THE MUSIC INDUSTRY AND POPULAR SONG IN 1930S AND 1940S SHANGHAI A HISTORICAL AND STYLISTIC ANALYSIS SZU-WEI CHEN Submited for the Degre of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Film and Media Studies University of Stirling February 2007 Abstract In 1930s and 1940s Shanghai, musicians and artists from diferent cultures and varied backgrounds joined and made the golden age of Shanghai popular song which suggests the beginnings of Chinese popular music in modern times. However, Shanghai popular song has long been neglected in most works about the modern history of Chinese music and remains an unexplored area in Shanghai studies. This study aims to reconstruct a historical view of the Shanghai popular music industry and make a stylistic analysis of its musical products. The research is undertaken at two levels: first, understanding the operating mechanism of the ‘platform’ and second, investigating the components of the ‘products’. By contrasting the hypothetical flowchart of the Shanghai popular music industry, details of the producing, seling and consuming proceses are retrieved from various historical sources to reconstruct the industry platform. Through the first level of research, it is found that the rising new media and the flourishing entertainment industry profoundly influenced the development of Shanghai popular song. In addition, social and political changes and changes in busines practices and the organisational structure of foreign record companies also contributed to the vast production, popularity and commercial succes of Shanghai popular song. From the composition-performance view of song creation, the second level of research reveals that Chinese and Western musical elements both existed in the musical products. The Chinese vocal technique, Western bel canto and instruments from both musical traditions were al found in historical recordings. When ignoring the distinctive nature of pentatonicism but treating Chinese melodies as those on Western scales, Chinese-style tunes could be easily acompanied by chordal harmony. However, the Chinese heterophonic feature was lost in the Western acompaniment texture. Moreover, it is also found that the traditional rules governing the relationship betwen words and the melody was dismised in Shanghai popular songwriting. The findings of this study fil in the neglected part in modern history of Chinese music and add to the literature on the under-explored musical area in Shanghai studies. Moreover, this study also demonstrates that against a map ilustrating how musical products moved from record companies to consumers along with al other involved participants, the history of popular music can be rediscovered systematicaly by using songs as evidence, treating media material carefully and tracking down archives and surviving participants. Dedicated to my two late grannies iv Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor Prof Simon Frith for his enduring guidance and intelectual support throughout the length and breadth of my doctoral project. Thanks also go to my examiners Dr Philip Drake and Dr Rachel Haris for their invaluable comments on this thesis and suggestions for future work. I appreciate the advice on methodological isues from Dr Jacquie L’Tang and suggestions on musical analysis from Prof Derek Scott, Prof Jonathan Stock and Dr Raymond Monele. Special thanks should go to Karen Forest and Louise Womersley in the departmental office for the enourmous administrative work they have done. I am particularly grateful to Rev Maxwel Craig and Mrs Margaret Rodgers for their help with proofreading and certainly any erors that may stil remain are entirely my own. I would also like to acknowledge the inspiration and intelectual stimulation from Prof Ricardo Canzio, with whose encouragement I decided to change the course of my life to pursue formaly my interests and pasion for music at an academic level. I am also deeply indebted to Prof Liu Shuen-Zen and his wife and As Prof Lin Hwey-Jane from the Graduate Institute of Acountancy, National Taiwan University, where I received my MBA, for their support along the journey to the doctorate. I owe a great deal to those who facilitate my fieldwork in Mainland China. Prof Chen Gang from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and Mr Le Leng Kok from Singapore kindly helped me to approach informants. I should extend my thanks to my interviewes, al those elderly ladies and gentlemen in Shanghai who have been unstintingly generous with their time as wel as elderly singers Jin Yi, Wu Yingyin, Yan Fei and Zhang Fan who shared their memory of old Shanghai pop with me. I would also like to expres my gratitude to the staf of the Modern Document Reading v Room of the Shanghai Municipal Library and the Library of the Music Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Arts for the pleasant and productive days I spent there. I am much obliged to so many friends in Shanghai and Beijing, particularly Jiang Lei, Li Meng, Liu Chuan, Liu Jun, Xu Ming and Zhang Jing, together with my Chinese opera drum master Mai Xueyi and his family, for their hospitality during my stay in China. Special thanks go to Sis Mao who fed and looked after me al the time. Thanks go to the congregation of the Church of the Holy Rude (especialy members of the Church Choir and Music Director Dr John Burnet), members of the Stirling City Choir and Stirling and Bridge of Alan Operatic Society and gents at my local, Port Customs Bar, for their felowship and support in al aspects of life in Stirling. I am especialy grateful for the friendship I developed at the University with IT Advisor Oron Joffe, my doctoral colleagues Adam Behr, Inez Templeton, Mark Percival, Martin Duch, Mat Percival, Nicola Scott and Pedro Nunes, and my Taiwanese compatriots Elen, Rebeca and Dr Yu Honglin. I would also like to extend my special thanks to my honorary English sister Francesca Young, my lifelong friend and soon-to-be best man Dr Lin Yung-Yao, and my patron and alter ego May, for their everlasting support and encouragement. Thanks also go to Prof John Izod, Jenny McKay, Dr Mark Brownrigg, Peter Mech and Richard Kilborn who shared with me their pasion for music and life. The love and support from my family has been unfailing. Thanks must go to my parents and sister who have stood by me through every trough and peak as wel as to Auntie Christine who offered financial support towards the cost of acommodation in Shanghai. Last on the list but first in my heart, thanks go to my beloved fiancée Fan for her faithfulnes, patience and everything she has done for me. Finaly, I have earned my PhD and we can now have our Scottish wedding in my church. vi Contents Acknowledgement iv Notes on Romanisation ix Chapter One: Introduction 1 I. The legendary image 1 I. How did it start? 4 II. An underepresented part of the modern Chinese pop history 9 IV. Shanghai popular song as a genre 13 V. Concluding remarks 31 Chapter Two: A Model for Understanding Shanghai Pop 41 I. Rediscovering Shanghai pop 42 I. Level one: reconstruction of the platform 50 II. Level two: analysis of the products 60 Chapter Thre: The Society 76 I. The start of modern Shanghai 76 I. Social changes in Shanghai 83 II. New forms of mas entertainment 96 Chapter Four: The Platform 109 I. The producing proces 109 1. Record companies 110 2. Composers and lyricists 122 3. Instrumentalists 125 vii 4. Singers 128 I. The seling proces 131 1. Agents and promoters 131 2. Publishers 132 3. Retailers 136 4. Film companies 140 5. Radio stations 147 6. Dancehals 153 7. Regulatory institutions 159 II. The consuming proces 164 1. Audience 164 2. The pres 174 3. Critics 179 Chapter Five: The Products 201 I. Ethnicity in music 202 I. Chinesenes in music 208 1. Musical texture 215 2. Musical scale 218 3. Tones and tunes 222 II. Examining Shanghai popular song 230 1. Singing voice 230 2. Instrumentation 236 3. Melodic content 246 4. Acompanying harmony 255 5. Words 263 vii Chapter Six: Conclusion 283 I. The rediscovered past 283 I. After the rediscovery 293 Appendix I: Map of Shanghai, 1935 297 Appendix I: Chronology of Shanghai Pop 298 Appendix II: List of Informants 301 Appendix IV: List of Song Examples Cited in the Text 302 Glossary 311 Bibliography 321 Discography 355 ix Notes on Romanisation Hanyu Pinyin (‘Scheme of the Chinese phonetic alphabet’) is adopted in this study for transcribing Chinese proper nouns and publication, movie and song titles, and Chinese expresions when needed, into the Latin alphabet. Places names are writen in Pinyin despite any other forms of transliteration used in historical documents, for example Huangpu and Suzhou instead of Whangpoo and Soochow respectively. Personal names are also writen in Pinyin with the exception that author names in literature are cited as they were originaly speled. Kunrei-shiki Rômaji (‘Cabinet-ordered romanisation system’) is used for transcribing Japanese names and movie and song titles. 1 Chapter One Introduction Shanghai, once a wonderland for adventurers and a paradise for gold diggers, has become again the financial centre of China, and it has been claimed that it wil be one of the most important economic centres of the world in the twenty-first century. However it is argued, the development of Shanghai in the first half of twentieth century was the epitome of modern China. A considerable number of studies have been made of the growth, transition and boom of the city over the past decades. In addition, topics such as the people’s livelihood, cultural interaction, foreign concesions and so on have been widely discussed. 1 Despite this, the popular music that came into existence and developed in the first half of the last century in Shanghai remains largely unexplored. I. The legendary image Since the British first arived and began trade and investment in the middle of the ninetenth century, Shanghai developed steadily and later became so fascinating a metropolis that it atracted other Europeans as wel as people from China’s hinterland. Although originaly Shanghai was only a trade centre, in the early 1930s people from diferent cultures and varied backgrounds came to live there and contributed to its development. The style of music that developed there was later to be known as Shanghai popular song and was the origin of the modern Chinese popular music industry. Clasicaly trained White Russian musicians fleing the October Revolution, Filipino instrumentalists seking a beter living in other shores, Chinese Chapter One Introduction 2 composers, vocalists and artists with various performance skils, al contributed to make the golden age of popular music in Shanghai. Interestingly, this new repertoire was never sung in the Shanghai dialect but in Mandarin Chinese, and since this city was the place where the Chinese popular music industry first started, developed and thrived, they were caled Shanghai popular songs. Nightclubs, restaurants, balrooms, as wel as live broadcasts to homes, were the venues for these songs, but we should not forget the place they had in films as wel. The close cooperation among those diferent groups of people and the vast and briliant production they left behind suggest the beginnings of Chinese popular music in modern times. However, litle writing emphasises this important point. There is much to be researched about how varied cultural elements and social forces brought about the succes of popular songs in Shanghai from the early 1930s up to the 1960s. The first Shanghai popular song, ‘Drizles’ (Maomao yü), was a tune in a folk style with four verses using what was considered at the time to be overly familiar expresions of love, which were not customarily used in public, and was acompanied by a band playing Western instruments in a rudimentary form of New Orleans jaz. In a historical recording, this song was sung by a young girl with a high-pitched and untrained voice, sounding like ‘strangling cat’ (niesi mao) and to most of us today, perhaps, unpleasantly harsh. 2 However, the commercial succes of this tentative combination encouraged its producer to write more pieces in the same format and thereafter involved more musicians and artists in the task. In the ensuing two decades, diverse musical elements were integrated into Shanghai popular songs such as non-Chinese melodic, elegant, literary lyrics, as wel varied rhythms and a richer instrumentation. Chapter One Introduction 3 People could now hear the blue notes of jaz and the Western scale interwoven with pentatonic strains and folk tunes. Refined phrases and poetic expresions of longing for a beter life and the inclusion of incisive views towards social phenomena, together with romantic clichés in colloquial language, went to produce sophisticated lyrics. The arangements were marked by the strong pulsation of tango, rumba and foxtrot, and the string-dominated sounds in the Hollywood- Broadway tradition presented by a big band or by studio orchestras, as wel as simple chordal harmony or regular beats delivered by a couple of Chinese fiddles and percussion. These Eastern and Western musical elements were fused in a harmonicaly balanced fashion, and so the clasic Haipai (‘Shanghai style’ or ‘Shanghai school’) of Chinese popular music came into existence. 3 Atractive as this music was, Shanghai popular song declined after the advent of the Chinese Communist regime when most foreign organisations were forced to leave or taken over. With the whole entertainment industry moving to Hong Kong, Shanghai popular song continued to thrive for another ten years, but the style gradualy changed to become practicaly unrecognisable by the end of the 1960s. Thanks to a smal group of enthusiastic supporters in Hong Kong and Taiwan, together with those from the overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, some elderly artists continue to appear on stage and are stil popular among audiences who fel nostalgic for the past. Shanghai popular song is known in Hong Kong as shidai qu (‘song of the times’) or in Taiwan as guoyu laoge (‘Mandarin Chinese old song’) and is now usualy heard in a smal number of nostalgic radio or TV programes and played on special occasions such as concerts, enthusiasts’ reunion events and festivals. The elegant lyrics and charming melodies stil elicit admiration among many today. Chapter One Introduction 4 In recent years, while some amateurs have set about collecting these now clasical songs in the form of recordings and sheet music, others are writing down life acounts of the artists. However, what sems to be lacking is both a study of how Western and Chinese musical elements mingled and created a new era in the history of Chinese music, and a full discussion of the interaction betwen the musical elements which made up the characteristic style of Shanghai popular songs. I. How did it start? With the prosperity came the need for a variety of entertainment in which musical sounds played an important role. In the 1930s Shanghai was a metropolis famous for its nightlife and cabarets which outnumbered those of any other city in China. There were American, Filipino, Russian, Indian and other Oriental bands playing American jaz, balroom dance music or Chinese popular songs in diferent venues. There were the theme songs of Chinese films and the songs played during the intermision, which not only captivated the audiences in the cinema but also often took the whole of Shanghai by storm and were sung in nightclubs and broadcast over the airwaves. Besides dance and cinema, people in Shanghai would atend regular concerts given by the Shanghai Municipal Council Symphony Orchestra, which was the first symphony orchestra started in East Asia. The programes included European clasical music and special performances for children held in theatres, together with outdoor orchestral concerts and bras band marches held in public parks. 4 Those who prefered traditional Chinese music rather than a Western style performance might go to a Chinese theatre to listen to Beijing opera or other regional opera styles or might atend social occasions that favoured the instrumental Chapter One Introduction 5 repertoire. 5 Those with a penchant for political isues could go to the conventions caled by the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, KMT) where newly composed songs based on the style of school songs (xuetang yuege) were sung by the participants. 6 They could also join the ralies organised by the leftist and sing the mas songs heard in films or specialy composed by leftist musicians and writers. 7 Almost al the kinds of musical sounds in Shanghai described above could be heard even without being there in person. It was a period of explosive growth for Shanghai’s wireles broadcasting industries in the early 1930s and about half of the radio stations of China were established in this metropolitan area. 8 Thus it was easy to pick up the swing of American jaz, the high-pitched tunes of Beijing opera or the latest film theme songs by simply tuning the knob of a radio. Another popular means to aces those sounds was the gramophone record. The first record company in China, Pathé Orient, was established in 1908 with its first released recordings of Beijing opera. After a series of mergers and acquisitions betwen those record companies which owned subsidiaries in China, there were thre major record companies operating in Shanghai, which included two transnational capital controlled companies, Pathé-EMI and RCA-Victor, and one Chinese-owned company, Great China, operated in Shanghai. These majors recorded a wide range of Chinese operatic, folk and popular songs with their own contracted artists, studios and equipment and sold their records in China as wel as promoted them to the overseas Chinese. In the meantime, a host of local owned ‘pocketbook company’ (pibao gongsi), most of which specialised in traditional genres and catered to regional markets in diferent areas, negotiated recording contracts with local or regional musicians, and rented studios and manufacturing time from the majors to produce their records. Chapter One Introduction 6 Among these kinds of music that could be heard in Shanghai, two types of songs are worthy of atention: popular song and leftist mas song. Semingly, they were both hybrid genres and composed with already existing musical materials that one could hear in Shanghai as early as the 1920s, such as American jaz, the latest dance music, traditional Chinese melodies and European folk songs. However, to Chinese listeners living in the 1930s, these songs were, on the one hand, brand-new because of the unprecedented pleasure they aforded and, on the other, controversial for their close relation with genü (‘sing-song girls’) and with political isues such as national identity, anti-feudalism and anti-imperialism. 9 The creation of popular song could be traced to the early 1920s when a Chinese musician, Li Jinhui, began to compose children’s musicals and established the Bright Moon Ensemble (Mingyue yinyuehui) to play his compositions as wel as to produce gramophone records. Li devoted himself to creating works with a view to instiling the next generation with the spirit of humanist enlightenment, anti-feudalism and nationalism, and to promoting the use of the oficial language, Mandarin Chinese. He began composing in 1921 when he was invited to teach in the Shanghai National Language Institute (Shanghai guoyu zhuanxiu xuexiao). He wrote several short musical dramas in standard Mandarin Chinese for the pupils of the primary school atached to this institute and organised a group in the school to perform these works. In 1923, he published the first of eleven children’s musicals in instalments in a children’s wekly magazine. With the enthusiasm and ambition to create a new approach to training youngsters in music and dance, in 1926 he established the China Song-and-Dance Institute (Zhonghua gewu zhuanmen xuexiao) but it was shut down after just one year due to lack of funds. Nevertheles, with the financial support of a Chapter One Introduction 7 friend, he set up another institution, the Al Beauty Girls’ School (Meimei nüxiao) in 1927 and continued his training programe. In order to re-establish his former song-and-dance institute, he reorganised the school into the China Song-and-Dance Troupe (Zhonghua gewutuan) in 1928 and started to tour Southeast Asia to raise more funds. Unfortunately, the tour did not succed financialy. Thus, Li’s music style changed in 1929 when he found himself stranded in Singapore due to financial dificulties following the overseas performances of his troupe. He heard the news from Shanghai concerning the commercial succes of the songbook containing several love songs he had writen originaly for the tour, and turned to the creation of love songs so that he could earn traveling fes to go back and raise capital for the institute. Finaly he submited a batch of love songs, including the famous ‘The River of Peach Blossom’ (Taohua jiang) and ‘The Expres Train’ (Tebie kuaiche), to the same publisher and then returned to Shanghai. By then his feling for children’s musicals had gone and sentimental afairs were his new subject mater. From that time onwards, a large number of love songs were created using a variety of styles, including jaz, Hollywood film usic or Chinese pentatonic scales, together with lyrics in clasical Chinese love poems or romantic clichés of Tin Pan Aley, and thus began the era of Shanghai popular song. Besides love songs, Li also composed a few theme songs for Chinese sound films (motion pictures of synchronised sound). With the growth of the broadcasting industry, the availability of gramophone records and the popularity of sound films, these popular songs reached almost every cinema, store, stret corner and home. Many outstanding female performers who graduated from the institutes created by Li or came from some of the troupes he had founded also had stage carers in broadcasting, recording and in films. Chapter One Introduction 8 In the late 1930s several members of Li’s famous Bright Moon Song-and-Dance Troupe (Mingyue gewutuan) established by Li when he returned to Shanghai in 1930, and several Chinese musicians, also devoted themselves to the composition of popular songs. These composers included Xu Ruhui, Yan Hua (member of Li’s troupe), Li Jinguang (Li’s younger brother and member of his troupe) and Chen Gexin (a conservatory-trained composer and lyricist). 10 It was Li who triggered the development of Shanghai popular songs, and his training institutes and song-and- dance troupes brought to prominence a host of stars who dominated the entertainment industry in Shanghai from the 1930s to 1940s. Popular and succesful as these songs were, they were inexorably criticised by leftists and Nationalists as ‘decadent sounds’ (mii zhi yin) or ‘yelow music’ (huangse yinyue). Apart from the explosive growth of entertainment industry, the 1930s also witnesed Western imperialism, a sequence of teritorial encroachments and the military atack of the Japanese on China. Since Shanghai popular song was closely linked to the seamy demionde and the capital-controlled commercial activities, together with their glamourised female stars, it was regarded as poison to the Chinese people and ‘a capitulation to commerce at the expense of the imperative of national salvation’. 1 A leftist young man, Nie Er, former student of Li Jinhui who studied music under the patronage of the Bright Moon Song-and-Dance Troupe, published a series of critical articles on the decadence of Li’s popular music. He sought to create a new form of popular music that would stimulate and inspire the mases. Instead of the love poems and romantic clichés found in Li’s popular songs, Nie Er tried to speak out on behalf of the mases in choral works based on didactic school songs, inspired by Soviet-style mas music and military marches, with lyrics dealing with themes Chapter One Introduction 9 derived from his firsthand experience of the lives of workers, farmers, exploited children and soldiers on the anti-Japan front. 