By Annie M.
Throughout history, music and its different subcategories, genres, and styles have developed, evolved, and created between countries. Music is something that is shared with the world, and it inspires new music despite the difference in language, culture, and musical history of a country; where it becomes a history of musical exchange between countries. The idea of popular music from the Western countries, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom spread throughout the world, into the Eastern countries. One country is China, the musical exchange between China and the rest of the world, where the era of Chinese popular music had experienced and affected by a lot of political events from the country, yet because of its historical times, it has expanded into different categories and elements that make up what is considered Chinese popular music.
Chinese popular music, also known as C-pop, is music by artists of "the Greater China region, comprising mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan." It is generally known as liuxing yinyue or liuxing gequ ("popular songs") was "China's response to imported, modern, Western, and in particular, American popular music." It was linked to the Chinese movie, recording film, and television industry of the time since it modeled on the musical style of Hollywood films. However, early Chinese popular music was of big band jazz style, mainly performed in dance halls, nightclubs.
First of all, it began in the 1920s, 1930s, in Shanghai, China, known as the "seventh heaven for the jazz musician," a "Paris of the East," and the center of this new entertainment form of the time. In 1935, Buck Clayton, an African American jazz trumpeter, arrived in Shanghai, with his jazz orchestra. They were played at the Canidrome Ballroom, where it was for the wealthy Chinese and a "diverse crowd of foreign businessmen, colonial bureaucrats, diplomats, and military officers." In the two years in Shanghai, it represented Clayton's happiest time of his life due to the fact that he finally received the sort of respect and recognition he deserved compared to that of his native country due to his skin color. They enjoyed privileges like those of other foreigners yet their identities as African Americans still eventually led them into trouble which led them to find new work at a smaller ensemble that is of a less elegant setting, where it is of lower classes, the Casa Nova Ballroom. However, this new job required them to play Chinese music which led them to learn some of the songs.
"Some of the Chinese songs that Clayton was compelled to learn after his ejection from the Canidrome were almost certainly penned by Li Jin-hui, an educator and composer to whom the creation of a hybrid genre of American jazz, Hollywood film music, and Chinese folk music known in Chinese as 'modern songs' (shidai qu) is usually credited." Li is known as the "Father of Chinese popular music" where he created a new form, the shidai qu. The music during this time was shaped by Western pop styles and sounds of the time where many early Chinese pop songs were largely reproductions of pop music styles such as swing and big band. Despite his music being popular, it was named "yellow" or "pornographic music (huangse yinyue) because these songs were "about romance, love, and, by implication, the decadence of urban life," which many considered harmful to society. "Yellow music was condemned by nationalist and leftist critics alike as a 'decadent sound' (mimi zhi yin) capable of seducing citizens away from the pressing tasks of nation-building and anti-imperialist resistance," and in regard to Confucianist thought, "music has the power to affect people's morale and behavior." Along with the development of shidai qu, there were also Western music companies like "Pathé Asia Records, a corporate ancestor of EMI," EMI, and RCA-Victor that set up recording studios in Shanghai since the 1920s, that recorded Chinese traditional, classical music, and the first pop recordings. Pathé Asia was the foremost marketer of Mandarin pop songs in China of the time.
One song released by Pathé Records in Shanghai was "Rose, Rose, I Love You [Meigui Meigui Wo ai ni]" (1940). "Meigui meigui was sung and recorded by the Shanghainese cabaret songstress Yao Lee (1922-2019)." It became a Chinese hit due to the "popularity of gramophone recordings, radio broadcast, and movies across China." Yao Lee was known as one of Shanghai's "seven famous singers" [which includes other famous women singers, Zhou Xuan (1920-1957), Bai Guang (1921-1999), Li Xianglan (1920-2014), and others]. "Their appearance, persona, and singing style were seen as a fashionable and modern trend in China because they were based on Western cabaret singers." This song was of western style, and the only reference to China was of its title and that it was written by a Chinese composer and lyricist, where there were no references to Chinese music.
