L7 Popular Music and Culture

Frederick Lau
Department of Music
 What is pop music?
• Dominant forms in all contemporary societies
have originated at the social margins-among
the poor, the migrant, the rootless, minority
etc..
 Why study pop music?
• Study of Music always European Classical
Music
• Sociologist began studying pop music
• Cultural Studies
• Raymond Williams, British sociologist began to
pay attention to the lower class common
people since the 1960s
 Why pop music?
• Against elitism in music
• Recognition of the commoners as valid
• Social economic change of the 1950s
• The rise of the middle-class and R & B
• Post-WWII dissatisfaction towards high-low
cultural divide
 How to study pop music?
• Not only structure, form, and musical
language
• Behavior
• meaning
• code
• ideology
• Making a statement
• IDENTITY
 Simon Frith
• Musical meaning is socially constructed
• Musical pleasures are defined by our social
circumstances

• At issue is “homology”
--some sort of structural relationship
between material and cultural forms
Simon Frith: British sociologist focuses
on rock music
• The question is not how a piece of music, a
text,"reflects" popular values,

• but how-in performance-it produces them

values
• "Authenticity" in this context is a quality not
of the music as such (how it is actually made),
 Frith p.276
• Music constructs our sense of identity through
the experiences it offers of the body, time,
and sociability, experiences which enable us to
place ourselves in imaginative cultural
narratives.
 Frith p.272
• Music gives us a way of being in the world, a
way of making sense of it:

• musical response is a process of musical

identification
• aesthetic response is an ethical agreement.
• Music, we could say, provides us with an
intensely subjective sense of being sociable.
• Music both articulates and offers the
immediate experience of collective identity.

• Identities are, then, inevitably constrained by

imaginative forms-"structured by conventions
of narrative
 HK pop music
• Issues: local identity
• colonial history
• History of China’s periphery
• Regional culture
 Chinese pop Music
• in Chinese: the term liuxing yinyue , tongsu yinyue
, yaogun yinyue (rock)

• Beganwithshi dai qu (contemporary songs) —a term refers

to Shanghai popular song

• Li Jinhui —father of Chinese popular songs

• dance hall gave rise to jazz, romantic ballad

• by the mid-1930, popular songs were firmly in place

• the leftist accused Li’s song as “pornographic” (huangse )

Early pop song: 毛毛雨
(1920-57) -
 Communist Party

• in the beginning of 1950s, the CCP discouraged

popular/capitalist songs

• after the fall of the gang of four in 1976 and the open door
policy in 1978, popular music from HK and Taiwan began in
PRC—known as gangtai yinyue 港台音樂
People 's Republic of Chin

• Teresa Deng, Deng Lijun 鄧麗君 was the first singer to

reach a wide audience in China.

• by 1978, gangtai 港台 music was so popular that local

groups began to imitate this new modern, profitable style
 Teresa Teng
• Gender
• Politics of consumption
鄧麗君
• General trend during the mid-1980s is “seeking roots”
尋根 among young people where liberal politics was
allowed
•
• a new style called xibeifeng 西北風
He ff the
(northwest wind)
• this style featured political, rustic lyrics delivered in
rough solo vocal style modeled on folksongs of the
NW—Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu.
• the lyric set to disco beat and instrumental
accompaniment.
• depart from the smooth lyrics from gangtai music.
• in 1989-1993—development of a new rock style

• a well-defined subculture began to emerge

• subculture-- meaning systems, modes of
expressions or lifestyles developed by groups in
subordinated structural position in response to
the dominant meaning system…which reflect
their attempt their attempt to solve structural
contradictions arising from the wider societal
context
 Cuijian: father of rock 1980s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxYT4vtRdRI&pbjreload=10
1
• I have nothing Yiwu suoyou

I have asked you repeatedly, when will you go with me?

But you just always laugh at my having nothing
I have given you my dreams, given you my freedom
But you always just laugh at my having nothing
Oh! When will you go with me?
Oh! When will you go with me?

Theme: Modernization
Reform
Individuality
Question authoirity
Chinese Rock band Black Panther
No place to bury my shame
(started 1987)
Chinese Rock band Black Panther
No place to bury my shame
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YxjRbs0Gsg&pbjreload=101
Tang Dynasty (Heavy metal band from Xian in
1988)
Tang Dynasty: Internationale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE95GulBfNo
 HK—yueyu liuxingqu 語流行曲
• Shidaiqu was popular
• Studios from Shanghai came to HK
• 1950s--local Cantonese industry in place, but
Shanghainese music invaded the local film
industry, the Mambo Girl (Ge Lan 蘭)
Ge Lan 蘭
 語流行曲
• Based on Hong Kong themes
• Westernized sentiment
• Built on Cantonese songs Xiaoqu 小曲

• Humorous
• Local theme
• Traditional to Modern life
 周聰，李紅：快樂進行曲
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k49dPo6ty4Q&p
bjreload=101
 1961
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i479aG1Nwos
• Local slang : , , , ,

• Cantonese singing：字靚腔圓

• Musical style: latin Cuban jazz

 “Can’t Buy me Love”
- D 1965
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyYthoaEJAY&pbjreload=101
• Immigrants from China
• New culture mixing Chinese and English
• Colonial Education
• Youth that received western education
• Followed Anglo American pop culture
• Cantonese serves as an everyday ‘low’
language
• English as the auxiliary ‘high’ language
The Lotus 蓮花樂隊 Just a Little
1965 Beau Brummels hit
 夢 1975
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZBrrum8440&pbjreload=101
 Cantopop early 1980s
• Pop songs with Cantonese lyrics
• Sense of Local identity
• Sam Hui, Alan Tam, Teddy Robins, 林子祥
• Local educated youth and their
Cantonese番書仔廣東話
• Campus folk songs
 羅文−獅子山下 1979
Under the Lion Rock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTT6UQxwUgY
• Orchestrated with full orchestra,
board sound, elegant, grand musical
style管絃大樂隊， 氣派 大豪華,穩重

• Multiple parts, polyphonic parts,

tightly structured多聲部對位，結構嚴緊

• Pure Cantonese dialect

• In the 1990s, the globalization of the Chinese
media changed the ecology of Chinese
popular music industries, and the Cantopop
industry failed to respond effectively.
• After 1997, as Mandarin has become the
lingua franca of Hong Kong, Mandapop has
become more and more popular.
 musical talent back
lack of
singers to mainland

of Chineseneg
✗
training Tideway
✗ revitalise HK industry
✗
enough gov support

• The deaths of Cantopop superstars

• Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui ,

• And lyric master James Wong seemed to

symbolise the end of a glorious era. advent of -

adrenal of piracy & satellite

why : caste
TV
combination of a bad economy

The industry Is unfavourable to creativity & hybridity

affect sales figure
Tmp }
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Before : cover
songs low production cost
Lack of hybridity
-