12 He used to work in collaboration with other leftist musicians and writers, such as Ren Guang, Tian Han and An E, who produced films showing the hard living conditions of ordinary people and encouraging the mases to fight for the future of the nation. Nie’s musical works were thus widely circulated through films and later made into gramophone records. They were often distinguished from popular songs and refered to as ‘mas songs’ due to the diferent mesage they were meant to deliver. However, as these songs had a connection with the entertainment industry in the sense that they were diseminated through existing media, they were equaly admired by some of the audience who were fascinated by whatever songs on radio, records or in films. Therefore, the 1930s saw two types of songs which were created by the re- arangement of existing materials: popular song and mas song. Both reached people through the same technology and media of entertainment. The spirit of mas song became the origin of Chinese communist revolutionary song which played a leading role in Mainland China until the late 1970s, whilest popular song, the subject of this study, however criticised, took Shanghai, or even the whole China, by storm from the early 1930s and thrived in Hong Kong for another decade after 1949. II. An underepresented part of the modern Chinese pop history Originating in the late 1920s and early 1930s and developing through the 1930s to 1940s as the product of the interaction betwen Chinese and Western musical elements, Chinese popular music and its producers in the Shanghai era are seldom mentioned in the modern history of Chinese music. Most documentation of Chapter One Introduction 10 and research into China’s musical activities under Western influence through the first half of the twentieth century focuses on the reformation of education, composition and performance led by intelectuals and musicians within academies. Whilst mas songs, art songs, choral works and their composers are viewed seriously and discussed in detail by academics, popular songs are mentioned casualy or even omited in most works about the modern history of Chinese music. In a textbook of the history of Chinese contemporary music, Li Jinhui’s contribution to children’s musicals is recognised, but none of his musicals for song-and-dance troupes nor the popular songs composed later in his life are mentioned. Except for Li, no other composers or artists involved in popular music are discussed. In another article about the development of Chinese music in the first half of the twentieth century, Wang mentions Li Jinhui as the pioneer of Chinese entertainment music, and considers that the works writen by him and his contemporaries deeply influenced the popular song styles in Hong Kong and Taiwan later in the twentieth century. 13 Recently there have been some academic work on Chinese popular music which also features both Chinese and Western musical elements, yet those works focus mainly on yaogun yinyue (Chinese ‘rock ’n’ roll music’) produced after the 1980s when the Communist China opened again its gate to the West rathern than on popular songs creataed in the 1930s and 1940s before the advent of the Communist regime. 14 Whilst popular song is not usualy taken seriously in the history of Chinese music, several enthusiasts have examined its origins and writen down life stories of composers and artists and their representative works. Liu Xing traces the beginning of Chinese popular music back to Li’s musicals before the coming of sound films and reviews the works of several composers and lyricists from then on to the late 1970s, including those active after 1949 in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Liu Gouwei also Chapter One Introduction 1 considers Li the father of Chinese popular song. Furthermore, he divides the development of Chinese popular song into thre stages, the eras of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan and analyses the disemination of popular song through radio broadcasts, sound films and television programes. Wong Ke-Chee argues that the style of Shanghai popular songs, as wel as those produced later in Hong Kong, is unique and diferent from that of the Chinese songs writen later in Taiwan. He also indicates that these ‘authentic songs of the times’ declined in popularity after the 1960s. 15 Besides these works, facts and figures about Chinese popular song can also be found in the biographies and the memoirs of stars and in some compilations of articles which include anecdotes about historic events based upon the author’s own recollections. In a collection of several articles originaly writen for newspapers, Shuijing discusses composers, lyricists and artists in the Shanghai era together with their styles, and recounts several interviews with some elderly directors and singers. 16 Though without a systematic approach, he also talks about the lyrical content and the paterns of acompaniment, based on the lyrics and melodies he remembered. Apart from the literature about the development of Shanghai popular songs, it is not until the pioneering work of Andrew F. Jones that the relation betwen popular songs and the formation of media culture in China in the 1930s has been discussed. While conventional critiques stres that ‘the original innocence of Li Jinhui’s early nationalistic eforts to promote children’s education is besmirched by his later descent into the tawdry world of commercial media culture,’ Jones recognises the fact that ‘Li’s contribution to Chinese media culture was just as complex and ambivalent as those of his leftist counterparts’, who were later enshrined as revolutionary heroes in the communist pantheon. 17 Although derogated as decadent and pornographic music solely because of the form of performance in which the voices, images and personal Chapter One Introduction 12 lives of mas-mediated females were consumed, Jones believes that Li created a new musical idiom. It is, on the one hand, a renegotiation of jaz music in national terms without entirely dispensing with the pentatonic markers of Chinese national character and, on the other hand, a new culture formed within an emerging transnational economy of musical production and consumption. However, rather than examining musical features in detail, Jones only roughly describes Shanghai popular songs as fusion of American jaz, Hollywood film music and Chinese folk forms. Moreover, al musical works he mentioned were composed no later than 1937, the year in which the Sino-Japanese War began, and there are more works created after 1937 to be discussed. Recently, the rapid growth of the economy in Shanghai reminds the Chinese people of the past days of prosperity in this metropolis. A series of reisues of Shanghai popular songs have drawn the atention of the public and mark a revival of and nostalgia for these songs. In Mainland China, two sets of casetes – a two- casete set in 1985 and then another four-casete one in 1993 – have been isued by the state-run China Record Company (Zhongguo changpian gongsi). As Jonathan Stock comments in an article, in which he compares the social and political backgrounds of the releases of these two sets, once criticised as unhealthy, these songs are now considered the rich and colourful national heritage of popular music of earlier times by the Chinese authorities, although the songs reisued were selected carefully. Strong consciousnes of regional identity in China may provide an explanation for these reisues. To people in Shanghai today, these popular songs can be taken both as a symbol of cultural independence and as a token of the rehabilitated past of this thriving commercial city. 18 Chapter One Introduction 13 In 1992 and the ensuing five years, EMI (Hong Kong) also released a series of audio CDs which collect a great number of historical recordings from those originaly produced by EMI (China) in Shanghai before 1949 and those in Hong Kong after the record company moved there to the late 1960s. Despite the original plan to isue one hundred volumes, this series has been stopped for commercial reasons after the fifty- ninth instalment was released. More compilations of historical recordings were produced subsequently by EMI (Malaysia) from 2000 onwards. A step farther in Southeast Asia, a Singaporean gramophone record collector, Le Leng Kok, has been trying to restore historical recordings and so far has published six audio CDs since 2000. Using an advanced audio restoration system, re-mastering the aged recordings and removing unwanted noise from old gramophone records, he makes it possible for us to experience the original aural efect. Though circulated mainly within a limited circle of supporters and fans, the reisue or restoration of historical recordings of Shanghai popular songs by Chinese people in diferent regions provides valuable source material for musicological analyses and further research. IV. Shanghai popular song as a genre Shanghai popular song, from the 1930s to 1940s, includes songs which had been deeply influenced by Western musical elements as wel as those which were stil composed and performed in traditional Chinese style. Listeners in Shanghai during this era might have encountered these pieces day and night in wireles broadcast programes, in films, in cabarets, in the humming of people in the stret or through gramophone record playing. Although today people categorise music that is commercialy promoted by mainstream record companies and consumed in great Chapter One Introduction 14 amounts by fans as ‘popular’, these songs were not refered to as ‘popular’ by people at that time. These songs were first refered to as ‘new song of the times’ or ‘contemporary song’ and these terms could be sen on copies of sheet music, the covers of songbooks or in contemporary entertainment magazines released in the 1930s. Words such as ‘social’ in English and ‘shidai’ (‘of the times’) in Chinese can also be found on the labels of some records. 19 Since jaz or other Western style bands were employed to acompany the singing and, in contrast with the traditional repertoire, these songs were new creations, terms such as ‘jaz song’ or ‘modern song’ were later on widely used. In the light of the usage of these terms, it appears that listeners, publishers and editors had somehow recognised and treated these songs as a specific category distinct from those they considered traditional or folk, such as operatic arias, balads or short simple strains. Even today, these songs, generaly known as ‘song of the times’ (rather than ‘new’ songs) or ‘Mandarin Chinese old song,’ are located in a reserved category. For example, in record shops, albums of Shanghai old songs are often shelved together; when young pop stars try to reinterpret Zhou Xuan’s hits on TV, elderly fans usualy criticise them severely for their inauthentic style and the inappropriate acompaniment; when a radio programe plays 1960s Mandarin Chinese clasics which were produced in Hong Kong, it is possible to recognise the taste of old Shanghai. We can then say that it is the style and form in which these songs were performed that made them unique and thus easily diferentiated from the Chinese popular music prevailing nowadays. How can listeners today and those who lived in Shanghai at the time tel these songs from other concurrently existing repertoires? What is the uniquenes of Chinese popular music in the Shanghai era and how can these songs be regarded as a Chapter One Introduction 15 specific category of music by the Chinese? In the second half of the introductory chapter, the concept of musical genre wil be applied to begin a preliminary analysis of the characteristics of this repertoire. Genre categories are nowadays widely used as a way of organising the music making, seling and consuming proceses. In line with these preset categories, al the participants in the music market – performers, producers, shopkeepers, consumers and critics – have an idea in mind of the aural and visual efects they should expect when coming across certain categories of music. 20 Nevertheles, genre can also be an elusive term, neither a textual esence nor a comprehensive code, because no text wil have al the traits of the genre to which it belongs nor are particular texts precisely identical with the categories in which they are included. 21 Even so, as the formation of a genre is based upon a set of acepted rules that qualify the authenticity of the musical events making up that genre, it is useful to examine systematicaly what general features Shanghai popular songs have, acording to Franco Fabbri’s five groups of genre rules. 2 1. Formal and technical rules The first group contains rules of musical form and playing conventions, the rules most discussed in musicological literature dealing with genres. From the melodic and harmonic point of view, traditional Chinese operas and folk songs are based mainly on pentatonic scales together with some so-caled ‘altered notes’ out of the pentatonic scale and thus has a distinctive identity. Moreover, in Chinese thinking, a pentatonic scale is already a representation of harmony and therefore, to Western ears, traditional Chinese music lacks complex harmonies and is always played in unison. 23 Some of Shanghai popular songs sound quite traditional because their melodies are inspired by or extracted from folk tunes or story-teling balads. Chapter One Introduction 16 For example, Zhou Xuan’s ‘The Wandering Songstres’ (Tianya genü) is derived from tanci (a traditional story-teling performance originated in Suzhou) and ‘Betel Nut Picking’ (Cai binglang) is adapted from folk dance music of Hunan. However, more Western elements can be observed in other newly composed works. In addition to traditional scales and melody contours, there is frequent use of chromatisms, the blue notes of American jaz, and the application of Western compositional techniques such as recurring motifs, augmentations and modulations from the tonic key of a song to its relative minor or major. Gong Qiuxia’s ‘Roses Blooming Everywhere’ (Qiangwei chuchu kai) is a good case where the first section is in the major pentatonic scale without any altered tone, but it is then modulated into its relative minor in the second section featuring the raised leading tone. It can also be noticed that melodies or cadences are aranged in acordance with the progresions of European harmony, and instrumental introductions and intermezi are played in part harmony. From the rhythmic point of view, though both Chinese folk songs and Shanghai popular songs are usualy in the 2/4 or 4/4 metre, with acents in odd- numbered beats, there are several popular songs composed in the 3/4 metre and performed in the form of a waltz but few in the 6/8 time of European folk dance. Some songs were originaly writen in syncopated rhythms with a flavour of American jaz, whereas others just remained plain in rhythm, close to the style of Chinese folk songs. Due to their relationship with balroom dance culture in Shanghai, more rhythmic variations can be heard in the musical acompaniments of these popular songs than in folk music. Since these songs were aranged to be danced, they often took the form of modern dance numbers which prevailed in dancehals or cabarets at that time, such as tango, rumba, waltz and foxtrot. For example, Bai Guang’s ‘Lingering Dreams’ (Hunying jiumeng) and Zhou Xuan’s Chapter One Introduction 17 ‘Recaling My Husband’ (Yi liangren) are famous tangos; in Bai Guang’s ‘Autumn Night’ (Qiuye) and Ouyang Feiying’s ‘Shangri-La’ (Xianggelila) we can hear the rhythm of rumba. As for waltz, while Bai Hong’s ‘Dance of Spring’ (Chun zhi wuqu) is a Viennese waltz, Zhou Xuan’s ‘Good Night’ (Wan’an qu) is a slow one. The wel- known piece ‘Rose, Rose, I Love You’ (Meigui meigui wo ai ni) sung by Yao Li is aranged as a foxtrot. 24 There are also a great number of rhythmic paterns in traditional Chinese music, but they belong solely to the performance of percussion instruments and have litle to do with melodies or any dancing step. It goes without saying that traditional Chinese operas and folk songs are performed with or acompanied by traditional instruments, but these instruments are also used in Shanghai popular songs to give them a traditional flavour. A typical combination of Chinese instruments, widely used in the acompaniment of balad singing or Beijing opera, contains a huqin (two-string bowed instrument), a sanxian (thre-string plucked instrument) and a drummer’s kit consisting of a pair of clappers and a drum. When acompanying a song, the instrumental line usualy follows the vocal line in unison with some ornamental variation and fil-in melodies betwen vocal phrases. Zhou Xuan’s ‘The Wandering Songstres’ and Wu Yingyin’s ‘Spring Sadnes’ (Duanchang hong) are examples representative of this combination and acompanying style. However, the use of Western instruments in varied combinations is one of the most fascinating features in most Shanghai popular songs. Among a wide range of combinations, some are smal groups similar to those of the bands in New Orleans jaz, using a ‘front-line of melodic’ instruments, such as a trumpet, a clarinet or a violin which might play a fil-in solo phrase, and other ‘rhythmic-harmonic backing’ instruments, such as a piano, string bas and drums. The earliest Shanghai popular song, ‘Drizles’ (Maomaoyu), and two late-thirties Chapter One Introduction 18 works, Yao Li’s ‘Lovesicknes for Sale’ (Mai xiangsi) and Zhang Fan’s ‘Party Time’ (Manchang fei), for instance, are acompanied by bands of this sort. There were also larger bands which were comparable to chamber orchestras, such as those string- dominated studio orchestras in Hollywood and Broadway or as those big bands of the swing era with expanded bras, red and rhythm sections. 25 The lush arangements and sonorous sounds of such an aray of instruments can be heard in, to give a few examples, Li Xianlan’s ‘Evening Fragrance’ (Yelaixiang), Bai Hong’s ‘Goodbye Shasha’ (Shasha zaihui ba) and Ouyang Feiying’s ‘Misty Rain’ (Yu mengmeng). As for the technical capacity of instrumentalists playing in the bands for Shanghai popular songs, it is believed that they had to follow music scores orchestrated by the arangers when acompanying a singer, but it is not clear if they were expected to improvise as American jazmen did in the fil-in instrumental solo phrases. It is also known that White Russian clasical musicians and Filipino instrumentalists were both notable and competent at jaz or Euro-American style music in recording sesions or nightclubs or cabarets, but litle is known about Chinese instrumentalists. A famous elderly lyricist, Chen Dieyi, remembers that there was no formal or in-house traditional Chinese musical band, or not famous enough to be remembered, and anyone who played huqin might be hired to form a pickup band. 26 Perhaps it required more members and close collaboration among them to organise a Western musical band, but two or thre players were enough to acompany the singing with Chinese instruments, and it was thus not necesary for record companies to maintain large traditional Chinese bands. From the vocal point of view, because the singers in the Shanghai era came from diferent backgrounds, two major singing styles existed at the same time in Shanghai popular songs. Some vocalists were naturaly talented and learned to sing Chapter One Introduction 19 by themselves, such as Yao Li and Wu Yingyin; some were trained in song-and-dance troupes, such as Bai Hong, Zhou Xuan and Gong Qiuxia; and others, such as Ouyang Feiying, Qu Yunyun and Li Xianglan, received formal musical training from private tutors. 27 Generaly speaking, the nasal, high-pitched voice and the melismatic phrases used in traditional operas or folk songs can be heard in most historical recordings of Shanghai popular songs, while a deeper, more open-throated singing approach or a style like European bel canto or coloratura soprano, can also be found in several gramophone records. However, some singers changed the manner in which they sang several years after their first appearance as their voices became more mature or they tried to interpret songs in a diferent way. For example, compared to the imature and strident voice in ‘Lovesicknes for Sale’ released in 1937, Yao Li had developed into a warm, rich and elegant style ten years later in ‘A Broken Heart’ (Yike poxin) recorded in 1948. While Bai Hong interpreted ‘Crazy Musical Band’ (Fengkuang yuedui) in a traditional Chinese approach, she intimated a coloratura soprano style in ‘Enchanting Lipstick’ (Zuiren de kouhong). More interestingly, in traditional Chinese operas or folk songs both genders participate in singing, but most of Shanghai popular songs in historical recordings were sung by female performers. Male performers often served as characters who were secondary in importance to the main female role in duets and choruses, or as vocalists for backing harmonies. Though some male singers also made their own recordings, such as Yao Min, Yan Hua and clasicaly trained Sheng Jialun, Huang Feiran, overal, they left behind considerably fewer works than their female counterparts. As with the singing style, when looking at the rules governing lyrics we find that there is more than one lyrical form in these popular songs, including clasical Chapter One Introduction 20 Chinese texts, refined literary language and vernacular expresions. The language style of a song depends on its lyricist. As the lyricists of popular songs in the Shanghai era usualy came from the ranks of scholars, writers (Fan Yanqiao), film directors (Hu Xinling, Wu Cun) and journalists (Chen Dieyi), and most of them were wel educated and open to the new culture or brought up with training in clasical literature, it is explicable that such diferent uses of language should have existed. In general, the lyrics of most songs draw on the vernacular idioms and phrases originating from clasical works or words only used in writing, and thus the fre-form composition of lyrics is similar to what was then caled the ‘new poems’ (xinshi). 28 A number of them are writen in a more literary way with clasical words and regular metre, while at the other end of the spectrum some are totaly colloquial. The lyrics of Zhou Xuan’s film song ‘The Litle Nuptial Chamber’ (Xiaoxiao dongfang) were writen in a clasical poetic form by the director, with eight lines in total and seven words in each line, whereas those of Qu Yunyun’s ‘Young Lady In A Pedicab’ (Sanlunche shang de xiaojie) were in plain vernacular without any clasical idioms or refined words. Interestingly enough, in whatever language a song may be couched, it is possible to find in its lyrics intimate expresions that may be frowned upon if uttered in public. 29 To sum up, from the point of view of the overal form, Shanghai popular songs mainly use the pentatonic scale with variations based on Western compositional techniques, mostly sung by female singers in nasal, high-pitched voices, and acompanied by bands featuring Western instruments and arangements in European- American style. It was a new sound for the audience at that time, and for us today constitutes a particular performance style. However, there were also pieces composed Chapter One Introduction 21 in traditional scales, performed in the style of story-teling balads and acompanied with Chinese instruments. 