This song was not only popular within China, where it got attention abroad, which led to other singers covering it. In 1951, American singer Frankie Laine recorded it in English on Columbia Records, released as "China Rose" or "Shanghai Rose." Not knowing of its origins from China, it resembles the original version, yet the meaning changes wherein the original version, "the singer utters her unfailing love, the rose being a metaphor for love and the rest of the lyrics express devotion and admiration toward her lover," where the adopted version shows a totally different storyline. After this successful version, the song continued to be of interest outside of China, where others did a remade/adoption cover of it. This wasn't of small matter, the recognition of Chinese music, thinking of the racial biases towards China by the West, yet, the global fame of Chinese pop music was a short one, when "the Shanghai-based pop music industry (these early "songs from this era are now called Lao Shanghai gequ [old Shanghainese songs"]) relocated to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia." This led to C-pop into subgenres: Cantonese pop music, aka Cantopop, Mandarin pop music, aka Mandopop, and Taiwanese pop music, aka Hokkien pop. Within these subgenres, the music styles affiliated vary, including Chinese rock, hip-hop, jazz, R&B, disco, electronic, and others.
Other Versions not Mentioned:
After the declaration of the People's Republic of China in 1949, many moved to Taiwan or British-colonial Hong Kong from mainland China due to the country being of communist rule and the political instability. The Communist Party influenced the mainland's Chinese entertainment industry, when they began to ban pop music in 1950, resulting in the music business fleeing Shanghai. The "popular music reflects the changing ideologies of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the transforming role of popular music from a political tool, social agent, to a socially manageable everyday culture." In the 1950s, Chinese popular music underwent changes from Shanghai's shidai qu to more of Western-style pop and rock and Mandopop was taking place from Taiwan and Cantopop from Hong Kong. Along with that, there was a significant part of the recording and movie industry moved to Hong Kong. During the Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945), "the Communist party modeled popular music into a socialist propaganda instrument creating lively symbols of peasant heroes and joyful images of village life under its rule." It flattens all the music into one single form, for the revolutionary purpose, "thereby eliminating those emerging forms of western populism of culture embedded in Shanghai pop music since the 1930s" and shifted "to songs with strong anti-Western imperialist messages written to glorify the Communist Party."
After the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), "the PRC government implements a policy of reform and opening up which gives he by now stagnant field of musical culture a new lease of life. In the wake of improvements in production and increased cultural exchange with other countries, music and the other arts begin to flourish;" and the Chinese popular music made a return, which is described as the "New Wave" music. "It was not until the 1980s that the world began to take notice of the Chinese pop music world, beginning with Cui Jian who, like his predecessors began by looking outward for inspiration." Cui Jian, the pioneer of Chinese rock music, a Chinese with Korean ancestry, that was trained as a trumpet player, performed with his rock band in university, launching his own music. "In 1986, Cui Jian stunned the music world by performing his by-now class hit 'I Have Nothing' ('Yiwu suoyou') which has characteristic sounds of rock but he included a "solo played of the double-reed suona instead of the typical distorted sound of the guitar." During the student movements of the 1990s, his music was widely played, as a symbol of defiance and rebellion. He being the pioneer of modern Chinese rock music made him the model for many rock bands but rock music is still a genre not of the mainstream, however, it still has a market for the youth.
