Shidaiqu () is a type of Chinese popular music that is a fusion of
Chinese folk
Music of China refers to the music of the Chinese people, which may be the music of the Han Chinese in the course of Chinese history as well as ethnic minorities in today's China. It also includes music produced by people of Chinese origin in som ...
, American
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
and Hollywood film music that originated in
Shanghai, China
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...
in the 1920s.
[Shoesmith, Brian. Rossiter, Ned. 004(2004). Refashioning Pop Music in Asia: Cosmopolitan flows, political tempos and aesthetic Industries. Routeledge Publishing. ]
Terminology
The term ''shídàiqǔ'' literally means "songs of the era" in Mandarin. When sung in
Cantonese
Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...
, it is referred to as (, Jyut Jyu Si Doi Kuk). When sung in
Amoy Hokkien
The Amoy dialect or Xiamen dialect (), also known as Amoynese, Amoy Hokkien, Xiamenese or Xiamen Hokkien, is a dialect of Hokkien spoken in the city of Xiamen (historically known as "Amoy") and its surrounding metropolitan area, in the southern ...
, it is referred to as (). The term ''shidaiqu'' is thought to have been coined in Hong Kong to describe popular Chinese music that first emerged in Shanghai.
Musicality
Shidaiqu is a kind of fusion music that makes use of jazz musical instruments (castanets, maracas). Songs were sung in a high-pitched childlike style.
This early style would soon be replaced by more sophisticated performances from better-trained singers. The songs of the period often use the ABA or ABCA form, which were new to Chinese audiences and are still used by modern composers. Melodies were simple and the songs are still sung today, such as "''
Wishing You Happiness and Prosperity
"Gong Xi Gong Xi" () is a popular Mandarin Chinese song and a Chinese Lunar New Year standard. Other English titles for the song include "Congratulations" and "Happiness To You".
History
The music and words of the song are both by Chen Gexin ...
''" (恭喜恭喜) performed by
Yao Lee
Yao Lee (; 10 September 1922 – 19 July 2019), also credited as Yao Li, Yiu Lei and Hue Lee, was a Chinese singer active from the 1930s to the 1970s. She was the sister of Yao Min, also a famous singer and songwriter. She was considered one o ...
and
Yao Min.
History
Shidaiqu music is rooted in both traditional Chinese folk music and the introduction of Western Jazz during the years when Shanghai was under the
Shanghai International Settlement
The Shanghai International Settlement () originated from the merger in the year 1863 of the British and American enclaves in Shanghai, in which British subjects and American citizens would enjoy extraterritoriality and consular jurisdiction ...
. In the 1920s the intellectual elite in
Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
and
Beijing
}
Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...
embraced the influx of Western music and movies that entered through trade.
The first jazz clubs in Shanghai initially targeted the Western elite, saw an influx of musicians, and acted as dance halls. Beginning in the 1920s, Shidaiqu entered into the mainstream of popular music. The Chinese pop song "Drizzle" ("毛毛雨") was composed by Li Jinhui around 1927 and sung by his daughter Li Minghui (黎明暉). The song exemplifies the early ''shidaiqu'' in its fusion of jazz and Chinese folk music – the tune is in the style of a traditional
pentatonic
A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave, in contrast to the heptatonic scale, which has seven notes per octave (such as the major scale and minor scale).
Pentatonic scales were developed independently by many ancie ...
folk melody, but the instrumentation is similar to that of an American jazz orchestra.
The recording methods of songs on 78rpm gramophone shellac records marked a new age in Chinese musical history. Usually the recording would be done in one take only. Therefore, sound engineers had to be extremely careful when making records. Steel stylus records (鋼針唱片), which were an important recording medium, have now been abandoned due to the development in digital recording.
Shanghai shidaiqu songs are sung in Mandarin, regarded as a symbol of fashion and progressive culture. A large part of the audience would not be fluent in Mandarin. Shanghai dominated the Chinese movie industry in the 1930s. ''
Song of the Fishermen'', a famous movie in the 1930s, marked the beginning of song films or musicals (歌舞片). Pop singers such as
Zhou Xuan
Zhou Xuan (; born Su Pu (); August 1, 1920 – September 22, 1957), also romanized as Chow Hsuan, was an iconic Chinese singer and film actress. By the 1940s, she had become one of China's Seven Great Singing Stars. She was the best known o ...
,
Bai Guang
Bai Guang (27 June 1921 – 27 August 1999), also credited as Pai Kwong, Bai Kwong and Bai Kwang, was a Chinese actress and singer. By the 1940s, she became one of the Seven great singing stars.
Biography
Bai Guang was born Shi Yongfen () in 192 ...
, and
Gong Qiuxia
Gong Qiuxia, also romanized as Kung Chiu-hsia (4 December 1918 – 7 September 2004) was a Chinese actress and singer. By the 1940s, she became one of the seven great singing stars.Baidu.Baidu" ''Gong Qiuxia.'' Retrieved on 28 April 2007.
Biog ...
among others also participated in these films.
Mainstream
Shidaiqu reached peak popularity during 1940s. Famous jazz musicians from both the US and China played to packed dance halls. Chinese women singers grew in celebrity. Additionally, nightclubs such as the Paramount Dance Hall became a meeting point for businessmen from Western countries and China would meet. The western
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
influences were shaped predominately by
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
musician
Buck Clayton
Wilbur Dorsey "Buck" Clayton (November 12, 1911 – December 8, 1991) was an American jazz trumpeter who was a member of Count Basie's orchestra. His principal influence was Louis Armstrong, first hearing the record "Confessin' That I Love You" ...
. Nowadays, shidaiqu has inspired
Gary Lucas
Gary Lucas (born June 20, 1952) is an American guitarist/songwriter/composer who was a member of Captain Beefheart's band. He formed the band Gods and Monsters in 1989.
