Hong Kong Cantopop

Cantopop was once the leading pop genre of pan-Chinese popular music around the world. In this pioneering study of Cantopop in English, Yiu-Wai Chu shows how the rise of Cantopop is related to the emergence of a Hong Kong identity and consciousness. Chu charts the fortune of this important genre of twentieth-century Chinese music from its humble, lower-class origins in the 1950s to its rise to a multimillion-dollar business in the mid-1990s. As the voice of Hong Kong, Cantopop has given generations of people born in the city a sense of belonging. It was only in the late 1990s, when transformations in the music industry, and more importantly, changes in the geopolitical situation of Hong Kong, that Cantopop showed signs of decline. As such, Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History is not only a brief history of Cantonese pop songs, but also of Hong Kong culture. The book concludes with a chapter on the eclipse of Cantopop by Mandapop (Mandarin popular music), and an analysis of the relevance of Cantopop to Hong Kong people in the age of a dominant China. Drawing extensively from Chinese-language sources, this work is a most informative introduction to Hong Kong popular music studies. “Few scholars I know of have as thorough a knowledge of Cantopop as Yiu-Wai Chu. The account he provides here—of pop music as a nexus of creative talent, commoditized culture, and geopolitical change—is not only a story about postwar Hong Kong; it is also a resource for understanding the term ‘localism’ in the era of globalization.” —Rey Chow, Duke University “Yiu-Wai Chu’s book presents a remarkable accomplishment: it is not only the first history of Cantopop published in English; it also manages to interweave the sound of Cantopop with the geopolitical changes taking place in East Asia. Combining a lucid theoretical approach with rich empirical insights, this book will be a milestone in the study of East Asian popular cultures.” —Jeroen de Kloet, University of Amsterdam

Cantopop was once the leading pop genre of pan-Chinese popular music around the world. In this pioneering study of Cantopop in English, Yiu-Wai Chu shows how the rise of Cantopop is related to the emergence of a Hong Kong identity and consciousness. Chu charts the fortune of this important genre of twentieth-century Chinese music from its humble, lower-class origins in the 1950s to its rise to a multimillion-dollar business in the mid-1990s. As the voice of Hong Kong, Cantopop has given generations of people born in the city a sense of belonging. It was only in the late 1990s, when transformations in the music industry, and more importantly, changes in the geopolitical situation of Hong Kong, that Cantopop showed signs of decline. As such, Hong Kong Cantopop A Concise History is not only a brief history of Cantonese pop songs, but also of Hong Kong culture. The book concludes with a chapter on the eclipse of Cantopop by Mandapop (Mandarin popular music), and an analysis of the relevance of Cantopop to Hong Kong people in the age of a dominant China. Drawing extensively from Chinese-language sources, this work is a most informative introduction to Hong Kong popular music studies.

Cantopop was once the leading pop genre of pan-Chinese popular music around the world. In this pioneering study of Cantopop in English, Yiu-Wai Chu shows how the rise of Cantopop is related to the emergence of a Hong Kong identity and consciousness. Chu charts the fortune of this important genre of twentieth-century Chinese music from its humble, lower-class origins in the 1950s to its rise to a multimillion-dollar business in the mid-1990s. As the voice of Hong Kong, Cantopop has given generations of people born in the city a sense of belonging. It was only in the late 1990s, when transformations in the music industry, and more importantly, changes in the geopolitical situation of Hong Kong, that Cantopop showed signs of decline. As such, Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History is not only a brief history of Cantonese pop songs, but also of Hong Kong culture. The book concludes with a chapter on the eclipse of Cantopop by Mandapop (Mandarin popular music), and an analysis of the relevance of Cantopop to Hong Kong people in the age of a dominant China. Drawing extensively from Chinese-language sources, this work is a most informative introduction to Hong Kong popular music studies.

Made in Hong Kong: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive and thorough introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of twentieth- and twenty-first century popular music in Hong Kong. The volume consists of essays by leading scholars in the field, and it covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of popular music in Hong Kong. Each essay provides adequate context to allow readers to understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance. The book is organized into four thematic sections: Cantopop, History and Legacy; Genres, Format, and Identity; Significant Artists; and Contemporary Cantopop.