In Hong Kong, there was "the birth of local popular music style called Cantonese popular songs, later known as Cantopop." It emerged during the 1970s, and it is music sung in Cantonese, but it is different from Cantonese narrative genres and operas from the 1930s in sound quality and musical style, where it takes inspirations "from Western 'folk rock' music of the 1970s (e.g., the Carpenters, Bee Gees, and John Denver). … The singing style is lyrical in quality, similar to Western soft rock and Japanese popular songs. The lyrics are vernacular, colloquial, and contemporary in content, appealing to urban youth." There were many superstars produced in Hong Kong for Cantopop but one of the pioneers was Sam Hui Koon-ki. Hui started his career imitating the Beatles and Western covers, but in the mid-1970s, he turned to singing and writing songs in Cantonese, producing his first Cantopop album in 1978. "In his ballad, 'Langzhi hui tou' ('Vagabond's Desires'), originally written for the 1976 Cantonese movie The Private Eyes," he departed his usual rock style and tried American folk and soft electronic sound to accompany his singing. His songs are usually about the life and struggles of working-class commoners, and "Langzhi hui tou" talks of the "danger of vanity" and encourages them in seeking "happiness by working hard and being realistic." Later in the 1990s, the most known male singers were Jackie Cheung, Andy Lau, Leon Lai, and Aaron Kwok – they were coined and known as the "Four Heavenly Kings."
Other Songs:
"Teresa Teng, or Deng Lijun (1953-1995), a Taiwan-born female singer, is considered the most celebrated transnational Chinese pop star of the 1970s and 1980s in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan." She represented "an icon of modernity and for imaging a foreign lifestyle" where the lyrics and melody became nutrients for the people. Her significance was that she prompts "the authorities to accept the fact that they had to allow this popular music as they knew that suppressing this entertainment would be impractical. Before Teng, revolutionary songs for the collective public were the only official music type in China. Since Teng, popular songs expressed in natural, emotional and painless ways have been demonstrated as not inferior to national hymns or songs performed in opera or the classic style (meisheng) in terms of social significance." Her music was occasionally banned as decadent and pornographic since it is of personal desires and romantic possibilities. In 1979, "Tian Mi Mi," her voice "sounds calm, curious, almost teasing" despite this sense of bewitched yearning. In "The Moon Represents My Heart," shows her talent and what made her special in her voice, where "her voice seems to vibrate softly until it dissolves into the weepy strings and synths in the background." Teng's music was of the "possibility of freedom and choice, memory and longing." There were also times where her personal politics come to play, where during the Tiananmen uprising of 1989, she gave dedications to the student protesters, providing new meanings to her old songs.
In conclusion, over time, the genre of C-pop has expanded, especially after the open-door policy, where it opened up to the exchange in music with the rest of the world. With all said above being the history of Chinese pop music that is influential and inspiring, it can only mean that the expansion of music (Chinese pop music and other music) will only grow because the exchange of ideas in culture will lead to new development. With this, many musicians/artists studying abroad, or immigration could develop the music they want with the knowledge and inspiration they get, when they learn more about other cultures. Additionally, Chinese pop music expanded not only to those of China regions but also to those artists that are of Chinese ancestry but are residing in a different country, like Chinese Americans. Lastly, the changing factors of society and its technology provide opportunities to spread C-pop and the Chinese music styles like zhongguo feng, Chinese wind style, where it either references Chinese instruments or the singing techniques to the world.
Bibliography
Clayton, Buck, and Nancy Miller. Elliott. Buck Clayton's Jazz World New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. https://archive.org/details/buckclaytonsjazz0000clay.
Jones, Andrew F. Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
Fung, Anthony Y.H. "The Emerging (National) Popular Music Culture in China." Taylor & Francis, August 28, 2007. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14649370701393824?scroll=top&needAccess=true.
Hsu, Hua. "The Melancholy Pop Idol Who Haunts China." The New Yorker, August 3, 2015. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-melancholy-pop-idol-who-haunts-china.
Lau, Frederick. Music in China: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Lau, Frederick. "The Sounds of Modernity in Chinese Pop Music." International communication of Chinese culture 7, no. 2 (2020): 101–115. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40636-020-00185-y.
Liu, Chingchih. A Critical History of New Music in China. Translated by Caroline Mason. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2010.
MasterClass Staff. "C-Pop Music: A Look at the History of Chinese Pop - 2021." MasterClass. MasterClass, September 11, 2021. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/c-pop-music-guide#a-brief-history-of-cpop.
~Research Project
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