2. Semiotic rules The second group of rules refer to the ways in which the meaning of a song is conveyed. While to us today, discussing Chinese popular music of the Shanghai era, these popular songs can be regarded as a musical product which emerged in a particular social context when traditional Chinese culture met Western entertainment, to those living in the 1930s to 1940s in Shanghai or other areas in China, these modern songs portrayed an imaginary world beyond the hard reality of the country at the time – the encroachment of the Japanese and Western imperialists. From the point of view of textual strategy, although the true intention of the composers, lyricists or performers of these Shanghai popular songs is not clear, what we can se in these texts is not only fantasy but representation of the real world in which listeners at the time could find themselves. Songs expres sentiments that can be perceived as the listeners’ own felings, describe events that can take place in the listeners’ everyday life, and draw pictures of a wonderland that listeners might yearn for. For example, the lyrics of Zhou Xuan’s ‘Recaling My Husband’ (Yi liangren) (liangren, ‘husband’, or literaly ‘good man’) read: My husband is on the way to the long march My husband is at the vanguard on the main road May spring wind send my regards May spring wind bring him endles happines Chapter One Introduction 2 The ‘good man’ could be any Chinese woman’s husband at the front of the Sino- Japanese War and these words could represent the heartfelt wishes of any Chinese soldier’s wife. A close look at various themes in the lyrical contents wil show that, for a wide range of listeners, the principal communicative purpose of Shanghai popular songs is an emotional one. Sentimental afairs and topics stresing the pleasure of the moment are common subjects in most songs, although the lyrical contents of Shanghai popular songs cover a broad range of isues. Generaly, we can se several typical events, such as the dialogue or monologue of courtship, conjugal blis, the pang of pain of separated young couples, the sorrow of unrequited love or lovesicknes, and the desire for afection in this transitory life. In addition to romantic love betwen couples, there are songs dealing with family or filial love, including subjects such as gratitude for parental love, family reunion, and nostalgia for the homeland during endles wanderings. Compared to romantic love songs, these are usualy direct descriptions of events without too many metaphors or double meanings. Apart from sentiments, ordinary people’s livelihood is another theme in popular songs. In lyrics we may find portrayals of farmers’ work, young girls picking tea leaves, people preparing for a wedding, a description of a fishermen’s typical day or the beauty and plenty of the land. We may also come across acounts of a broken homeland, of people starving and drifting aimlesly, of homelesnes and of dreams of paradise while living in misery. We find incisive views on social phenomena, such as criticism of reckles youth squandering a fortune, the seamy side of the city’s nightlife or social inequality. In contrast to these songs full of grumbling and discontent, those caling for the salvation of the nation or service to society are more Chapter One Introduction 23 positive and constructive. Good examples of this are songs about the coming of spring or of the Chinese New Year with expectations of riches and a beter life. Whether these events are described directly in plain words or abundantly with metaphors, the lyrics are often filed with colourful descriptions of natural scenery, as they have been in many vernacular and literary works. These images may be taken merely as part of the story, serving as a backdrop to create an atmosphere, but sometimes they may be used to suggest something through their metaphoric meanings conventionaly perceived in Chinese society. The seasons, wild life, the weather, celestial bodies and the landscape appear again and again. Spring is frequently used to suggest the revival of nature and the experience of romantic love. Some songs praise the bounty of spring and encourage people to cherish it and work enthusiasticaly, while others appeal to couples in love. Autumn and winter are usualy taken as symbols of depresion, solitude and hardship. Wildlife, such as birds, butterflies, fish and flowers are widely used in songs and each of them has its traditional meaning in Chinese society. Mandarin ducks, swalows, butterflies in couples or a pair of phoenix usualy symbolise conjugal blis; a swalow departing South or a nightingale caling at night can be asociated with unrequited love and lovesicknes; fish swiming in water implies the joy of intercourse. The bird metaphor is equivocal and may be contradictory in diferent contexts. For example, a flock of swalows or orioles are sometimes regarded as a scene of prosperity and sometimes perceived as a horde of women, even, derogatorily, as flirtatious women. As for plants, the peach flower is customarily synonymous with women but ‘peaches and plums’ refer to students, especialy those who have graduated; a wilow by the riverside is a poetic image, but ‘flower and wilow’ is a euphemistic expresion for indiscret behaviour and promiscuity. Roses, though rare Chapter One Introduction 24 in traditional Chinese literature, are common in popular songs and can be interpreted as the female protagonist in the love narative or as romantic love itself. Wind, rain, cloud and fog are common metaphoric images for obstructions and gloom, but they may connote diferent things in works of literature and in popular songs alike. A spring breze can be interpreted as a touch of freshnes in the air and announces the advent of prosperity, but it can also be sen as the stirings of love. A girl waiting for a spring breze suggests her longing for love. ‘Rain and cloud’ are asociated with sex, and raining with man’s ejaculation. Sun, moon and stars and land features such as rivers, lakes and hils, are normaly used in a straightforward way as backdrops for the narative. However, ‘blue sky and bright sun’ and ‘red sun’ might be politicaly asociated with the Nationalist and the Communist parties, respectively, due to the colour and design of the flags of the two parties. Since Shanghai popular songs were often played in dancehals and served as dance music no mater for what purpose or in what context they were created, questions are raised as to the meaning of these songs to the hosteses and their clientele in Shanghai. What was conveyed to these people beyond the rhythmic pulses acompanying dance steps? How did people fel about the sentiments, events and images pictured in these songs? For example, Bai Hong’s ‘No Rain, No Red Flowers’ (Yu busa hua hua buhong) reads: You are a dragon in the sky I am a bunch of flowers on earth If the dragon does not turn his body over, there is no rain If rainwater does not sprinkle over the flowers, the flowers do not turn red Chapter One Introduction 25 In contrast to its monstrous image of something formidable or baneful to Western people, the dragon is conventionaly in Chinese society a symbol of the male, of the monarch, and hence of power and wealth. Besides, acording to Chinese myths, ‘the Dragon King of East Sea’ (donghai longwang) is the deity in charge of rainfal, and it depends on his mood as to whether there is enough rain for plants to thrive on earth. The alusion presented in the words of this song may, on the one hand, create a picture of how a vulnerable girl needs a powerful man’s careful atention, but on the other hand imply sexual intercourse in line with the aforementioned raining as a sign of ejaculation. However, except for these inferences from the usage of metaphor, there is no further proof of how these words might be perceived by a man and the taxi dancer in his arms at a cabaret in Shanghai. 30 It is thus not clear whether the connotative mesages conveyed by the songwriter were received by the listeners. As for the relationship betwen performers and audience, because not everyone in Shanghai at that time could aford to atend a live performance in the cabaret or to dance with the acompaniment of a band and singers in a dancehal, Shanghai popular songs spread to ordinary people mainly through radio broadcast programes and gramophone records. Thus most of the audience received these popular songs as disembodied sound, mediated through records, radio and films rather than as a face-to-face musical experience. The most common approach through which the unsen singers could come to the gaze of their fans was by printed materials, such as copies of sheet music, gossip tabloids and celebrity pictorials where their portrayals or photos were shown. Another economical and popular way to aces these songs and singers was by going to the cinema, where people were able to enjoy the latest songs through high-quality speakers, while at the same time they could watch the look and demeanour of their favourite artists on the scren. Some Chapter One Introduction 26 cinemagoers even went to watch the same film several times because they were fascinated by the songs and wanted to listen to them again. 31 As a result, although some songs were exclusively writen for the scren, with their lyrical contents adapted to the narative and the musical setings aranged in harmony with the plot, other songs, not necesarily relevant to the scenes in films, were added as a publicity stunt in order to promote the films. 3. Behavioural rules The third group of rules cover performance rituals on and off the stage and apply both to artists and to audiences. Due to the lack of firsthand knowledge of the type of audience that these popular songs catered for, as wel as the relationship betwen audience and performers, it is not clear which were the rules of conversation and codified etiquete current in the popular music scene in the Shanghai era, such as the appropriate behaviour of performers in interviews, the proper response to gossip on magazines, and the guidelines for the spectators during live performances. Acording to Yao Li, one of the living elderly singers once active both in Shanghai and Hong Kong, most people at the time would pay more atention to the singing than to the singer’s appearance. When giving a live performance in dancehals, she was always in qipao (Manchurian-style female long gown) and never wore any makeup because people usualy closed their eyes and just listened to her songs. 32 Nevertheles, Yao Li did not mention whether audiences then applaud loudly, shouted ‘bravo’ (hao), encouraged the singer in any other way or even behaved in a manner similar to the ways in which young fans today revere their pop idols in live concerts. A known fact about audience fedback is that in contests Chapter One Introduction 27 sponsored by various entertainment periodicals in the 1930s, readers were asked to send in balots ranking their favourite singers so that the popularity of the singers could be gauged by readers’ responses. 3 However, more detailed data about behavioural rules must be left in abeyance until more reliable information can be gathered. 4. Social and ideological rules The fourth group contains the rules which cover the social image of artists and the nature of the music community and its relationship to the world beyond. On the one hand, popular singers in this era relied a great deal on record companies for their continuing performing carers; on the other hand, they maintained an ambiguous relationship with the audience. Record companies came to China with a view to opening up a new market of their record players and recordings. With this new technology, these companies made it possible to store the sounds of stage performances and to sel them in the form of a commodity. To singers, making recordings (either for films or for gramophone records) was the best way to circulate songs quickly in the country and thus to make their names known to a wider audience. Although record companies could reap a great profit for their own sake from contracted singers, it was under the support of these companies that the artists could become established and their stage carers last a long time in the entertainment industry. Therefore, it was of vital importance for singers to keep on good terms with record companies. However, to listeners, a record company was just a commercial institution, similar to countles other companies who promoted Western inventions and amenities Chapter One Introduction 28 in Shanghai at the time; it did not mater which institution released the records. What the audience realy paid atention to were songs and singers, who fascinated the ordinary public with their syrupy voices. Despite the fact that entertainers, such as story-teling singers and opera players, had long been stigmatised in traditional society, people were not only atracted by popular singers’ musical works but also interested in their personal maters. A Chinese saying goes that ‘a whore has no feling for love; an opera player has no sense of honour and justice’ (biaozi wuqing xizi wuyi). In spite of being looked down upon in such a way, in the past the players used to comfort themselves with the proverb that ‘whoever is human listens to opera’ (fanshi ren jiudei tingxi). These words indeed shed light on the views of the public on Shanghai popular singers at that time – for them, while entertainment is esential for life, it is low and degrading to provide entertainment. From an ideological point of view, the Shanghai era saw two extreme atitudes in response to popular music. When this new form of entertainment that fused Chinese traditional and Western musical elements first enjoyed succes and popularity, the ranks of scholars, moralists and nationalists derided it and tried to ban it as decadent and pornographic and even denounced it as opium for the mases. They argued that this singing and dancing valued imediate pleasure without thought for the future and created an ilusion of peace and prosperity. Nevertheles, it could not be denied that to those living the harsh reality of Chinese social conditions at that time, popular song meant escape, while for those chasing flashy and fleshy excitement, cabaret dancing was a fashion and fad as wel as a mark of urban superiority. It is possible to argue that, on the one hand, Shanghai popular music involved a multitude of commercial activities in conflict with the morality of traditional Chinese society and was incongruous with cals for the salvation of the Chapter One Introduction 29 nation, while on the other hand, these songs filed the needs of sectors of the public for amusement at the same time as the vivid imagery they conveyed reflected most people’s longing for a happier life. 5. Economical and juridical rules The last group in Fabbri’s rules deals with the commercial activities that guarante the survival and prosperity of a music genre. The song-and-dance troupe may be the earliest form of commercialisation through which Shanghai popular songs were produced and promoted. The organiser of a troupe wrote songs, trained singers, aranged performances and signed contracts with record companies to make recordings of their stage appearances. For example, Li Jinhui’s Bright Moon Song- and-Dance Troupe once signed an exclusive contract and then recorded no les than one hundred records within the course of six months. 34 Another common way of promoting songs was through the music society, smaler groups of singers and instrumentalists which usualy appeared over the airwaves in programes sponsored and supported by commercial firms. Some music societies, such as the Great Unity Club (Datong she), even promoted their musical works by implementing the use of radio broadcasts with an efective use of printed material – they periodicaly published collections of songs, as a guide for tunes and lyrics with pictures of their singers on the cover page endorsing the products of advertisers as a means to support the publication. 35 Besides their work for the song-and-dance troupes and music societies, some Shanghai popular singers also made a living by performing in restaurants and cabarets. For instance, Wu Yingyin had sung in dancehals and nightclubs before she Chapter One Introduction 30 made her first recording. Yao Li, after rising to fame with the succes of her radio programes and records, also performed in top dancehals in Shanghai. In addition to those live performances, films played an important part in the production and disemination of Shanghai popular songs. Good songs usualy helped to promote films and drew a wide range of people, and on the other hand, the songs of commercialy succesful films were later made into records, published in collections of song sheets, and performed again in broadcasts and dancehals. The thre major record companies active in Shanghai – the British-based EMI (China), the American RCA-Victor and the local Great China Records – produced popular songs in their own studios with their own contracted artists and promoted them al over China and abroad. By the end of 1930s EMI (China) controlled most of the Shanghai popular music market and most composers, arangers and female singers signed exclusively to EMI during the most crucial stage of their carers. Existing records indicate that in EMI most busines decisions were made by foreign managers and song lyrics were usualy translated into English to be approved by them before a recording sesion, whereas Chinese employees provided their musical expertise or worked as compradors responsible for negotiating with performers and local distributors. There was certainly a wel-functioning mechanism dealing with copyright of songs and lyrics, as wel as recordings because, even now EMI (Hong Kong) stil pays royalties to the living elderly singers of the Shanghai era or their descendants when old recordings are reisued. 36 However, because the documents about the organisation structures of these companies were lost or destroyed during the chaos of political change, most facts about the decision-making proceses within companies and the legal relationships betwen artists (including singers, musicians, composers and lyricists) and companies remain unclear. Chapter One Introduction 31 V. Concluding remarks The review of the rise of Shanghai popular song reveals that Li Jinhui’s love song triggered the creation and development of Shanghai popular song, and that through gramophone recordings, radio broadcastings and sound films, this new form of musical entertainment enjoyed great popularity throughout Shanghai and other regions of China, regardles of severe criticisms from certain sectors of society. Because these musical works were dismised as decadent sound and neglected in the history of modern Chinese music, most facts and figures about the popular music industry were not preserved properly and were lost or scatered in Mainland China, Hong Kong and the Southeast Asian Chinese communities due to the political change on the Mainland after 1949. As shown in the preliminary analysis of the features of Shanghai popular song from the perspective of music genre, there is indeed much variety in the musical elements of these songs, though, generaly speaking, most combine traditional Chinese melody and singing styles together with Western orchestral acompaniment. Despite the fact that these songs tend to be concerned with sentiment and put stres on the pleasure of the moment, other isues can be found in the contents of the lyrics as wel. Notionaly, from the perspective of formal and semiotic features, it is not entirely satisfying to define a genre where songs are mainly in one style but where other various stylistic elements are incorporated here and there into the repertoire. However, taking into consideration the social and historical context in which Shanghai popular song came into existence, it is not dificult to understand why diferent forms of performance stil existed while the main style had been developed through the combination of specific musical materials from the two cultures. Chapter One Introduction 32 Shanghai was China’s first modern industrial, commercial and financial centre as wel as one of the world’s most prosperous cities in the first half of the twentieth century. Al kinds of modern technology and amenities were introduced to Shanghai soon after their appearance in other Western major cities; however, Chinese tradition and habits stil existed in people’s everyday lives. Similarly, while people were intoxicated with the fusion of the Chinese pentatonic scales and the Western instrumental acompaniment in Wu Yingyin’s ‘Met by Chance’ (Ping shui xiangfeng), they never forgot the lasting charm of the huqin and story-teling balad in Zhou Xuan’s ‘The Wandering Songstres’ and never stopped enjoying the resonant bel canto singing in Sheng Jialun’s film song ‘Singing in the Midnight’ (Yeban gesheng). Ever since Li Jinhui began the composition of love songs, aranged commercial performances and made them into gramophone records, the production and spread of Shanghai popular songs had been dependent on the collaboration betwen artists (song-and-dance troupes, music societies or other contracted musicians and performers of record companies) and commercial institutions (radio stations, film companies and record companies). Due to insufficient knowledge regarding the details of busines practices in the Shanghai popular music industry, it is not clear whether there was someone in an executive position in the music society or song-and-dance troupe or a department in the record company functioning as the equivalent to the A&R person in today’s major record companies, i.e. responsible for the style of musical works and the image of a star. Nevertheles, the musical elements, lyrical contents and forms of performance of these popular songs reflect a collective style of these participating artists and institutions and, at the same time, bygone audience tastes. Chapter One Introduction 3 The review of the rise of Shanghai popular song and preliminary analysis of its generic features provide a good point of departure for a reconstruction of a neglected part in its history. More evidence wil present a clearer picture of the context in which the various musical events took place and take us a step further in our understanding of this interesting period in the modern history of music in China. Endnotes 1 To give a few examples: Hanchao Lu, Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century (Berkeley, Cali. and London: University of California Pres, 1999); Sherman Cochran (ed.) Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 1900-1945 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornel East Asia Series, 1999); Frederic E. Wakeman, Policing Shanghai, 1927-1937 (London: University of California Pres, 1995); Frederic Jr. Wakeman and Wen-hsin Yeh (eds), Shanghai Sojourners (Berkeley, Cali.: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1992); Yingjin Zhang (ed.), Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922-1943 (Stanford, Cali.: Stanford University Pres, 1990). 2 The first Shanghai popular song was writen by Li Jinhui in 1927. The historical recording (Shanghai Pathé 34278 A & B) mentioned here was performed by his daughter, Li Minghui, and was released by the EMI (China) in Shanghai. It appears that the critical remark ‘strangling cat’ was first made by the noted writer Lu Xun. 3 The term Haipai was originaly used by the literati in the late nineten century to disparage the more vibrant, liberal and commercial-oriented local painting, theatre and literature that was produced in Shanghai and which contrasted with the Chapter One Introduction 34 supposedly more conservative and traditional Jingpai (‘Beijing style’). However, in the early twentieth century this designation was gradualy acepted by people in Shanghai and applied to them with a positive connotation. For a further discussion of the history and meaning of the term, se Zhang Zhongli (ed.), Jindai shanghai chengshi yanjiu (Modern Shanghai studies) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1991), pp. 1130-59. 4 For more details about the history and organisation of Shanghai Municipal Symphony Orchestra, refer to Robert Bickers, ‘“The greatest culture aset east of Suez”: the history and politics of the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra and Public Band, 1881-1946’, in Chi-hsiung Chang (ed.), China and the World in the Twentieth Century (Taipei: Institute of History, Academia Sinica, 2001), pp. 835-75. 5 There were several amateur groups, such as the Heavenly Cadence Society (Tianyun she), the Great Unity Music Society (Datong yuehui) and the Midnight Music Society (Ziye yuehui), striving to preserve the tradition of serious instrumental music and operatic performance. They also caried out research in the compilation and translation of Chinese music manuscripts into Western notation, and improved the design and manufacture of Chinese musical instruments. These groups usualy gave regular concerts in their own right or other programes in hotels and private banquets by request. Among these groups is worth remarking the Midnight Music Club whose founder, Xu Ruhui, a former member of the Great Unity Music Society, conducted his music ensemble acompanying popular songs writen by him; the performance featured Chinese percussion playing frenetic jazy rhythms. For more details of Xu’s life acount and his popular songs, se Xu Wenxia, ‘Wode fuqin Xu Ruhui yu Chapter One Introduction 35 Zhongguo zaoqi liuxing gequ’ (My father Xu Ruhui and Chinese early popular songs) Musicology in China, 1 (2002), p. 86. 6 School songs are tunes and lyrics collected and published as educational materials for teaching singing in elementary school or at higher levels. The earliest group devoted to these works was the Music Study Society (Yinyue jiangxihui) founded by Chinese visiting students in Tokyo. Shen Xingong, Li Shutong and Zeng Zhimin were thre of the most prolific composers in this society. For their propositions and contributions to Chinese early music education se Gerlinde Gild, ‘Early 20th century “reforms” in Chinese music,’ Chime, 12-13 (1998), pp. 119-21. 7 In 1933, leftists Tian Han, An Er, Ren Guang, Zhang Shu and Lü Ji formed the Soviet Friend Society (Sulian zhi you she) in order to study Soviet mas music and composition. In the next year they set up another group, the Music Unit of the Left- wing Dramatists Union (Zuoyi julian yiyue xiaozu), to integrate more musicians into the production of music and films and thence to devote to communist revolution. Se Qin Qiming (ed.), Yinyuejia Ren Guang (The musician Ren Guang) (Anhui, China: Anhui wenyi chubanshe, 1988), pp. 13-17. By the end of 1935 over a hundred choirs and singing societies had been founded across the various social strata in Shanghai. These societies gathered regularly to sing patriotic songs in the hope of boosting the morale of Chinese people and army. Se Wang Yuhe, ‘New music of China: its development under the blending of Chinese and Western cultures through the first half of twentieth century, part I’, Journal of Music in China, 30:2 (2001), p.189. Chapter One Introduction 36 8 In the mid-1930s, there were eighty-nine radio stations running in China and forty- thre of them were situated in Shanghai, among which four were operated by foreigners and catered mainly for Western communities, two were state-owned, and the others were al local commercial stations. Se Shanghai tong she (ed.), Shanghai yanjou ziliao xuji (Shanghai research materials vol. 2) (Shanghai: Shangahi tong she, 1935), pp. 564-9. 