul”. Photo: SCMP

DJ Kulu and a stylish friend at the Clockenflap festival in Hong Kong, in 2017. 

An undated photo of DJ Kulu. Photo: Facebook/@Melody Hong Kong

DJ Janette Slack and DJ Kulu in 2014. 

Jazz guru DJ Kulu and trumpeter Mark Henderson at the Phi-B bar, in Central, in 2001. Photo: SCMP

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(From left) Beyond members Yip Sai-wing, Wong Ka-keung, Wong Ka-kui and Paul Wong Koon-chung in 1990. The Hong Kong rock band formed in 1983 and were popular across Asia.

Wong Ka-Kui died in 1993 aged 31 due to an accident while filming a gameshow in Tokyo, Japan. Photo: SCMP / TVB Weekly

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Beyond in the band’s early years. Photo: M. Chan

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Lifestyle

Arts & Culture

Fans, friends and fellow artists pay tribute to DJ Kulu, who began a second career at the turntables in his 50s and performed until the end


Fans, friends and fellow artists pay tribute to DJ Kulu, who began a second career at the turntables in his 50s and performed until the end.


Hong Kong

Britain

Obituaries