This book traces the evolution of the Hong Kong’s popular culture, namely film, television and popular music (also known as Cantopop), which is knotted with the city’s geo-political, economic and social transformations. Under various historical contingencies and due to the city’s special geo-politics, these three major popular cultural forms have experienced various worlding processes and have generated border-crossing impact culturally and socially. The worlding processes are greatly associated the city’s nature as a reception and departure port to Sinophone migrants and populations of multiethnic and multicultural. Reaching beyond the “golden age” (1980s) of Hong Kong popular culture and afar from a film-centric cultural narration, this book, delineating from the dawn of the 20th century and following a chronological order, untangles how the nowadays popular “Hong Kong film”, “Hong Kong TV” and “Cantopop” are derived from early-age Sinophone cultural heritage, re-shaped through cross-cultural hybridization and influenced by multiple political forces. Review of archives, existing literatures and corporation documents are supplemented with policy analysis and in-depth interviews to explore the centennial development of Hong Kong popular culture, which is by no means demise but at the juncture of critical transition.

Looks at the fate of Hong Kong’s unique culture since its reversion to China.

Through the lens of popular music in and from Hong Kong, this book examines the material, ideological, and geopolitical implications of music production and consumption. It intends to trace the worldwide flow of popular culture and the people who produce and consume it.

Delineates the globalizing pressures and opportunities that have dramatically transformed the terrain of Chinese film and television, including the end of the cold war, the rise of the World Trade Organization, and the escalation of democracy movements. This book examines the prospect of a global Chinese audience.

Part historical drama, part thriller, and part comedy, Tsui Hark's Peking Opera Blues (1986) invites--if not demands--examinations from multiple perspectives. Tan See Kam rises to the challenge in this study by first situating Tsui in a Sinophone context. The diasporic director explores different dimensions of "Chineseness" in the film by depicting competing versions of Chinese nationalism and presenting characters speaking two Chinese languages, Cantonese and Mandarin. In the process he compels viewers to recognize the multiplicities of the Chinese identity and rethink what constitutes cultural Chineseness. The challenge to a single definition of "Chinese" is also embodied by the playful pastiches of diverse materials. In a series of intertextual readings, Tan reveals the full complexity of Peking Opera Blues by placing it at the center of a web of texts consisting of Tsui's earlier film Shanghai Blues (1984), Hong Kong's Mandarin Canto-pop songs, the "three-women" films in Chinese-language cinemas, and of course, traditional Peking opera, whose role-types, makeup, and dress code enrich the meaning of the film. In Tan's portrayal, Tsui Hark is a filmmaker who makes masterly use of postmodernist techniques to address postcolonial concerns. More than a quarter of a century after its release, Tan shows, Peking Opera Blues still reverberates in the present time.

Hong Kong is perched on the fault line between China and the West, a Special Administrative Region of the PRC. Leo Ou-fan Lee offers an insiderÕs view of Hong Kong, capturing the history and culture that make his densely packed home city so different from its generic neighbors. The search for an indigenous Hong Kong takes Lee to the wet markets and corner bookshops of congested Mong Kok, remote fishing villages and mountainside temples, teahouses and noodle stalls, Cantonese opera and Cantopop. But he also finds the ÒrealÓ Hong Kong in a maze of interconnected shopping malls, a jungle of high-rise residential towers, and the neon glow of Chinese-owned skyscrapers in the Central Business District, where land development, global trade, capital accumulation, consumerism, and free-market competition trump every valueÑexcept family. Lee illuminates the relationship between Hong KongÕs geography and its colonial experience, revisiting colonial life on the secluded Peak, in the opium-filled godowns along the harborfront, and in crowded, plague-infested tenements. He examines, with a criticÕs eye, the ÒHong Kong storyÓ in film and fiction: romance in the bars and brothels of Wan Chai, crime in the walled city of Kowloon, ennui on the eve of the 1997 handover. Whether viewed from Tsing Yi Bridge or the deck of the Star Ferry, from Victoria Peak or Lion Rock, Hong Kong sparkles here in all its multifaceted complexity, a city forever between worlds.