9 The Chinese word genü can be understood literaly as those females who sing to earn their living. However, it was usualy used as a derogatory term because actreses or entertainers had been traditionaly stigmatised in traditional Chinese society, and performers who ‘sel songs’ to the public might sometimes be asociated with courtesans and their sexual services. 10 Li Jinguang, Chen Gexin and another thre prolific composers, Yao Min, Yan Gongshang, and Liang Yueying, were regarded as the most influential and were later nicknamed the ‘Gang of Five’ of Chinese popular music by critics. 1 Andrew F. Jones, Yelow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jaz Age (London: Duke University Pres, 2001), p. 74. 12 Examples of Nie Er’s songs are, ‘Song of Dockers’ (Matou gongren ge), ‘Song of Picking Water Chestnut’ (Cailing ge), ‘Song of Newspaper Boys’ (Maibao ge), and ‘The Volunter’s March’ (Yiyong jun jinxingqu), which later on became the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China. 13 Se Wang Yuhe, Zhongguo jinxiandai yinyue shi (A history of Chinese contemporary and modern music), 2nd edn (Beijing: People’s Music Pres, 1994), pp. 87-92; ‘New music of China: its development under the blending of Chinese and Chapter One Introduction 37 Western cultures through the first half of twentieth century, part I’, Journal of Music in China, 30:2 (2001), p. 189. 14 For example, Tim Brace, ‘Popular music in contemporary Beijing: modernism and cultural identity’, Asian Music, 22:2 (1991), pp. 43-66; Huang Hao, ‘Yaogun yinyue: rethinking Mainland Chinese rock ’n’ rol’, Popular Music, 20:1 (2001), pp. 1-11; Nimrod Baranovitch, China's New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender, and Politics, 1978-1997 (Berkeley, Cali.: University of California Pres, 2003). 15 Liu Xing, Zhongguo liuxing gequ yuanliu (The origins of Chinese popular songs) (Taichung, Taiwan: Taiwan shengzhengfu xinwenchu, 1988); Liu Guowei, Jinqu wushi nian: guoyu liuxing gequ shiyong baodian (Fifty years of the golden songs: a practical treasury of Mandarin Chinese popular songs) (Taipei: Donggong guoji guanggao youxian gongsi, 1996); Wong Ke-Che, The Age of Shanghainese Pops: 1930-1970 (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2001). 16 Shuijing, Liuxing gequ cangsang ji (A record of the vicisitudes of popular song) (Taipei: Dadi chubanshe, 1985). 17 Jones, Yelow Music, pp. 94, 136. 18 Se Jonathan Stock, ‘Reconsidering the past: Zhou Xuan and the rehabilitation of early twentieth-century popular music’, Asian Music, 26:2 (1995), p. 129. 19 Wong, The Age of Shanghainese Pops, pp. 12-13. 20 For the details of how genre labels work, se Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Pres, 1996), ch. 4. 21 Jason Toynbe, Making Popular Music: Musicians, Creativity and Institutions (London: Arnold, 2000), p. 103. Chapter One Introduction 38 2 Se Franco Fabbri, ‘A theory of musical genres’, in David Horn and Philip Tag (eds), Popular Music perspectives (Göteberg and London: IASPM, 1982), pp. 52-81. In this article, Fabbri defines a musical genre as a set of musical events (real or possible) whose course is governed by a definite set of socialy acepted rules and further suggests five groups of rules involved in the definition of a genre. 23 In Chinese music, one single note in itself could be sen as an experience of harmony which can trigger off other extra-musical harmonious references. For a rough guide of the melody and harmony concept of Chinese music, se Oto Karolyi, Traditional African and Oriental Music (London: Penguin Books, 1998), pp. 150-56. 24 As a curiosity, it is worth remarking here that ‘Rose, Rose, I Love You’ was the first Chinese song with English lyrics that made it in the international market. The interpretation by Frankie Laine (Columbia 39367) became very popular during the 1950s, but most Western listeners had no idea of its Chinese origin when they first came across the song. 25 For instrumentation of jaz in these two eras, se Avril Dankworth, Jazz: An Introduction to Its Musical Basis (London: Oxford University Pres, 1968), pp.54, 62. 26 Se Shuijing, Liuxing gequ cangsang ji (A record of the vicisitudes of popular song) (Taipei: Dadi chubanshe, 1985), pp. 166-7. 27 Seking higher musical artistry, Ouyang Feiying and Qu Yunyun studied European clasical music and art songs under foreign vocalists, Mrs Ford and Mrs Levi. They later gave several concerts with Shanghai Municipal Symphonic Orchestra. Se Ouyang Feiying, Wochang Xianggelila: Ouyang Feiying huiyi lu (I sing Shangri-la: a memoir of Ouyang Feiyin) (Taipei: Yuzhouguang chubanshe, 1998), p. 56. Chapter One Introduction 39 28 The use of vernacular as opposed to clasical Chinese in writings and textbooks had been insistently demanded by some intelectuals since the May 4th movement of 1919. As a result, the Ministry of Education aceded to their appeal and officialy mandated the use of vernacular in public schools in 1921. Consistent with these demands about using the vernacular, some of the May 4th intelectuals had been writing the so-caled ‘new poems’ (as opposed to clasical poems), discarding clasical rules of tonal paterns and rhyme schemes for fre style and plain words. 29 To name a few, lang (‘man’) and ge (‘elder brother’) used by females when addresing their loved men, nu (literaly, ‘slave’) used by females refering to themselves, and jie (‘elder sister’) or mei (‘younger sister’) meaning either girls or women. 30 A taxi dancer is a profesional dance partner, employed by a dancehal or nightclub to dance with patrons who pay a fe for each dance. 31 Se Wong, The Age of Shanghainese Pops, p.19 32 Se Shuijing, Liuxing gequ cangsang ji, p. 205. 3 Two examples of these periodicals are Popstar Pictorial (Gexing huabao) and Nightly News Magazine (Dawanbao fukan). 34 Se Jones, Yelow Music, pp. 95-6. 35 This Great Unity Club, where Yao Li and Yao Min played important roles, had no connexion to the abovementioned Great Unity Music Society which was devoted to traditional Chinese music. Chapter One Introduction 40 36 For example, Wu Yingying was invited by EMI to Hong Kong several times to collect royalties when she stil resided in Mainland China and a royalty was also kept for Zhou Xuan’s sons after she pased away. Se Liu, Jinqu wushi nian, p. 51. 41 Chapter Two A Model for Understanding Shanghai Pop Apart from great popularity among Chinese fans, an interesting combination of various musical elements and fragmentary historical acounts of the pop industry and its participants in Shanghai, what else about Shanghai popular song is known to us today? Just as the Chinese audience took pleasure in popular songs in the 1930s and 1940s, with the rise of the broadcasting industry, the availability of gramophone records and the popularity of sound films, so did people in the West enjoy a wide range of popular music during the same period. However, whilst nowadays there is a vast literature about the development, the makers and consumers and contents of Western, particularly Anglo-American, popular music in this period, there are few writings that provide comparable facts and figures of Shanghai popular song. 1 As mentioned in the introductory chapter, there is only sketchy information about record companies, artists’ life acounts, anecdotes about historic events and commentaries on a few musical works scatered in various types of publications, such as biographies, popular periodicals and liner notes for recordings. In order to rediscover this underepresented part of the modern history of Chinese popular music, a systematic approach is required to gain a beter understanding of the industry where Shanghai popular songs were produced, sold and consumed, as wel as al the components that make up those popular songs. Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 42 I. Rediscovering Shanghai pop Legendary as Shanghai popular song is, what made it so popular from the early 1930s to 1940s in Shanghai and for more than a decade up to the 1960s in Hong Kong? It is generaly believed that Major transnational record companies which manufactured both recordings and record-play equipment came to Shanghai and other major cities in Asia in order to open up new markets and expand their busineses. 2 It is a historical fact that the proceds from seling a collection of love songs to a Shanghai publisher resolved Li Jinhui’s financial dificulties and initiated the creation of Shanghai popular song. Since the late 1920s, Chinese popular music entered the mas market in the form of purchasable commodities primarily through songbook publishers, record companies, radio stations and film companies and live performances in entertainment venues. The underlying rationale for the busines Li and these institutions had been doing is straightforward, as Simon Frith indicates, ‘to make money out of music’. 3 Since music is not a thing but an experience which is transient and ungraspable, the key to make money out of music is to turn it into something that can be traded for financial profits. It is not sounds but the storage of sounds that we buy and sel. Shanghai popular song came to existence at the time when a new technology of musical storage and retrieval was developed and introduced to China. The recording technology not only created a new industry sector, the manufacture of records and record players, but also established the structure of the modern music industry. Frith describes the music industry as ‘a busines in which both the supply side (the musicians) and the demand side (the consumers) are irational’ and record companies ‘make their money from bringing supply and demand into line’. 4 Keith Negus suggests that the industry should be understood as ‘both a commercial busines Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 43 driven by the pursuit of profits and a site of creative human activity in which some very good popular music has come and continues to emerge’. 5 It is not clear how much financial benefit was gained by the record companies involved in the production and distribution of popular songs in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai. These companies indeed filed various needs of musicians, including singers, songwriters, instrumentalists and consumers (not only the audience who listened to songs but also those whose busines relied much on the use of songs, such as radio stations and film companies). These economic facts can be broken down into thre facets, each of which suggests one of the thre cornerstones of the modern music industry: musical events, commercial activities and technological developments. Musical events include creation of songs by composers and lyricists, interpretation of songs by instrumentalists and singers in recording sesions and live performance, and appreciation of musical works by the audience. Commercial activities consist of a variety of activities concerning management and operation of the busines, including proceses occurring inside a record company, such as recruiting and contracting artists, planning the production and manufacturing records, as wel as those proceses leading to the outside, such as promotion and distribution of products and licensing the use of them. Technological developments refer to invention or improvement of musical storage and retrieval devices, and new music cariers which are intended to make recorded sound quality beter, recording sesions more flexible and record storage and preservation easier, as wel as to other technologies, such as sound films, radio and television, which help in the distribution of music to the mas market. These thre cornerstones not only play their roles individualy but also interelate dynamicaly to one another. Although it is musical events that bring about Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 4 musical supply and demand in the industry, browsing through the history of the record industry, it is not dificult to note that how music is composed, performed and listened to is influenced by technology. For example, the development of electric pick-ups, microphones and amplification in the mid-1920s made it possible to balance smal, weak human voice with sonorous sound produced by acompanying bands both in live performances and recording studios and thus gave rise to the intimacy singing style with a languid, caresing voice and more personal sentiments in lyrics of American Tin Pan Aley songs. 6 The development of the durable vinyl 45-rpm record in the late 1940s, together with the growing popularity of compact transistor radios since the mid-1950s, played important roles in the course of the formation of a new music genre, rock. 7 Moving on to the 1970s, the arival of tape casetes and casete recorders gave listeners a new means of control over the sounds and alowed them to ‘compile LPs and radio shows for themselves’ and ‘use a Walkman to cary their soundscapes around with them’. 8 Nowadays, the utilisation of digital technologies such as MIDI and sound editing software makes it possible for musicians to compose on a computer and to record without the need of the good acoustic environment of the studio. These historical facts certainly show us how musical events may be shaped by technology. As for the impact of commercial activities upon musical events, the bureaucratic system of production and promotion in most record companies serves as good evidence. In order to realise optimal returns, i.e. maximising profits from succes and minimising losses from failure, record companies establish contract-based relationships with artists and sek control over isues such as the release schedule, the choice of the producer, songs to be released and the song order in an album, the promotional strategy and the licensing policy. 9 The musical style, image and other Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 45 particular characters of a final product are usualy, if not always, determined in acordance with the corporate policy. Reluctant to risk stylistic experiments or innovation when very few records actualy generate a profit, producers may simply follow standardised formulae which govern style, text, melody, formal structure, harmonic progresion and the like. 10 It is a busines decision that contributes to the homogeneity of a certain musical style in the market. The recent emergence of ‘world music’ is another example of commercial influence on musical events. The term ‘world music’ was originaly coined in a 1987 meting by eleven independent record labels to name the many various forms of music unclasifiable in terms of Western genre labels in order to improve the music’s sales situation. 1 However, in the 1990s even major record companies started packaging and marketing their artists and, in the name of world music, musical elements draw from non-Western repertoires were intentionaly added or rearanged. Hence, a new fashion of music production started. At the same time, a new sect of ‘world’ fans gradualy formed in the market, atracted by any kind of non-Western music promoted by record companies regardles of what the music realy was. Many artists also tried to integrate into their compositions or performances non-Western instruments and musical materials of the minorities as a mark of ‘world’. The collaboration betwen technological developments and commercial activities can be observed through the complex history in which acquisitions, mergers and joint ventures have been made by several transnational corporations, such as the British-based Thorn-EMI, the Japanese Sony Corporation, the Bertelsmann Group of Germany and the American Time-Warner conglomerate, which not only own record companies but also have interests in media, leisure and entertainment, domestic and industry audio-visual products and telecommunication equipment. 12 As the Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 46 production and mas distribution of commodified culture items, i.e. musical products in the case of the music industry, are usualy faced with an uncertain and unpredictable environment, there are needs for the involved entrepreneurial organisations to diversify into related technologies and entertainment busines to disperse the risk incurred in developing new products and markets. Moreover, with the arival and improvement of new technologies for home entertainment and mas media such as tapes, video, compact discs, the Internet and cable or satelite TV, acording to Keith Negus, ‘the positioning of artists in various media and the construction of image’ has moved ‘beyond sound production’. 13 In order to extend the exposure of artists and their music as wel as to increase the circulation of musical commodities, record companies have to make the most of and expand their interests across information technologies and various media outlets. Corporate policy also has to be modified acordingly in response to the change of technologies so that new technologies can offer a competitive advantage in the pursuit of commercial succes. It is across these thre facets that musical products can be manufactured, circulated and consumed. In previous studies, the production, distribution and consumption of popular music is usualy examined as a series of industry proceses, despite scholars’ various perspectives on the actual functioning of these proceses. Bound up with the stres on the systematic nature of the production proces in capitalist societies, Theodor W. Adorno argues that popular music is produced by a culture industry, which he compares to an ‘asembly line’ turning out its products by synthetic, planned methods, just like those industries which manufacture consumer goods. Musical desires are created, controlled and exploited in the industry and thus ‘a circle of manipulation and retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows ever stronger’ is formed’. 14 Acording to Adorno, whilst artists fit their musical Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 47 works to rigid paterns of pre-existing formulae and norms, the audience pasively acept standardised musical products manufactured by the asembly line. Diferent from Adorno’s extreme standpoint of industrialised mas manufacture, Paul Hirsch developed an ‘industry system’ model of the production of culture products in which artists and mas audiences are linked by an ordered sequence of events. Creative raw materials are first proposed by artists in the ‘creative subsystem’ and then admited to and selected for sponsorship together with promotion by producers and administrators in the ‘managerial subsystem’. The selected output is filtered by mas media gatekepers in ‘the institutional subsystem’ and finaly introduced to the public in ‘the societal subsystem’. 15 In this model, music as a raw material is procesed through a system with preselection strategies at each stage, and musical products arive at the consumption stage only when they succed in firstly being selected by an entrepreneurial organisation and secondly receiving mas-media coverage. However, apart from making selections to cope with uncertainty, Hirsch sheds litle light on the impact of these strategies on musical works and moreover, it appears that in this model the music industry staf have no influence on the shaping of products. In a study of country music songwriting John Ryan and Richard Peterson show a loosely linked ‘decision chain’ through which songs pas and reach consumers. At each link in the chain, numerous specialists make decisions and pas the work to the next stage, but ‘songs are often rewriten or reinterpreted at several points along the way’ before they are presented to the consuming audience. The industry staf may shape products acording to a ‘product image’. 16 For example, a song may be modified after the producer listened to the demo to fit the image he wants to convey and the appearance of a song may keep changing during the Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 48 recording sesion and at the postproduction stage. Adding to this point, Negus contends further that the industry personnel are not only involved in filtering or contributing to product images but also actively intervene and change the sounds and images as they are being put together. 17 Obviously, both the ‘industry system’ and the ‘decision chain’ are unidirectional: musical products are pased stage by stage from artists to the public. Derived from the results of a research work on the record industry in France, Jean- Piere Vignolle indicates that popular music is manufactured in a manner of collective creation by horizontal collaboration betwen various specialists and there is no ‘absolutely fixed logical or chronological order of precedence’ in the entire proces in which songs are manufactured and marketed to the public. He also suggests that the profesionals in creation are linked to the public with a fundamental connection and thus the consumer can be regarded as part of the productive forces of music. 18 Vignolle’s argument shows that the production of popular music is not determined in one direction but is a collective creation and involves the production and the consumption side interactively. In an atempt to gain a beter understanding of the pop industry in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai rather than debate the diversity and appropriatenes of models of the industry, a working model is proposed in this study based on the concept of the ‘industry chain’, ‘decision chain’ and ‘collective creation’, together with the dynamic interaction of the abovementioned thre cornerstones. In our society, the popular music industry functions as a platform on which musical products flow from the supply side to the demand side through several busines proceses. The platform is set up by various participants involved in various musical events, commercial activities and technological developments and thereon musical products stored and Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 49 retrieved in diferent forms are produced, sold and consumed. The products both shape and are shaped by al the proceses occurring on the platform. Fig.1 ilustrates a simplified model of music industry with its product flow from the supply side. Fig.1 Simplified model of the popular music industry Although this model basicaly draws on historical facts and recent developments of the Anglo-American music industry and might not be fully applicable to the pop industry in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai, it can serve as a good starting point for this study. Thus, grounded on this proposed model, the work of rediscovering Shanghai popular song can be caried out at two levels: first, understanding the operating mechanism of the ‘platform’, which includes the producing, seling and consuming proceses in the popular music industry, and second, understanding the components of the ‘products’, which are musical elements and lyrical contents in Shanghai popular songs. The two-level work should begin by reconstructing a historical view of the industry and continue with an analysis of lyrics, melodies, instrumental arangement and interpretation of song works. Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 50 I. Level one: reconstruction of the platform In the proposed working model of the music industry, it is suggested that musical events, commercial activities and technological developments impact upon one another and musical products may shape and be shaped by al of these proceses. However significant on the industry platform these interactions are, the mutual dynamics can only be detected and described by virtue of tracing through the course through which music comes into existence from its creators and reaches consumers in the form of purchasable commodities in the market place. Hirsch’s ‘industry system’, Ryan and Peterson’s ‘decision chain’ and Vignolle’s ‘collective creation’ are al grounded on observations of the flow of musical products, whatever determinants of the appearance or image of final products they have discovered. Thus, in order to reconstruct a historical view of the Shanghai popular music industry, it is useful and necesary to investigate the physical flow of musical products and thereby to understand the operating mechanism of the platform. North America and Europe are undoubtedly places where the modern music industry began and where relevant technologies were innovated and improved, recording and producing proceses established and commercial practices developed. During the 1930s to 1940s, two of the thre major record companies involved in the production and publishing of popular music in Shanghai were owned by transnational capital, the British-based EMI and the American RCA-Victor. A third one, Great China Records, originaly funded and established by both Chinese and Japanese capital, ran its busines with limited facilities on a much smaler scale compared to the two foreign companies and never competed with them. Therefore, busines practices and manufacturing proceses in the Shanghai popular music industry might run paralel to those in most major record companies based in American and Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 51 European countries. In view of this asumption, a hypothetical flowchart that shows how popular songs move from record companies to consumers along with al the involved participants in the industry can be sketched out acording to our knowledge of the modern record industry, regardles of limited, fragmented information of the industry in old Shanghai available at the beginning of this study. In the hypothetical flowchart (Fig.2), the product flow is divided into thre proceses, the producing, seling and consuming. The producing proces is centred in record companies, controlled by transnational or local capital, where various contracted or frelance artists, including lyricists, composers, instrumentalists and singers, collaborate with other administrative and technical staf on music production. The seling proces involves several channels, including songbook publishers, wholesalers or retailers, film companies, radio stations and dancehals. The producing and seling proceses are connected by agents and promoters who help in aranging local distribution of records and cooperation betwen record and film companies, as wel as to organise live performances in radio stations and dancehals or other entertainment venues. However, singers and instrumentalists may give regular live performances and composers may write songs for songbook publishers and film companies in their own right rather than in asociation with record companies. In the consuming proces, the audience purchases musical products, or simply hears it for fre, in various forms such as sheet music, gramophone records, soundtracks in the cinema and live performances, critics judge the merits of those music works and the pres collects and comments on al kinds of information about musical products and events around them. Both critics and the audience offer their views to the pres, but the audience also relies on the pres to obtain more information. The consuming proces is linked to the producing proces by fedback on music products from critics, Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 52 Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 53 the audience and the pres. Moreover, loosely around the seling and consuming proceses, there are also regulatory institutions, either governmental authorities or other private organisations, which are responsible for censorship as wel as seting up and enforcing regulations regarding what can be distributed to the market. Having each participant’s position and connection to others defined in the flowchart, the level-one exploratory work lies in discovering the details of activities they are involved in, artistic or technical expertise they had, interaction and communication among them and the social context in which the industry platform is erected. In his article about research methods Vic Gamon indicates that ‘the greatest single problem in the historical study of popular music is that we are for the most part unable to hear the music we wish to study.’ 19 Obviously, the music he mentions is the music which was played before the advent of recording technologies and therefore not stored for our reference today. Fortunately, Shanghai popular song came into existence after recording and playing devices were introduced to China, or rather it was partly in the form of recorded sounds that these songs were diseminated and became popular, and thus nowadays some Shanghai popular songs can stil be heard in historical recordings, which are useful source materials for analysis of the music per se. As for reconstructing a historical view of the bygone Shanghai popular music industry, it requires more evidence of the music producing, seling and consuming proceses so that facts and figures of musical and related commercial activities can be verified. However, due to the chaos caused by the Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945 and the civil war betwen the National Party and the Chinese Communist and the political change in 1949, details of those proceses are no longer intact. A clear Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 54 picture has yet to be pieced together through exhaustive investigation of various types of evidence. Based upon his empirical historical work on musical activity in ninetenth- century southern England, Gamon divides qualitatively various forms and sources of evidence into two categories and examines their usage and limitation. The first is direct evidence, which includes artefacts of musical activities and other materials produced by the participating musicians. Although the value of evidence in this category is the direct relation to a researched subject, it is important to note whether a single piece of evidence is typical and to what extent it can be generalised to reflect the view of the whole industry. As we are not likely to recover al the necesary information from direct evidence, whose validity may need further asesing, the second category, indirect evidence, should then be employed to examine the representativenes of direct evidence and as a supplementary way to gain more understanding of the subject under investigation. Indirect evidence can be usualy found in circulating printed mater such as newspapers, magazines and literary works produced by journalists, critics or writers at the time in question, and in collections and works of antiquarian collectors and informed amateurs. The problem of this type of evidence is the subjectivity of producers. As journalists, critics and writers would impose their own categories of perception on what they observe and the situation could be altered due to their presence, what is observed may not be the norm and therefore what is writen down and published may not be representative. The collectors and amateurs are also highly selective in what they record and preserve. Only what they regarded as genuine items and valuable information, judged by the criteria they have evolved, wil be taken down. To overcome these dificulties, one Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 5 should ‘asembly a quantity of diverse material relating to an observed phenomenon and sift out the elements most or al of the acounts posses.’ 20 The historical study of the Shanghai popular music industry must draw on a wide range of direct and indirect evidence so that facts and figures of specific events or common phenomena can be crosschecked. Historical materials to be investigated, acording to their source, fal into four groups, which are items released by record companies, official reports or annals isued by governmental authorities, printed mater and films circulated in Shanghai and narative acounts and evidence collected from living participants of the industry. The uses of these four groups of materials and major problems that wil be confronted in dealing them with are discussed below. The materials isued by record companies, including internal busines documents, posters, catalogues, sheet music and gramophone records and sleves, are good sources of direct evidence of activities in the industry. These primary sources reveal a range of historical facts such as the structure of record companies, the decision-making routine and busines proces, publication information and how acts were produced and promoted. Nevertheles, the original thre major record companies in old Shanghai no longer exist and neither their internal documents nor text material released to the public then were preserved properly or transfered to any institution. 21 Most of these items are now individual collections scatered around the world. As private collectors usualy only sek and acquire what they are interested in and institutions only curate what they are donated or entrusted to, it is unlikely to find a single collection of primary source documents which cover chronologicaly the whole period in question or al types of printed and published mater circulated at a specific time. Therefore, any material retrieved may only reveal partial details of a single event but not reflect a full view or a trend over a long period. Moreover, some Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 56 primary sources are not clearly dated. For example, a gramophone record released in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai usualy bears no date. The publication year was never printed on the record label or sleve nor was it given on a poster or in a catalogue. It causes problems when a date is needed to ases, for instance, when a specific commercial practice was introduced or the impacts of an incidental event over the ensuing years. Oficial documents to be consulted consist of official statistics and census, tax and tarif files, court procedings, reports from regulatory institutions and government annual reports, by which socio-economic backgrounds such as the demographic structure, cost of living, dispensable household income, purchasing power, commercial law, publication regulations and government atitudes towards popular song, can be beter understood. Before tracking down legal records and official reports of demographic and commercial information, it is esential to understand by whom and how they were generated. The city of Shanghai was governed by thre separate and distinct municipal entities, the International Setlement, the French Concesion and the City Government of Greater Shanghai. As diferent governing entities had diferent political or economic concerns, it is possible that data were gathered and procesed for diferent political reasons and diferent perceived policy relevance. The thre administrations in Shanghai might have varied political atitudes towards a specific subject and therefore only revealed in their publications what was relevant for their own benefit and probably omited or even distorted what was disadvantageous against their positions. It may be particularly problematic when it comes to transnational isues such as conflicts betwen Chinese and other nationalities, and the situation can be even more intractable after late 1941 when the Japanese began to take over the whole of Shanghai. Above al, apart from those Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 57 which are held in archives and libraries in Shanghai, official documents of the thre administrations may nowadays be scatered over those countries which once had setlements in Shanghai, or have long been lost during the turbulence of war and regime transitions. Printed mater circulated in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai reveals many interesting facets of the industry. Songbooks are important sources of tunes and lyrics when historical recordings of specific songs are not available. Moreover, the song selection in a songbook does not merely reflect the editor’s personal preference but may also imply what were popular among the audience at the time. Whereas details of live performances, performing and consuming practices and atitudes of performers and customers in various entertainment venues can be found in setings and dialogue in novels or other contemporary literature, information on the particulars of the venues together with customer guidelines are provided in tourist guidebooks. In periodicals and newspapers, one can discover anecdotes and life acounts of artists, the audience’s listening habits and information about commercial activities of record companies, government policies and social criticisms on popular music. In addition to those produced during the 1930s and 1940s, recently released biographies and memoirs may disclose more inside stories which have never been reported in the past. Although these printed materials undoubtedly contain details of participant and busines proceses they were involved in pertinent to the reconstruction of the platform, as not al materials were writen by wel cited writers or released by established institutions such as a leading daily newspaper or reputed publisher, it may sometimes be dificult to ases the credibility of their contents. As for films, since scren songs were often used as a publicity stunt to promote a film and the commercial succes of a film in turn gave a publicity boost to its obligatory songs, Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 58 investigating how songs fited into the context of a film and how many of the songs used in a film were released by a record company helps in understanding the cooperation betwen film and record companies. It also sheds light on the audience’s musical preference on the silver scren. Moreover, as with literature, setings and dialogue in films can provide clues to how popular songs were performed and consumed as wel as how the audience interacted with artists at various venues. Nevertheles, sometimes it is problematic to trace a song back to the film for which it was originaly writen, because while the scren song is so atractive that it is stil known to the public today, the film has long been forgotten so the song in question is not even remembered as a scren song. In addition, the most chalenging task is searching for films. Unlike gramophone records, which can be easily played and thus usualy collected by more people, film rels are not popular collectibles. Although some early films produced in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai have recently been re- released on VCD or DVD, it is known that scenes were cut out either due to technical or political isues or simply because the surviving rels are not intact. Idealy, at least one member out of each position in the hypothetical flowchart of the industry should be included on the list of interviewes so that not only can information gleaned from documentary sources be crosschecked but also its incompletenes can be compensated for. Because some members such as composers and managers of a record company are no longer alive and other members such as Filipino or Russian musicians can no longer be reached, the list of interviewes certainly can never be satisfactory. The snowbal sampling technique is to be employed to aces informants. Interviewes wil be approached through two primary contacts: Chen Gang, a profesor from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and the elder son of Chen Gexin (the composer of ‘Rose, Rose, I Love You’), and Le Leng Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 59 Kok, a Singaporean gramophone record collector. Fans, instrumentalists, singers and a former employee of EMI were interviewed individualy. As Shanghai popular song was once criticised as decadent and pornographic, elderly people usualy fel reluctant to talk about isues regarding Shanghai pop and only after properly introduced and gaining their trust can one have a dialogue with them. 2 Although sample members are not selected from a sampling frame but from among the acquaintances of existing contacts and thus may be subject to some biases, in such a historical study in which informants are dificult to reach, it is through snowbal sampling that industry details can be gathered from more surviving participants. Above al, it is more important to consider how to compare and combine al the comments and recollections of their involvement in the industry from diferent informants rather than to pursue al living members. The political environment, the development of technologies and the spread and preservation of these popular songs vary in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other overseas Chinese communities. This influences the way in which people remember and recount the events they have experienced and the phenomena observed. As a result, informants from diferent political regions may have diferent views toward a similar subject. Moreover, there wil possibly be contradictions in the comments on the same event made by diferent informants who were in diferent positions of the industry. For example, since audience interpretation of media content is often highly variable and unpredictable, based on their own perception fans might asociate songs with a social phenomenon or a political change which artists and producers did not intend to asociate with. The four groups of historical materials are al valuable raw materials for the work of reconstruction, yet only those which have been sifted through the mesh of contextual sense can be used to lay the foundation and restore the whole platform. Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 60 Every piece of evidence from the past, in whatever form, must be interpreted with a thorough understanding of the conditions in which they were generated, that is, to place the texts ‘in their original context in order to gain a beter of grasp of their omisions, biases and peculiarities’. 23 As Gamon puts, ‘historical work on popular music requires carefully analysis, a detailed knowledge of context and a degre of sympathy and imagination’, the work of reconstructing a historical view of the Shanghai popular music industry needs an image borne in mind – Shanghai’s prosperity and, at the same time, its political turbulence. 24 II. Level two: analysis of the products Just as most contemporary popular music takes the form of song, so the musical products manufactured by the Shanghai popular music industry reached the audience in the form of song through various cariers: gramophone records, songs broadcast over radio waves, songs crooned in sound films, songs performed in entertainment venues and songs printed on sheets or in books. When a song has just been writen out in the supply side of the industry, it is a piece of musical work consisting only of the melody (a sequence of musical phrases, a tune) and lyrics (a set of organised words, verses). However, when reaching the demand side, it is usualy a performance with aural efects generated by human voices and instrumental sounds or moreover, together with visual efects, atmosphere and interactions betwen performers and the audience if such a performance is caried out live in front of the audience. The creation of a popular song can be viewed as a proces in which the primitive musical conception is transformed to audio-visual and other efects (Fig.3). Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 61 Fig.3 Composition-to-performance proces of song creation The birth of a song begins at the work of composition. A composer creates a line of melody to which a lyricist compiles a group of words to fit or vice versa. 25 In the modern music industry popular song is often criticised as formulaic, full of clichés. We do sometimes experience in some latest hit songs similarities in melodic paterns or word usages to one another or to those we have heard somewhere else before. However, it is the melody and lyrics, whatever stereotypical tune or hackneyed verbiage, that form the core of the performance of a song. It cannot be denied that some songs are so enchanting that the tunes or the words imprint on our mind imediately after we hear them and therefore we cannot help ourselves humming or singing repeatedly after picking up them. Some of them ay become so- caled ‘evergrens’ and wil be pased through decades, interpreted again and again by several singers acompanied by diferent combinations of instruments with various arangements. Nevertheles, the original melodies and lyrics, the underlying bases of those songs, remain unchanged. The craft of songwriting, that is, the skil of carving out melodies and lyrics, certainly plays an important role at the very beginning of the proces. 26 Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 62 In addition to the exquisite craftsmanship of writing a melody and lyrics, it is the art of arangement and the recording sesion that makes a popular song be presented vividly in a certain style and become something can be felt and appreciated. The work of arangement organises the order and repetition of verses and the chorus and harmonies and adds parts for instrumental acompaniments. In a recording sesion, the musical arangement is turned into audible music, wel-organised human voices and instrumental sounds, and stored. Antoine Hennion regards a song before the arangement as nothing and argues that the creation of a song ‘occurs not realy at the moment of its composition but far more at the moment of orchestration, recording and sound mixing’. 27 This is quite comprehensible because the arangement of a song tends to influence its style and gives the final product a particular character, which may not have been devised by the songwriter at the stage of composition. Furthermore, however a song has been aranged, its final image wil not be decided until the singer sings it and the instrumentalists play it during the recording sesion, where these artists not only follow the musical notations and the instruction of the producer but also interpret and perform the song with their own imaginations and capacities. 28 Even if the singer of a song is also its writer, producer or the acompanying instrumentalist, only when the musical work is performed can his or her musical idea be put into practice, registered by ears and perceived by mind. When a song has been performed by a singer in collaboration with instrumentalists and backing vocalists or harmony singers, recorded by technicians using proper studio technology and procesed with sound engineers’ skil in post- production editing, it becomes a performance. It can be wel said that while we are listening to a recorded song, we are listening both to the song, i.e. the tune and words contrived by the creator, and to its performance, i.e. the rendition of this piece by a Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 63 group of participants in a musical event taking place in the past. In terms of communication, artists who perform a piece of musical work function as a medium, a channel through which the writer’s musical ideas are transmited to audiences but this medium also modifies the original creation with its own wil in the transmision proces. From the perspective of performance art, on the one hand, artists are objectified as the medium of the art, whose qualities of being existent are determined by the work, and on the other, they subjectify themselves as the site of the work, deciding what happens in the whole event. 29 On the occasion of playing a record or tuning the dial on a radio, the singer’s voice we hear is in fact not only a carier of sounds and words but also the singer’s own character. When the performance is delivered in front of the audience, it even involves the interplay betwen both sides and is no longer unidirectional audio-visual efects. Ergo, the popular song we consume is a performance. Taking it as a human body, its skeleton is formed by the melody and lyrics at the stage of composition, then its flesh added after the work of arangement and finaly its soul gained when performed in the recording sesion or on other occasions of performance. The composition-to-performance view explicates notionaly how a popular song is moulded step by step from a rudimentary tune and words to a mature work of performance, yet in practice the whole proces does not necesarily take place in a specific order and may change from genre to genre. In some genres, the entire image of a song, its audio-visual presentation in performance, may be contemplated at the beginning of creation and is an indivisible whole. Taking rock music as an example, many individual artists or groups, who are actualy singer-songwriters and thus create original works and provide the sole instrumental acompaniment for themselves, would usualy set out to compose with the instruments they play in the performance at Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 64 hand and arange al performing details at the same time, although further change may be made in the future. In other genres, the work of arangement is undertaken after the esential musical idea, the lyrics and melody, is implemented. For example, in the field of country music, a songwriter’s creation is first acepted by a publishing firm and then made into a demonstration tape, in which the song is carefuly aranged to appeal to a potential producer and artist. 