Lucas has released more than 50 albums to date as a solo artist or band l ...
for his album ''The Edge of Heaven'' and DJs such as
Ian Widgery
Ian or Iain is a name of Scottish Gaelic origin, derived from the Hebrew given name (Yohanan, ') and corresponding to the English name John (given name), John. The spelling Ian is an Anglicization of the Scottish Gaelic forename ''Iain''. It is a ...
and his ''Shanghai Lounge Divas'' project. On the other hand, if cinema was the origin of many songs,
Wong Kar-wai
Wong Kar-wai (born 17 July 1958) is a Hong Kong film director, screenwriter, and producer. His films are characterised by nonlinear narratives, atmospheric music, and vivid cinematography involving bold, saturated colours. A pivotal figure ...
used them again for illustrating his movie "
In the Mood for Love
''In the Mood for Love'' is a 2000 romantic drama film written, produced and directed by Wong Kar-wai. A co-production between Hong Kong and France, it portrays a man ( Tony Leung) and a woman (Maggie Cheung) whose spouses have an affair toget ...
";
Rebecca Pan
Rebecca Pan Di-hua (; also Poon Tik-wah, Pan Wan Ching) is a Hong Kong actress and singer.
Early life
She was born in Shanghai on 29 December 1931 and moved to Hong Kong in 1949.
Career
Her singing career began in 1957. One of her songs, which ...
, one of the actresses in this film, was also one of those famous shidaiqu singers.
Political connotations
Shanghai was divided into the International Concession and the
French Concession
The Shanghai French Concession; ; Shanghainese pronunciation: ''Zånhae Fah Tsuka'', group=lower-alpha was a foreign concession in Shanghai, China from 1849 until 1943, which progressively expanded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Th ...
in the 1930s and early 1940s. Owing to the protection of foreign nations (e.g., Britain and France), Shanghai was a prosperous and a rather politically stable city. Some shidaiqu songs are related to particular historical events (e.g., Second Sino-Japanese War). The euphemism of presenting love, which was always found in old Chinese novels, is kept in shidaiqu.
Decline
Throughout the decades leading up to the
Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward (Second Five Year Plan) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1958 to 1962. CCP Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruc ...
, the reputation of Shidaiqu outside of its target audience was degrading. Despite some of the songs intended to nation build, the government deemed Shidaiqu as "
Yellow Music
Yellow Music is a genre of popular music. The term has been used in China and Vietnam to describe types of music that have separate origins.
China
Yellow Music () or Yellow Songs () was a label used to describe early generations of Chinese popu ...
" and described it as "pornographic and commercial".
In 1952 the Communists banned nightclubs and pop music production. During this time period, western style instruments were sought out and destroyed. Chinese jazz musicians were not rehabilitated until decades later.
The tradition then moved to
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
and reached its height from the 1950s to the late 1960s, when it was replaced by Taiwanese pop (sung in Mandarin) and later
Cantopop
Cantopop (a contraction of "Cantonese pop music") or HK-pop (short for "Hong Kong pop music") is a genre of pop music written in standard Chinese and sung in Cantonese. Cantopop is also used to refer to the cultural context of its production ...
. While it is considered a prototype, music enthusiasts may see it as an early version of
mandopop
Mandopop or Mandapop refers to Standard Chinese, Mandarin popular music. The genre has its origin in the jazz-influenced popular music of 1930s Shanghai known as Shidaiqu; with later influences coming from Japanese enka, Hong Kong's Cantopop, Ta ...
.
Revival
While the tradition continued to thrive in Taiwan and Hong Kong, Shidaiqu gained popularity in Mainland China once more during the 1980s. Shanghai opened up for the first time after WWII and interest in what used to be forbidden music peaked. Surviving musicians were invited to play once more in hotel lobbies
and pop musicians began writing covers of famous songs such as
Teresa Teng
Teng Li-Chun (; 29 January 1953 – 8 May 1995), commonly known as Teresa Teng, was a Taiwanese singer, actress, musician and philanthropist. Referred to by some as " Asia's eternal queen of pop," Teng became a cultural icon for her contributio ...
's 1978 cover of Li Xianglan's The Evening Primrose.
In more recent years, a group called the
Shanghai Restoration Project
The Shanghai Restoration Project (SRP) is a Barcelona-based contemporary electronic music duo, consisting of Chinese American artists Dave Liang and Sun Yunfan.
Background
Producer Dave Liang was born in Lawrence, Kansas and grew up in Upstat ...
uses both the 1980s and 1940s pop songs to create electronic music.
Representatives
See also
*
C-pop
C-pop is an abbreviation for Chinese popular music (), a loosely defined musical genre by artists originating from mainland China,Hong Kong and Taiwan (the Greater China region). This also includes countries where Chinese languages are used by ...
*
Seven Great Singing Stars
The Seven Great Singing Stars () were seven singers of China in the 1940s.
Background
Several of the stars acted in films, and their music played a prominent role in developing Cinema of China, Chinese cinema. They dominated the Chinese pop musi ...
*
Music of China
Music of China refers to the music of the Chinese people, which may be the music of the Han Chinese in the course of Chinese history as well as ethnic minorities in today's China. It also includes music produced by people of Chinese origin in som ...
*
Music of Hong Kong
The Music of Hong Kong is an eclectic mixture of traditional and popular genres. Cantopop is one of the more prominent genres of music produced in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hong Kong Sinfonietta regularly perform ...
Notes
{{reflist
References
* https://web.archive.org/web/20160303193054/http://hoydenish.multiply.com/tag/shidaiqu/
* http://www.ne.jp/asahi/bai-dai/tokyo/menue.htm
Chinese styles of music
C-pop
Pop music genres