30 After the song is chosen for a recording singer by a producer, it wil be rearanged by other specialists in ways which best fit the singer’s established image. That is to say, the arangement and required efects are adaptable to and dependent on the performer’s individual style. The creation of Shanghai popular song is similar to that of country music. Although there was certainly no such thing as the so-caled ‘demo’ in the 1930s and 1940s, songs were surely writen in composers and lyricists’ own style and orchestrated by arangers at a later stage for recording. Based on the composition-to- performance view of song creation, the analysis of products manufactured by the Shanghai pop industry should cover al the aspects of a song, its skeleton, flesh and soul. Hence, idealy, what should be examined in the product analysis includes not only the melody, lyrics and acompaniment but also the human voice, instrumental sound and al audio-visual efects presented in performance. That said, for the purpose of understanding a pop industry in the past whose sole extant products are historical recordings, it would be impracticable to cover in the product analysis al efects in performance and how a musical work is interpreted in performance. Although most people in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai enjoyed recorded performances conveyed through gramophone horns or cinema loudspeakers, they also listened to live performances delivered over the airwaves. Those who aforded merymaking at a cabaret or dancehal even had opportunities to watch singers reinterpreting the hits of Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 65 other artists or probably rendering their own recorded works in a diferent expresive manner. If every performance can be considered unique and unrepeatable because it is impossible on another occasion to reproduce the exact same environment in which a performance has been caried out, then renditions of the same song in diferent spatial and temporal contexts can never be the same. In other words, only when a performance is pristinely recorded can the same rendition of a song be heard again. However, provided ‘listening’ itself can also be treated as part of a performance, when the audience listen to the same recorded song, on radio, record, or in a film, they are also participating in a one-and-only performance. Therefore, in the case of Shanghai popular song, an investigation into al aspects of performance sems to be unfeasible. Since in a surviving historical recording the melody, lyrics, arangement, singer’s voice and instrumental sounds of a Shanghai popular song has been unalterably stored no mater on what occasion it is played back, considering the availability of materials to be examined, it is proposed to narow down the scope of the product analysis to what can observed in historical recordings. 31 In early discussions of popular music, sociologists used to focus on words, investigating lyrical contents and how they are related to general social conditions, whereas musicologists tended to pay much of their atention to music itself, analysing the structure and constituent elements of musical texts through notated scores. Scholars from both fields have their particular strengths in dealing with diferent facets of popular music. However, as both lyrics and music (the melody and acompaniment) are the ingredients of a musical product, it would be inadequate to emphasise one at the expense of the other. Therefore both lyrical and musical parts should be treated with equal significance in product analysis. Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 6 From the lyrical side, the meaning of words is the easiest part of a popular song to be read by its listeners though they usualy understand only the sheer verbal meaning of lines in their own imaginations. This can be sen in most if not al cases of officialy banned songs. The authorities of censorship in a country would ban a song if anything in the lyrics is considered unaceptable, i.e. against the regime or social mores or harmful to the wel-being and stability of society. 32 Once a song is banned due to its lyrical content, the performance of its melody is also inevitably forbidden because it is the words that make the tune significant. The musical features of popular song may function as those of wordles clasical music, which usualy suggests emotive and narative connotation, yet, as popular song depends on the use of language, acording to Rick Altman, ‘titles and lyrics so dominate public evaluation of a popular song’s emotive and narative content that a song rarely signifies separately from its linguistic content’. 3 From this point of view, it can be said that it is because the words are remembered that the song is remembered. 34 However, from the musical side, it is also empiricaly true that the words of a song are memorised because the melody is imprinted on mind. Words without music would be dificult to remembered because it takes much les efort to learn the lyrics of a song by heart by singing them out for several times in a relaxed manner than just reading aloud. We are more wiling to sing than to learn writen words by rote. This may explain why schoolchildren can learn discipline, proper behaviour and morality more efectively through singing than read aloud printed text. Music also helps to keep things in mind and to recal them easily, for it impreses us with more intensity. We can recognise a song, perhaps singing along with it imediately, when it reaches us only with the melody, but we may find it dificult to identify a lyric when it comes as a printed text without any hint of its tune. 35 We are stil able to keep humming the Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 67 tune of a song to ourselves if several lines of the lyrics cannot be remembered, but it is never the case that we begin to recite the words because the melody is forgotten. What is more, on the musical part of popular song, in addition to the tune itself, the acompaniment plays a role which does not only support and make the melody brighter but also has its own ilumination and offers a clue to the melody. 36 From this point of view, it can be argued as wel that it is because the music is remembered that the song is remembered. Despite the fact that in the performing proces a song is an integrated whole in which words and music are bound together, when it comes to ‘song analysis’, it is esential to deconstruct a song into its basic components. In other words, even though pleasure of popular song can by no means be derived from separated lines of words, notated pitches and rhythms or acompanying instrumental parts, in order to set out the analysis, these components have to be separated from one another based upon their theoretical juxtaposition. In exploring approaches for song analysis, scholars working on the ninetenth-century German art song, Lied, have developed a variety of theories and practices which treat the relation betwen words and music in several ways and may be summarised into four diferent perspectives. 37 From the first one, song is regarded as a musical structure by which words are transformed into a musical form and thus disappear as words. From the second, there is an ireducible relationship betwen words and music and both of them coexist without losing their individual esences. The third point of view places words and music in a hierarchical structure where ‘words lie at the top to provide aces to meaning, while the music lies at the base to support the signification of text’. The fourth, in an eclectic way, explains song as including thre independent but overlapping areas, words, music and song itself. Words and music are considered an input of song but retain a degre of Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 68 autonomy to be viewed outside the song in their own right, whereas song exists under the influence of words and music but holds its ultimate identity not to be limited in the frame of words or music. However the connection betwen music and words is considered, it cannot help being somewhat arbitrary, but it also serves as a basis for analysis. In product analysis of the Shanghai pop industry, taking the second of the abovementioned four perspectives together with the proposed composition-to- performance view of song creation, it is asumed that while lyrics and music elements of a song fuse naturaly in performance, al of them can be identified separately for further investigation. In historical recordings, the lyrical part of a Shanghai popular song is the melodised words uttered by the singer and the musical part includes the tune delivered through the singing voice and the instrumental acompaniment which may contain a duplicated or modified vocal line, an independent melody and other harmonic, non-harmonic and rhythmic parts. Even though apart from recordings there are stil other existing materials such as sheet music or songbooks available for product analysis, these materials only provide lyrics and tunes. Unlike in the West, where there are usualy piano-vocal scores prepared for the sheet music market and thus a hint of chord progresions for acompanying a song set either by the songwriter or aranger can be found, in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai there was only the melodic line of a song writen in the simplified notation on a sheet without the piano acompaniment or any other harmonic setings. Therefore, as proposed earlier, the analysis wil basicaly focus on historical recordings. Based on the concepts of the ‘industry chain’, ‘decision chain’ and ‘collective creation’, together with the dynamic interaction of the abovementioned thre Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 69 cornerstones, a working model is proposed. In this model, the popular industry is viewed as a platform on which musical products were produced, sold and consumed through several busines proceses. To understand Shanghai pop, the first level of work is to reconstruct the platform, sifting through existing historical materials to discover the details of activities the participants are involved in, artistic or technical expertise they had, interaction and communication among them, and the social context in which the industry platform is erected. The second level is to analyse the products manufactured and traded on this platform by breaking down performances stored in historical recordings into recognisable components and examining the features of them. Before presenting the reconstructed platform and the product analysis in the ensuing chapters, the next chapter wil introduce the development and social background of Shanghai, where the pop industry is located. Endnotes 1 To name two academic examples: Alen Forte, The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era, 1924-1950 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Pres, 1995), a study which employs modern analytical procedures to explore the large repertoire of beautiful love songs writen during the heyday of American musical theatre, big band, and Tin Pan Aley; Lewis A. Erenberg, Swingin’ the Dream: Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Pres, 1999), a book which provides valuable historical naratives of the audience response and their interaction with musicians in the swing era. Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 70 2 Se Pekka Gronow, ‘The record industry comes to the Orient’, Ethnomusicology, 25:2 (1981), p. 251. Gronow’s pioneering work on the earlier years of the record industry provides precious and summarised information of the expansion of major record companies and their activities in Asia and North Africa. For more details of the busines of these companies in other regions, se also ‘The record industry: the growth of a mas medium’, Popular Music, 3 (1983), pp. 53-75. 3 Simon Frith, ‘The popular music industry’ in Simon Frith, Wil Straw and John Stre (eds), Pop and Rock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 2001), p. 26. 4 Ibid., p. 35. 5 Keith Negus, Popular Music in Theory: an Introduction (Oxford: Polity Pres, 196), p. 36. 6 Se Charles Ham, Music in the New World (London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1983), pp. 371-2. For another acount of how the utilisation of the microphone and amplifier in radio broadcast influenced song styles, se also Hughson F. Mooney, ‘Songs, singers and society, 1890-1954’, American Quarterly, 60:3 (1954), pp. 228-9. 7 For more details about the asociation betwen technology developments and the emergence of rock music, se Simon Frith, ‘The industrialization of popular music’, in James Lull (ed.), Popular Music and Communication, 2nd edn (London: Sage Publication, 1992), pp. 58-62. Se also Richard A. Peterson, ‘Why 1955? Explaining the advent of rock music’, Popular Music, 9:1 (1990), pp. 100-102. 8 Frith, ‘The industrialization of popular music’, p. 70. 9 Notes taken from a lecture by Simon Frith at the University of Stirling, 11 March 2003. Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 71 10 Peter Manuel indicates that the heavy reliance on standardised formulae is one of the undeniable features of Western popular music which draws biter contempt from scholars like Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Se Peter Manuel, Popular Music of Non-Western World: An Introduction Survey (Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 1988), p. 10. 1 Se Simon Frith, Performing Rites: on the Value of Popular Music (Cambridge, Mas.: Harvard University Pres, 1996), pp. 84-5. 12 For a brief history of the acquisitions, mergers and joint-ventures among major record companies and more details of the various investments in diferent areas made by these transnational corporations, se Keith Negus, Producing Pop: Culture and Conflict in the Popular Music Industry (London: Arnold, 1992), pp. 1-4. Se also Gronow, ‘The record industry comes to the Orient’, pp. 254-270. 13 Se Negus, Producing Pop, p. 5. 14 Se, Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightment, trans. John Cumming (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1998), p. 163. For a concise guide and criticism on Adorno’s theory on popular music, se Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music (London: Open University Pres, 1990), ch. 2. 15 Se Paul M. Hirsch, ‘Procesing fads and fashions: an organization-set analysis of culture industry systems’, American Journal of Sociology, 77:4 (1972), pp. 639-59. 16 For more details of each link in the decision chain, se John Ryan and Richard Peterson, ‘The product image: the fate of creativity in country music songwriting’, in James S. Etema and D. Charles Whitney (eds), Individuals in Mass Media Organizations: Creativity and Constraint (London: Sage Publication, 1982), p. 12-21. Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 72 17 Se Negus, Popular Music in Theory (Oxford: Polity Pres, 1996), p. 59. 18 Se Jean-Piere Vignolle, ‘Mixing genres and reaching the public: the production of popular music’, Social Science Information, 19:1 (1980), pp. 87-88, 101. 19 Vic Gamon, ‘Problems of method in the historical studies of popular music’, in David Horn and Philip Tagg (eds), Popular Music perspectives (Göteberg and London: IASPM, 1982), p. 16. 20 Ibid., p. 18. 21 EMI (China) ceased operation in 1949 and its internal documents were then either discarded or confiscated by the Chinese Communist. The Japanese controlled RCA- Victor (China) was taken over by the Nationalist Party after the Sino-Japanese War in 1945, but the busines never started again. Great China was captured by the Chinese Communist when Shanghai was ‘liberated’ in 1949. It is known that al the facilities of these thre majors were realocated for other uses and a ‘People’s Record Factory’ (Remin changpian chang) was formed later under the instruction of the new regime, but the whereabouts of these companies’ internal documents remain unknown. 2 Before receiving contact details of informants from Chen and Le, eforts were made at thte early stage of fieldwork to approach elderly people who gather on wekday afternoons to listen to and dance to ‘Shanghai oldies’ in a community hal located in the former Frech Concesion in Shanghai. Although it is believed that they used to be fans of Shanghai popular song and might be able to offer precious information, when approached, they appeared to be suspicious of the motive of such a study about ‘decadent and pornographic’ music and claimed that they knew nothing about Shanghai pop. Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 73 23 Deacon, David, Michael Pickering, Peter Golding and Graham Murdock, Researching Communications (London: Arnold, 1999), p. 30. 24 Gamon, ‘Problems of method in the historical studies of popular music’, p. 29. 25 Whichever comes first, as Vignolle puts, ‘at al events, much toing-and-froing is needed for a satisfactory result to be achieved at the prosodic level.’ Se Vignolle, ‘Mixing genres and reaching the public’, p. 88. 26 It is not dificult to find a book titled such as ‘How to Write a Hit Song’ which explains, as the author would claim, everything would-be songwriters have to know at the stage of composition, and usualy advises them to let arangers and producers do the rest once their work is done. Obviously, al they have to know is the craft of writing a tune and words. 27 Antoine Hennion, ‘The production of succes: an anti-musicology of the pop song’, Popular Music, 3 (1983), p. 163. 28 It is particularly true during the days, before the arival of the technology of multi- track recording and magnetic tape, when a singer had to sing synchronicaly to the acompaniment of a musical band during a recording sesion. It would not be uncommon if any of them did not follow exactly the musical notations but rather interpreted the song in a more extemporaneous manner. Modification of the original arangement and improvisation were not only created by the singer’s or bandsmen’s own talents but also, undoubtedly, inspired by everyone’s reaction during the sesion. 29 Se Frith, Performing Rites, pp. 204-5. Frith’s argument ‘is not just that in listening to popular music we are listening to a performance, but, further, that Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 74 “listening” itself is a performance’. For a beter understanding of this view on how pop performance works, se ibid. pp. 203-25. 30 Se Ryan and Peterson, ‘The product image’, p. 15. 31 Certainly the possibility of altering the content of a historical recording with the aid of modern digital recording technology is not considered here. 32 A case in point is the notable and controversial Shanghai popular song ‘When wil the gentleman come back again’ (Heri jun zailai), which was banned by the Nationalist Party, the Communists and the Japanese military in the 1940s. 3 Rick Altman, ‘Cinema and popular song: the lost tradition’, in Pamela Robertson Wojcik and Arthur Knight (eds), Soundtrack Available: Esays on Film and Popular Music (Durham and London: Duke University Pres, 2001), p. 23. In this article on film usic, Altman considers ‘clasical’ music ‘wordles’ because art song and opera, which obvious have words, are not regularly used in film usic. 34 Maurice Halbwachs argues that the musical memory of those who have no knowledge of musical notation is always atached to metamusical experience; the melody is remembered because the words are remembered. Se Alfred Schutz, ‘Making music together: a study in social relationship’, in Arvid Broderson (ed.), Collective Papers I: Studies in Social Theory (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), p. 164. 35 Se Frith, Performing Rites, p. 160. Frith gives an example of the TV pop quiz show in which panelists usualy cannot identify a lyric that winds along the bottom of the scren but they can imediately recal it with the help of a couple of notes of the music. Chapter Two Model for Shanghai Pop 75 36 In Hennion’s opinion, when one whistles the melody of a popular song, though unconscious, it is in fact the acompaniment that ‘gives intensity to the recollection of the melody’. Se Hennion, ‘The production of succes’, p. 171. 37 These perspectives are drawn from four competing explanatory models for the analysis of Lied summarised by Kofi Agawu from other scholars’ previous studies. For more details of these models and comments on the problems of their application, se Kofi Agawu ‘Theory and practice in the analysis of the ninetenth-century lied’, Music Analysis, 11:1 (1992) pp. 5-8. 76 Chapter Thre The Society Although originaly a muddy wetland outside the waled old Chinese town, this area turned into the core of an international metropolis and the most important city in China by the twentieth century. This area was a place where old China encountered Western culture and innovations, a place where Chinese people adapted themselves to Western lifestyle while maintained their long-standing traditions, and a place where traditional performing arts were repackaged and new forms of entertainment arose. It is Shanghai, the place where Chinese popular music in modern times started. Before exploring the Shanghai popular music industry in the 1930s and 1940s, the platform on which musical products, Shanghai popular songs, were manufactured and circulated, it is esential to understand the society where the platform was built. This chapter introduces the backdrop against which modern Chinese popular music was created. I. The start of modern Shanghai Despite its status as the largest in China and one of the six biggest cities in the world at the beginning of the twentieth century, Shanghai was smal in the sense of the actual area of its urban district. By the end of the Republican era in 1949, the city was only 31.8 square miles, including the former foreign concesions which covered an area of only 13 square miles. It was in this area, originaly meant to be a smal piece of land reserved for Westerners but unexpectedly opened for Chinese and Chapter Three The Society 7 expanded several times, that two cultures confronted and intermingled, providing a production base for Shanghai popular song. The pre-treaty-port Shanghai had been long regarded as a fishing vilage, as described in a guidebook writen for foreigners and published in 1934, ‘litle more than an anchorage for junks, with a few vilages scatered along the low, muddy banks of the river’. 1 In fact Shanghai had already atained the status of a waled town in 1554. The waled town became a third-clas county in the early ninetenth century and enjoyed commercial prosperity, due to the thriving cotton trade in the Qing period. What the guidebook depicted, before the International Setlement and the French Concesion were founded in the mid- ninetenth century, is actualy the scene in the northern outskirts of the county town, an area with a rural landscape of rice and cotton fields, uncultivated wetland and meandering waterways. The countryside that later on developed into the metropolitan district of Shanghai is exactly where modern Shanghai arose. Westerners recognised the potential of Shanghai as early as the 1830s. In 1832, the supercargo Hugh Hamilton Lindsay sailed up the coast of China from Macao, on a commercial mision entrusted by the British East India Company to investigate the possibility of opening trade in the north. After being refused entry to Xiamen (Amoy), Fuzhou and Ningbo in succesion, he was given a hearing by the Chinese local authority in Shanghai. This first recorded atempt by Westerners to open Shanghai to foreign trade was fruitles as the Chinese authorities ruled that foreign trade should be confined to Guangzhou (Canton). However, Lindsay noticed the favourable geographic location of the city and indicated in his report to the company that Shanghai had great possibilities as a commercial centre. 2 He would probably have never anticipated that Shanghai, together with the thre cities to which he was denied aces, would be opened due to a military engagement ten years later. Chapter Three The Society 78 In May 1839, the Chinese authorities in Canton confiscated and destroyed large quantities of opium from British warehouses, which British merchants were importing ilegaly from India to be sold to Chinese dealers. This incident and other ensuing conflicts finaly led to the First Opium War (1840-42) betwen China and Britain. After sporadic land and naval batles, the war ended in complete victory for Britain and The Treaty of Nanjing was signed on board a British warship on 29 August 1842, under which Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai were to be open to foreign trade. Thus, these five cities became the so-caled ‘treaty ports’. On 8 October 1843, the Supplementary Treaty was signed in Humen (Bogue), which specified terms and detailed how the British could move in. Acording to the Supplement, the local Chinese authority in acord with the British consul in each treaty port should designate a specific area where the British could reside and a limited zone within which foreigners could travel. 3 In Shanghai, folowing the formal announcement of the opening of Shanghai to foreign trade made by George Balfour, the first British consul in Shanghai, on 14 November 1843, the British started to sek a suitable site for dwelings and storehouses. Finaly, the Land Regulations (Dipi zhangcheng) was signed by the Shanghai daotai (‘circuit intendant’) Gong Mujiu and Balfour in 1845, as an agrement which provided a basis for the legal status of the foreign setlement in Shanghai. Under this agrement, although foreigners were not alowed to purchase land in law, technicaly they could negotiate permanent leases with Chinese landowners within the designated area of 138 acres in the northern suburb outside the county town, stretching from the Bund in the east to Barier Road in the west, and from the Yanjingbang Crek in the south to Lijiachang (at the confluence of the Huangpu River and the Suzhou Crek) in the north. Although it was an area reserved Chapter Three The Society 79 for the British, in the spirit of fre trade, al nationalities and their consuls were welcome to the setlement to develop their busines. Subsequent to the British action, the United States and France also signed treaties with China on 3 July and 24 October 1844 respectively and acquired the same right of trade in treaty ports. In Shanghai, after the creation of the British Setlement came the formation of the French Concesion and the American Setlement. On 6 April 1849, the Shanghai daotai Lin Gui and the first French consul in Shanghai, Louis Montigny, reached an agrement that the area of 164 acres betwen the Chinese city and the British Setlement would be alocated for the French. Unlike the British and the French setlements, rather than an officialy designated area, the original American Setlement was formed based on the American Episcopal Church Mision established in Hongkou, a district north to the Suzhou Crek, under the direction of Bishop Wiliam J. Boone in 1848. It was not until February 1854 that the American national flag was raised in the district and not until June 1863 was the boundary of the Setlement, which enclosed an area of 1,309 acres, officialy defined by the Shanghgai daotai Huang Fang and the American consul George Frederick Seward. Thre months later, a new community of interest, the International Setlement, was formed resulting from the merger of the British and American Setlements on 21 September 1863. Although a proposal was once drawn up that the French Concesion and the International Setlement should be united, it was never realised because the French insisted on the maintenance of a separate concesion in Shanghai. Thus, foreigners started constructing their own town and set up administrative institutions in Shanghai within the boundaries of the alocated area, which expanded several times and finaly reached a total of 13 square miles in 1914, and has remained unchanged ever since. In July 1854 foreign residents held a public meting to amend Chapter Three The Society 80 the Land Regulations and choose the first elected Municipal Council. In September 1869, the revised regulations were formaly approved by the Chinese government in concert with foreign envoys in Beijing and became the legal basis for the organisation of an administrative government in the International Setlement – Shanghai Municipal Council. Under the revised regulations, ratepayers in the setlement elected councilors to form the municipal council and held the ratepayers’ meting annualy to approve the report of the council and pas the budget. Although officialy the French Concesion was governed by a separate French Municipal Council (Conseil d’Administration Municipale de la Concesion Française de Changhai), established in May 1862, and not subjected to the Land Regulations, in practice the administration of the concesion was similar to that of the International Setlement, except that the French Consul General stil held the power of veto over the Council’s decisions. These two separate municipal entities governed the core of the modern Shanghai city until the setlement was abolished in 1943. As the original Land Regulations prohibited Chinese people from renting or purchasing property within the boundaries of foreign setlements, from 1845 on Chinese residents gradualy left the area reserved for foreigners. Except as domestic servants or in service for trades, Chinese were generaly excluded in foreign setlements and therefore the area became almost segregated. However, two revolts against the Chinese Qing dynasty unexpectedly stered the Chinese back to the foreign areas, which led to the official abandonment of the segregation by the British consul and made way for the formation of a Sino-foreign city. The uprising on 7 September 1853 organised by the Fujian-based secret society Smal Swords (Xiaodaohui) started to drive the first surge of refugees into foreign setlements. As the rebels seized the county town of Shanghai and continued Chapter Three The Society 81 to atack other county towns nearby, throwing Shanghai and its vicinity in turmoil for seventen months, Chinese people from the county town of Shanghai and those from neighbouring occupied towns flooded into foreign setlements, camping along the Bund or staying in wooden boats off quays. 4 Consequently, some foreigners started their busines to build dwelings for the refugees. Persuaded by the majority of the foreign merchants who were trying to make capital out of the chaotic circumstances, the British consul Rutherford Alock, though concerned about the security of the foreign community, agred to abolish residential segregation. The decision was adopted into the Land Regulations and pased by the public meting in 1854. Following this new policy towards refugees there came a boom in the busines of building and renting houses to Chinese people. By 1860, most of the 8,740 houses in the British setlement were owned by the British and Americans but occupied by Chinese residents. 5 The other driving force that caused population mobility into the foreign areas in Shanghai was the fiften-year long Taiping Rebelion led by Hong Xiuquan. Beginning in the southern province Guangxi in 1850 and spreading throughout most of the central and lower Yangtze region, the insurgents occupied Nanjing in March 1853 and established their capital there until it was crushed in 1864. 6 While the capture of Nanjing had already let loose crowds of people moving from the Jiangnan region to Shanghai, Taiping’s several atacks on the county town and foreign setlements during 1860 to 1862 caused more to pour into the foreign areas. By the end of the rebelion, over 110,000 Chinese people had moved into the foreign setlements in Shanghai. 7 Oficialy approved to move in, the Chinese population in the International Setlement and the French Concesion kept growing and finaly far exceded the number of foreign residents, yet Chinese ratepayers had no voice at either of the Chapter Three The Society 82 ratepayers’ metings, nor could they be elected as representatives in the governing councils. This political inequality did not change until the second half of the 1920s when two Chinese Ratepayers’ Asociations were formed in the respective foreign setlements and Chinese members elected by the ratepayer’s asociations were added to their respective municipal councils. It was first in the French Concesion that two Chinese representatives were added to its municipal council in 1926 and thre more the next year, which then totaled five Chinese out of a total membership of seventen. Along the same path, in the International Setlement thre Chinese members joined the Shanghai Municipal Council in 1928 and the Chinese membership was increased to five out of a total of fourten in 1930. 8 Up until the end of 1941, foreign concesions in Shanghai were mainly under Western control; Chinese councilors had no power or influence over important isues, such as finance, public utilities or rate asesment. In January 1942, barely a month after the atack on Pearl Harbor, Japan seized and reorganised the Shanghai Municipal Council by appointing K. Ogazaki, an official from the Japanese Embasy, as the chairman. Except two obviously non- Anglo-American European councilors, A. Glathe and R. Von der Crone, the rest of the members were either Japanese or ‘traitors to the Chinese nation-race’ (hanjian). In the French Concesion, although the governing organisation remained intact, the French Municipal Council lost its autonomy and virtualy operated on the instructions of the Japanese. At this stage, both municipal councils existed in name only. In 1943, forced by Japan, on 31 July France returned the French Concesion to the Chinese government – the Japanese-controlled puppet Wang Jingwei regime. The executive power over the International Setlement and the ownership of public facilities and other asets in the setlement were also transfered to the Chinese government on 1 Chapter Three The Society 83 August. Hence, the Japanese military and the Wang’s regime ruled the whole of Shanghai until the end of the Sino-Japanese War in August 1945. Four years after it was returned to the Chinese National Government, Shanghai was ‘liberated’ by the Chinese Communist in May 1949. Whereas the designation of foreign setlements turned the natural landscape in the northern outskirts of the Chinese city from rural fields into populated towns, it was the abolition of residential segregation that decided how the populated towns would develop, under the Western administration but inhabited mainly by Chinese people, into a metropolis where Western values and innovations were imported and aclimatised to Chinese society. I. Social changes in Shanghai The economic prosperity and its ambiguous political status atracted a great variety of both Westerners and Chinese from outside the Shanghai area and literaly every corner of the world. It is the only one of the original five treaty ports that kept growing and promised to be China’s biggest city. The city not only served as a stage for traders, entrepreneurs, diplomats and politicians but also, as it required neither visa nor pasport to enter, offered the dispossesed, the ambitious and the criminals a fresh start. 9 Among foreigners, the thre largest contingents, the British, the American and the French, whose concesions made up the city centre, were the most influential. Although the British and American concesions merged to become the International Setlement as early as 1863 and al nationalities were welcomed to come to the setlement, up to the 1930s the Shanghai Municipal Council was stil dominated by the British and Americans. More Japanese people moved to Shanghai after the Chapter Three The Society 84 Treaty of Shimonoseki signed in 1896, which granted Japan the same rights and privileges as other foreigners in China, including that of mining, building railways and factories. Later in the Republican era, White Russian émigrés, who fled the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and stateles Jewish refugees, especialy those from Europe who arived after 1930, also disembarked at the city and became the two largest sectors of foreign population. In addition to these major constituent nationalities of Shanghai’s foreign communities, there were other expatriates from diferent countries. Acording to a census conducted in 1930, there had already been forty-eight distinct nationalities represented in Shanghai. 10 Although it was foreigners, particularly those of the thre treaty powers, who laid the foundation of modern Shanghai, seting up the administration system and importing Western novelties and commercial practices, the ever-increasing Chinese population, who far outnumbered foreigners, were indeed the majority of the inhabitants of the city. 1 Al those who had migrated to Shanghai had their stories to tel. As early as 1933, in his book Shanghai Life (Shanghai shenghuo), Xu Guozhen has already recognised two major driving forces behind the imigration: living and entertaining. 12 While milionaires from the interior who fancied an extravagant lifestyle came to Shanghai for pleasure, the penniles from the impoverished surrounding countryside or hinterland flocked to Shanghai to survive. Those who had acumulated a great fortune might not have the opportunity in their hometowns to ride in a motorcar, to visit various entertainment venues full of novelties and to indulge in al sorts of Chinese and Western cuisines – only in Shanghai was it possible to experience a life of luxury and glamour as much as one could aford. As for those who could hardly eke out even a scanty livelihood in other provinces, or who craved for more than what they could earn, Shanghai, as China’s largest industrial and Chapter Three The Society 85 commercial centre in the late ninetenth and early twentieth centuries, appeared to be the Land of Promise to them, though many destitute imigrants never hit the jackpot, but rather ended up being rickshaw coolies or begging on the stret. Apart from these two reasons, imigrants moved to Shanghai for yet other reasons. To give a few examples, political disidents fled to the foreign concesions to take shelter, provincial youths came to Western educational institutions in search of a broader intelectual horizon, young women unfetered themselves from conventions of decorum to sek the fredom in this modern metropolis, and criminals traveled to this bustling port to continue their ilegal activities. Whether taking the initiative or being forced, al who trekked tirelesly to and pinned their hopes on Shanghai, as Hanchao Lu pinpoints, ‘had a simple, shared goal: to find a beter life.’ 13 The confluence of diferent groups of people in Shanghai, from diverse backgrounds with al sorts of wishes to fulfil, on the one hand inevitably created a city full of strangers competing for survival, which led to the cataclysmic change in moral standards and traditional social order, but on the other hand it also constructed a showground full of possibilities and imaginations, where people developed their carers fre from the burden of traditional values and norms. In this metropolis the Shanghainese developed their unique way of life and personality, which contrasted sharply with those in the rest of China. 14 Following Westerners’ lead The administration of foreign setlements in Shanghai imbued Chinese people, either those who had moved in within foreign boundaries or those who stil resided in the Chinese town, with a new sense of citizenship. The public participation in the Chapter Three The Society 86 management of the setlements, as Zhang Zhongli indicates, demonstrated a contrast betwen the two systems and provided an alternative option of municipal administration for Chinese people. 15 Conventionaly, the magistrate (zhixian) in a Chinese county town is regarded as the so-caled ‘parental official’ (fumuguan) and residents are ‘filial civilians’ (zimin), who are not alowed to participate in the municipal administration. Residents are merely dwelers rather than citizens of the town. On the contrary, foreign setlements in Shanghai are built on the Western system, in which citizens enjoy a degre of autonomy, though only property owners and taxpayers are qualified to vote, and the governing council acts on behalf and for the benefit of its citizens. Under the influence of Westerners, Chinese residents in the concesions gradualy realised their obligation to observe bylaws and dropped deplorable habits, such as disposing of household waste, defecating or urinating, wherever they wanted. In the Chinese county town, seing the convenience brought by public facilities and administration in the foreign setlements, some of the gentry put forward proposals to emulate the Western model of municipal administration. They publicised propositions in newspapers, such as recruiting stret cleaners and wardens to maintain public health and sanitation, as wel as instaling stret lamps for the purpose of public safety and security. 16 In 1895, the Bureau of Road Engineering (Malu gongchengju) was set up in Nanshi, the southern district of the county town, to clear an area ravaged by fire in the preceding year and construct new roads. In addition to the construction and maintenance of roads, the bureau later asumed the responsibility for al maters around the roads it built, such as granting planning permision. After 1900, this system was adopted in other Chinese districts, including Zhabei (to the north of the Chapter Three The Society 87 International Setlement), Pudong (the district in the east bank of Huangpu River) and Huxi (west Shanghai). 17 Just as Chinese people learnt from the Western municipal administration to transform themselves from dwelers to citizens, so they acepted and made the most of Western innovations, following a proces of irational resistance, careful observation and understanding. For example, there was no gas or electricity in Shanghai before Westerners came. When stret gas lamps were introduced in 1865, people thought gas was fire from underground (dihuo) and would infuse poison into human bodies when walking on the stret. When proposals were made for the introduction of electricity in 1882, they thought electricity was gathered from lightning in the sky, and thus using electricity was ireverence to God and they would be struck by lightning as a punishment. Nevertheles, after they understood those innovations were harmles but convenient to everyday life, they simply embraced the modern technology. In 1893, Shanghai even had one of the largest electric plants in the world. Coexistence of two ways of life While al kinds of modern technology and amenities, such as electricity, gas, running water, telephones, trams and automobiles, were introduced to Shanghai soon after their appearance in other Western major cities. However, Chinese traditions and habits stil existed in people’s everyday life. An intelectual who worked for a foreign company in a skyscraper and went to church on Sundays might live in a narow mezanine room, always purchase daily necesities from corner shops in the neighbourhood, and enjoyed conversations taking place outside a hot water shop. 18 Chapter Three The Society 8 Among a range of coexistent habits and traditions is the calendar. Although the Chinese republican government, which was established after the 1911 revolution, had abrogated the traditional Chinese lunar calendar (yinli) in favour of the Western Gregorian calendar (yangli, ‘solar calendar’) as the official calendar (guoli, ‘national calendar’), the lunar calendar was actualy stil in use. The lunar and the solar systems both appeared in the fre calendars printed and given away by most shops and department stores. Even those released by the China National Goods Company (Zhongguo guohuo gongsi), which shouldered the awesome responsibility of promoting ‘national goods’ (guohuo), were in the form of a ‘mixture of yin and yang’ (yin yang hebi). Sticking to the time-honoured tradition, Chinese people continued to celebrate the New Year acording to the lunar calendar and even the foreign community generaly took days off at that period, while the Chinese governmental offices al functioned as usual. Chinese daily newspapers in Shanghai also observed a two-day holiday at Chinese New Year, though smal extras might be isued. However, some Chinese newspaper offices did strive to catch the spirit of the Chinese government’s decre and newspapers were duly printed, but unfortunately, as the delivery staf generaly failed to show up, newspapers would not usualy reach the readers. 19 In such a fashion, while the Shanghainese celebrated Chinese New Year and other traditional feast days such as Mid-Autumn Festival and Dragon Boat Festival acording to the lunar calendar, they reveled in parties over Christmas and New Year in the Gregorian calendar. Although not everyone could aford to celebrate both Chinese and Western festivals, the coexistence of two calendars reflects the adaptability of the Shanghainese to the new culture and their perseverance with the old tradition. Just as an article commented in a humorous manner, Chapter Three The Society 89 one would prepare two sets of clothes, one being a Western suit and the other a Chinese outfit; one would marry two wives, one being a modern lady in high heels and the other an old-fashioned foot-bound woman; one would learn two ways of showing courtesy, one being a handshake or bow and the other raising high in front of the chest a fist made with both hands and then lowering it or kowtow. 20 It might not necesarily be true in al cases, yet it ilustrated a picture in which two ways of life could be practised simultaneously. Towards luxurious life Some customs survived while the new way of life offered more choice and added variety to the old society, yet some traditional values were no longer cherished. For instance, in ancient Chinese thinking, living a frugal life and not showing off one’s wealth was held as a virtue. People were encouraged to practice austerity: clothes that could keep bodies warm and houses that could shut out wind and rain were sufficient for their domestic life. Moreover, it was the norm that a person’s way of life, such as living conditions, clothing and public behaviour, should match his or her status in society. While the magistrate of a county town traveled in a sedan chair shouldered by four cariers, with a wel-decorated red roof and blue woollen curtains, in theory an ordinary person without an official title, however wealthy, should only ride a modest one caried by no more than two men. However, in Shanghai, these century-old beliefs had been gradualy given up with the rise of the new commercial culture in the city. Shanghai welcomed al visitors and imigrants by offering them a vision that once a fortune was acumulated in hand and al the requisite acoutrements put on, Chapter Three The Society 90 they could easily climb the social ladder and ascend to the upper clas, despite their origins and previous occupations. The boundaries betwen social clases were no longer impenetrable. As tasteful clothing, lifestyle and consuming habits would facilitate the upward movement of individuals to a higher social stratum, people purchased high-quality, extravagant items of merchandise or services to gain a further boost to their identity as urbanites, who could aford a modern life in Shanghai. Acquiring material goods and keeping up to date with the latest fashion became an esential part of urban living in Shanghai. Consumption of excesive luxury was no more considered against the ethics, but rather perceived as a means of self-realisation and an honour to win. 21 In a satirical newspaper commentary on bad customs in Shanghai, the writer, under an interesting pseudonym of ‘the guest who has watched foreign phenomena in Shanghai for nineten years’, gave a list of seven maters which the Shanghainese considered disgraceful: Not wearing glamorous clothing; Not riding the sedan chair; Flirting with a cheaper whore; Not having expensive food; Travelling by wheelbarrow; Not having an official cap (an honorary official title could be obtained by contributing a certain amount of money to the Treasury); Taking the third-class seat in a theatre. 2 Thus, spending enormous amounts to flaunt one’s wealth or to pretend to be rich was undoubtedly appropriate and failing to do so semed to be shameful. Chapter Three The Society 91 Nevertheles, apart from mindlesly pursuing showy extravagance, the Shanghainese could also choose what they realy needed from a wide range of commodities, acording to their purchasing ability. As more objects of Western material culture were introduced to the city, either brought by foreign residents for personal needs or imported by Chinese merchants in commercial concerns, the Chinese population gradualy adopted some aspects of the lifestyle of Western residents and their taste of fashion. With the increasing division of labour and the commercialisation of the supply of household goods and daily necesities, a wider range of products were available on the market at diferent quality levels and in varied price ranges. For example, people could buy imported bed linen and pilowcases in the Sincere Company, or find high-quality domestic manufactured products in Sanyou Company’s showroom on Nanjing Road, or get some mediocre substitutes at the linen shop in an aleyway. 23 Moreover, in Shanghai, by virtue of using mechanised production facilities, commercial products of aceptable quality were manufactured in large quantities and thus sold at afordable prices to the general public, particularly low- to middle-income populations. In other words, even factory workers were able to acquire mas-manufactured commodities to maintain a minimum level of comfort within their means. Changing social relations Western practices and commercial prosperity brought the Shanghainese convenience and material comfort that people in the rest of the country could not enjoy, yet the complicated interpersonal relations in this big city also created more tension that people from other areas would find dificult to deal with. A scene from the novel A Short History of Civilisation (Wenming xiaoshi) serves as an example. Chapter Three The Society 92 There was a fight in a teahouse arising from an unsuccesful mediation of an extramarital afair. An expeled female student of a Western-style school clad in casual-style clothing with showy jewelery and a clerk hired by a Western trading firm, to whom the young lady was the mistres, were about to break up. Unable to end this imoral relationship satisfactorily, the couple’s original introducer, a cart driver who made money by aranging such love afairs, engaged a runner from the detector’s office of the Shanghai Municipal Police to intervene in the dispute. After entangled in a scuffle, the couple were dragged by the runner and then arested by two policemen, a Chinese and a red-turbaned, dark-faced foreigner, both presumably caled on by the runner. The couple were taken to the police station, and if this case could not be setled there, they would be transfered to a foreign judge in the Mixed Court, which dealt with legal problems concerning Chinese people. Seated at the next table in the teahouse was a provincial degre-holder, together with his son and thre disciples, al of landed gentry background. Shocked by the young lady’s indecorous demeanour and speech, the ensuing fight and the interference of the runner and policemen, only after overhearing some gossipy conversations from other customers in the teahouse did they figure out what had just happened. 24 The old master took these four young country gentlemen to Shanghai with a view to expanding their knowledge and witnesing Western civilisation; however, they were confronted with an unexpected cast of unconventional characters in such an absurd scene even before starting their exploration of Western amenities and educational institutions in this city. Initiating an extramarital relationship through a ‘part-time’ dating agent and involving the police and perhaps finaly a foreign judge in ending the afair were things they had never heard of or learnt to deal with. As Wen-hsin Yeh commented, apart from wonders and novelties of Western material Chapter Three The Society 93 goods, there were ‘open violation of moral norms, blatant transgresions of gender roles and foreign asertions of political authority’ in full view in the public places in Shanghai. 25 Al of these were simply beyond the understanding of those who came from other areas and stil held traditional Chinese ethics as moral principals that governed interpersonal relationships. Moreover, these country gentlemen could not even imagine that cohabitation, choosing one’s own spouse or divorce were socialy aceptable in Shanghai, particularly in foreign concesions. Whereas in the interior, elopement was an offence and once detected the running off couple would be convicted, in Shanghai it would not be the case as long as the two made the choice of their own fre wil. Shanghai was thus considered the paradise of eloping couples, as wel as a place to pursue romantic love for those who opposed traditional aranged mariage. In the early twentieth century, novels depicting plots in violation of traditional expectations about proper decorum, for example, a monk geting maried or a widow faling in love, were al published in Shanghai, because it was the only place at that time where novels of these subjects would be acepted. 26 Contempt for outsiders Besides those unfamiliar social relations, people from other areas would encounter the Shanghainese utter contempt for outsiders. Due to a sense of regional superiority, people in Shanghai showed a scornful atitude towards those Chinese from the hinterland. They refered to those who were not local to Shanghai as waidiren (‘people from other areas’). Although the word waidiren is literaly in no sense derogatory, in Shanghainese eyes ‘people from other areas’ were simply ‘people from the countryside’ (xiangxiaren), which implied the backward, uncivilised mases. As waidiren or xiangxiaren, who only came for a visit or had just moved in the city, Chapter Three The Society 94 were not as adept as the local Shanghainese at coping with the fast-paced and ever- changing life in the city, these newcomers were always treated by locals with disdain in an unreasonable manner. For example, Xu Guozhen once witnesed an incident, which he could not understand in the first place but would regard as normal after staying in Shanghai for several years. In a cinema, seing a gentleman seated next to him strike a match to light a cigarete, a chap asked, ‘May I borow the fire, please?’ Aware of his non-local acent, the gentleman turned the head, stared ferociously at him and replied in a harsh voice, ‘Borrow the fire? When would you return it?’ The ‘fire’ was certainly not lent out because the chap did not ask in a favourable manner. In Shanghai one was expected to ‘beg for’ rather than ‘borrow’. 27 The gentleman was probably also from the hinterland and only arived somewhat earlier than the innocent chap, but several months’ urban life turned him into a snobbish, aloof local. The Shanghainese sense of superiority can be understood as self- congratulation for the achievement of survival in a highly competitive environment. As Shanghai is an imigrant city, in a sense, except those who had lived in the original muddy wetland or the Chinese town for generations, almost al Shanghainese are waidiren. 28 Once setled and acquainted with this city, people considered themselves superior and would sever their relations with al the maters concerning their past. In Yu Ling’s stage play Shanghai Night (Ye Shanghai), a wealthy widow who had just fled to Shanghai from the countryside turned down those who tried to persuade her to rent a flat so that she could make a profit by subleting the rooms. Whereas upon arival she considered it meaningles to make a fortune since her husband had died, half a year later she succesfully transformed herself into a cunning sub-landlady, who, when approached by relatives from her hometown for help, would reply coldly that those country folks’ dificulties were none of her busines. 29 Chapter Three The Society 95 The Shanghainese arogance and their contempt for those from the countryside can also be found in the path of development of the modern Shanghainese dialect. In the first few decades after Shanghai was opened to become a treaty port, the original form of Shanghainese dialect, a branch of the Songjiang dialect with a Pudong acent, was stil commonly used in either foreign concesions or the Chinese town. However, adopting expresions and idioms of the Suzhou and Ningbo dialects, brought by numerous imigrants in the late nineten century, as wel as incorporating some words from Western languages, the dialect underwent some changes and a modern Shanghainese dialect was gradualy formed. The modern dialect, spoken in the foreign concesions and the surrounding areas, then became a mark of urban superiority, while the original Shanghainese dialect somehow came to be relegated as the rural tongue. Crossing the Huangpu River to Pudong on the east bank, one could only find a slight diference in people’s acent there, but the diference was sufficient to make the urban Shanghainese from the west bank fel that they were in the countryside. 30 Therefore, to the local Shanghainese, those who did not speak the ‘modern’ Shanghainese dialect were simply xiangxiaren. The development of the modern Shanghainese dialect demonstrates the city’s aceptability of outsider and outside influences; nevertheles, outsiders were acepted on condition that they integrated into the society by following the gradualy formed rules of social behaviour in this city. If the chap in the cinema had ‘begged for’ the fire with the proper Shanghai acent, the snobbish gentleman would not have treated him in such an arogant manner. Chapter Three The Society 96 II. New forms of mass entertainment In such a highly populated metropolis and imigrant society, the physical distance betwen individuals semed to decrease, yet people were actualy becoming mentaly distant from one another because of more frequent but shorter contact with others from al walks of life and incesant changes of roles one had to play from dawn til dusk. Confronted with complicated social relations and new rules of social behaviour, the imigrants in Shanghai might not develop a strong afiliation or share beliefs and values with one another as those in more closed rural communities. Therefore, there was a need for communal interests and subjects of daily conversations to hold distant individual members of the general public together. Along with the imigrants’ pursuit of social afiliation came a range of mas entertainment. Wen-hsin Yeh argues that modern advertising in Shanghai, which played a crucial role in the construction of urban consumer culture in the Republican period, involved both mobilising the conventional communication approaches towards the production of new meanings and adopting new-style media to diseminate age-old ideas. For example, silk retailers in Shanghai hired story-singers to broadcast commercials in the form of tanci on radio; tobaco companies engaged Chinese artists to made calendar-poster advertising paintings (yuefenpai guangao hua) featuring Chinese women with shapely figures and seductive smiles. 31 Similar to advertising for consumer commodities, mas entertainment in Shanghai included contemporary ideas conveyed by conventional media and old subjects repackaged in a new format. The rise in popular readings and redevelopment of stage performance are two good examples. Chapter Three The Society 97 Popular reading The late ninetenth century in Shanghai saw the emergence of pictorial magazines, which, quite diferent from ordinary newspapers or periodicals, featured far more photographic or hand-painted pictures than text. With the aid of graphic ilustrations, these pictorials, lowbrow but with wide circulations, could spread the latest news and general knowledge in a straightforward way to the general public, particularly those imigrants from rural areas and ordinary people, who had no advanced reading skils to appreciate books or periodicals which only contained pure textual mesages. Although in the early years what these popular pictorials caried sometimes semed to be drivel or worthles anecdotes, for example, in Pictorial from the Stone Tablet Studio (Dianshizhai haubao) a disobedient son struck dead by a thunderbolt and a drunk bloke riding a bull, it was these light-hearted, nonsensical fantasies that caught the atention of normal people and provided them with materials for daily conversations. 32 Moving on to the twentieth century, pictorial magazines became a medium, which not only appealed broadly to the general public but also targeted specificaly middle clas readers who had more leisure time and disposable income. Through these pictorials, readers learnt information of domestic and international events, theoretical and practical knowledge of modern science, and the latest news of fashion, urban lifestyle and consumer products. For example, Young Companion (Liangyou huabao), one of Shanghai’s most popular and succesful pictorials of the 1920s and 1930s, frequently introduced interior design and decorative arts for homes to draw the atention of wel-educated women who had an interest in cosy and stylish domestic life. 3 Chapter Three The Society 98 In addition to pictorial magazines, there was also popular literature to acommodate those who were more wiling to read text. Popular literature in Shanghai, which was originaly intended to appeal to middle and lower clas tastes, broadly included the so-caled ‘mandarin and butterfly school’ (yuanyang hudie pai) fictions, which specialised in sentimental afairs and physicaly unrequited love, and a wide range of fictional genres, such as detective thrilers, supernatural stories, martial heroes, knights-erant and social scandals. In these fictions, the Shanghainese not only read stories in an imaginary world but also saw a reflection of themselves. In other words, besides fictitious plots, readers might encounter similar scenarios that actualy happened in real life. As E. Pery Link argues, these urban popular fictions reflected the anxiety and worry of those who dwelt in the metropolis, and of those whose desire to keep up with the ever-changing world had long been replaced by the desire to forget the fact that they could never keep up with it. 34 A wel-known slogan in the advertisement for a popular fiction magazine Saturday (Libailiu) reads: ‘[I] would rather not have a concubine than not read Saturday.’ Advertising catchphrase as it was, it indeed depicted how people were fascinated by those fictions. Acording to Zhou Shoujuan, one of the editors of the magazine, eager readers would wait outside the publishing house on Saturday mornings for new isues to be released, and then rushed to purchase the latest copies of Saturday once the doors of the building were opened, just like those who shouldered their way to a breakfast stal in order to buy baked wheat cakes. 35 In such a fashion, on the one hand what used to be spread through oral communication in a closed rural community, such as legend, rumours or current afairs, were now distributed through pictorials and fictions in Shanghai, and on the other, what used to be employed to deliver the teachings of Confucius and clasical Chapter Three The Society 9 literature, i.e. the printed mater, was now a medium to distribute knowledge of Western science and technology, as wel as nonsensical thoughts and gossips. Stage performance A form of stage performance, ‘new drama’ (xinju), arose in the late ninetenth century. Compared with traditional Chinese theatrical works, new drama is similar to Western spoken drama, laying more emphasis on dialogue without performers acting abstract gestures and movements or singing against the ear-piercing instrumental acompaniment. Due to its straightforwardnes in the aspect of communication, in the late Qing dynasty, new drama was commonly used by the reformists to promote their ideal of democracy and advocate establishing a Chinese republic. After the overthrow of the Qing dynasty, the agitated political fervour and formulaic sentiment- rousing speeches that had been conveyed in those stage plays were no longer appreciated by the audience. As a result, transformed from a device for propagation into a form of mas entertainment, from instiling the general public with political beliefs into acommodating the audience’s needs for sheer pleasure, domestic news and plots from traditional opera and popular fictions were integrated into new drama in Shanghai. 36 The audience could se in stage plays familiar images of ordinary people, dramatic presentation of everyday trivialities, clichéd naratives of romantic or parental love, the dark facets of social life and shocking inside stories of celebrities and criminals. Therefore, before the film industry mushroomed and sound films gained popularity in the 1930s, new drama had been an important form of entertainment offering the Shanghainese onstage what could only be read in fictions and learnt about from magazines or newspapers. Chapter Three The Society 10 Nevertheles, the popularity of new drama never dampened people’s enthusiasm for traditional operatic performances. Like people in other areas of China, atending live performance of traditional opera and story-teling balads was also one of the important leisure activities for the Shanghainese. Conventionaly, traditional stage performances were caried out in tea gardens (xiyuan) and smal teahouses (chaguan), where a square stage was set in front of tables and chairs, and tea and a range of refreshment were served to the viewers. However, Shanghai provided these traditional performing arts with new stages for further development. There were privately owned pleasure gardens, usualy boasted with pavilions, tres, rockeries and flowers blooming throughout the year. Unlike in a tea garden, which alowed only one performance at a time on the stage, in a pleasure garden people could atend several programes delivered by various entertainers in diferent corners of the garden at the same time. Following the construction of the first Western-style theatre, the Lyceum Theatre (Lanxin xiyuan), by European residents in the French Concesion in 1874, Chinese entrepreneurs also started building the so- caled ‘stages’ (wutai) for Chinese operas in the early twentieth century. These ‘stages’, duplicating the layout of Western theatres, were fited with tiered seats, a raised, large stage, as wel as lightning equipment and alternating backdrops. Among these new theatres was the New Stage (Xin wutai), opened in 1908, which had 5,000 seats and a stage spacious enough for the scenery and extra large pieces of props. At the same time as the rise of new theatres in the first two decades of the twentieth century, a number of larger entertainment complexes appeared in Shanghai. These multi-storey establishments provided a much wider range of amusements than pleasure gardens, from a mixture of performances, such as traditional operas, balads, acrobatics, magic shows and stage dramas, to other atractions, such as cinemas, Chapter Three The Society 101 department stores and stals seling al manner of snacks and refreshments. The New World (Xin shijie) in the International Setlement and the Great World (Da shijie) in the French Concesion were the most two famous entertainment centres of this kind in Shanghai. These Western-style establishments not only repackaged old stage performance to bring a new theatrical experience to the audience but also constructed a new arena for performers to introduce more onstage devices and gimicks for audio-visual efects, which were never sen on the traditional stage. In traditional Chinese opera, a play is presented on an almost bare stage and an actor portrays a character through specific gestures and movements, as wel as delivering the sense of time, space and imaginary objects through body language. 37 However, in Shanghai, because of the ample space available in new theatres for stage movement and the use of a greater amount of stage properties, more magnificent stage sets, dazling acrobatics, bigger acompanying ensembles, fancier electric lighting device, and even ilusive tricks and live animals were al employed in traditional operatic performance. Moreover, besides the traditional repertoire, there were newly composed plays in Shanghai, bringing subject mater shown in new drama into traditional opera, and therefore theatregoers could also se current events and contemporary life acted on the operatic stage. Hence, this more vibrant, liberal and commercial-oriented form of operatic performance was labeled as Haipei (‘Shanghai style’), as opposed to the supposedly more conservative and traditional Jingpai (‘Beijing style’) opera. The chaos caused by the two rebelions unexpectedly drove the Chinese back into the areas originaly designated for foreign residents, and thus alowed people of old Cathay to experience and emulate Western civilisation in everyday life. The economic prosperity kept drawing more to the city from its vicinity, the hinterland, as Chapter Three The Society 102 wel as from overseas, for a beter life. From a waled Chinese county town together with a piece of muddy wetland, Shanghai transformed into a metropolis where traditional life coexisted with Western practices and civilisation, an imigrant city where newcomers had to acquaint themselves with the fast-paced life and complicated social relations, and a big stadium where new forms of entertainment were created and old performing arts redeveloped. If two ways of life could be practised simultaneously in this city, and if there could be comfort and pleasure in various entertainment commodities, why could not musical elements from two traditions be drawn together to amuse people and ease their stres and anxiety here? If novels and amenities were only available in this city, and if commercialisation of the supply of daily necesities offered a beter quality of life, why could not a new form of musical products be created here and distributed through the flourishing new media and entertainment industry? As Lu Hanchao suggests, ‘if Shanghai was a place where two cultures – Chinese and Western – met but neither prevailed, it was not because the two were deadlocked but because both showed remarkable resilience.’ 38 Similarly, if Shanghai was a place where new maters arose but the old did not perish, it was because the old could be repackaged to join the new hile the new could embrace the old to asure prosperity on both sides. This is the place where Chinese popular music industry started, developed and thrived. Endnotes 1 Al About Shanghai and Environs: A Standard Guide Book (Shanghai: University Pres, 1934/1935; repr. with an introduction by H. J. Lethbridge, Hong Kong: Oxford University Pres, 1983), p. 1. Chapter Three The Society 103 2 Ibid., p. 2 3 Imperial Maritime Customs (eds), Treaties, Conventions, Etc., Betwen China and Foreign States, vol. 1 (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1908), p. 200. 4 For more details of the uprising, refer to Shanghai shehui kexueyuan lishi yanjiusuo (eds), Shanghai xiaodaohui qiyi shiliao huibian (Collection of historical materials on the Shanghai Smal Sword Uprising) (Shanghai: Shanghai remin chubanshe, 1958; repr. 1980). 5 Se Hanchao Lu, Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century (Berkeley, Cali. and London: University of California Pres, 1999), p. 140. 6 For a comprehensive source of the rebelion, se Philip A. Kuhn ‘The Taiping rebelion’ in John K. Fairbank (ed.), The Cambridge History of China, Volume 10: Late Ch’ing, 1800-1911, Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1978), pp. 264-317. 7 Zou Yiren, Jiu Shanghai renkou bianqian de yanjiu (Research on population change in old Shanghai) (Shanghai: Shanghai remin chubanshe, 1980), pp. 3-4. 8 Ch’en, Jerome, China and the West: Society and Culture 1815-1937 (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1979), pp 211-2. For more details of the qualifications for the enrolment in the Chinese Ratepayers’ Asociation, se Shanghai zujie zhi bianzuan weiyuanhui (eds), Shanghai zujie zhi (A chronicle of concesions in Shanghai) (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexue yuan chubanshe, 2001), pp. 177, 181. 9 Hariet Sergeant, Shanghai (London: Jonathan Cape, 1991), p. 2. Chapter Three The Society 104 10 Al About Shanghai, p. 35-7. The census showed that in 1930 the Japanese, with a total of 18,796, were the largest single group in the city as a whole, the British were in a distant second place with 8,449, les than half the Japanese population, and the Russian took third by 7,366. Interestingly, though regarded as treaty powers, the American only ranked fourth by 3,149 and the French a far eighth by 1,406. These figures and rankings, nonetheles, changed variously in the ensuing two decades with the development of international political situations. 1 To give two particular instances, in 1937, before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the whole city of Shanghai, including the foreign concesions and the Chinese municipality, had a population of 3,851,976, among which only 63,148 were foreigners; moving on to 1942, after Japan declared war on the Alies, the foreign population increased to 86,389 against a total of 3,919,779. For more statistics in other years, se Shanghai zujie zhi bianzuan weiyuanhui (eds), Shanghai zujie zhi, p. 116-8 and Zou, Jiu Shanghai renkou bianqian, pp. 90-91. 12 Xu Guozhen, Shanghai Shenghuo (Shanghai life) (Shanghai: Shijie shuju, 1933), pp. 13-6. 13 Lu, Beyond the Neon Light, p. 43. 14 While the ‘Shanghainese’ was a label reserved for Chinese people who had setled down in Shanghai, either foreign concesions or the Chinese city, Westerners, excluding Russian exiles whom were not considered white, usualy addresed themselves as ‘Shanghailandgers’. For an interesting commentary on Shanghailanders, refer to ‘The Shanghai boom’, Fortune, 11:1 (January 1935), pp. 30- 40. Chapter Three The Society 105 15 Zhang Zhongli (ed.), Jindai Shanghai chengshi yanjiu (Modern Shanghai studies) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1991), p. 753. 16 Se Shenpao, the 23 rd of the 3 rd month the year kuiyou (1873) and the 24 th of the 1 th month the year renshen (1872). 17 Wei, Bety Peh-T’I, Shanghai: Crucible of Modern China (Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 1987), p. 81-2. 18 As most aleyway houses in Shanghai did not have hot water facilities, residents usualy relied on profesional hot water services in their neighbourhoods. For more discussion on the tenacity of Chinese traditions in daily life of old Shanghai, refer to Lu, Beyond the Neon Lights, pp. 307-15. 19 Se Gao Ping, ‘Yinli de yanyong’ (Continue using the lunar calendar), Xinsheng zhoukan, 1:1 (10 February 1934), p. 13; ‘We have Chinese New Year with us again’, The China Wekly Review, 67:11 (10 February 1934), p. 397. The ‘mixture of yin and yang’ is stil sen in printed calendars circulated in China, Taiwan and other Chinese communities around the world. 20 Gao, ‘Yinli de yanyong’, p. 14. 21 This would also explain why one’s appearance matered a great deal in Shanghai. Some people, though staying in a smal room on a mezanine (tingzijian) and living on a shoestring, would put their Western-style trousers under their pilows every night to maintain the creases in the trousers so that they looked at least properly dresed when they strutted down the stret. 2 Haishang kanyang shijiunian ke, ‘Shenjiang louxi’ (Bad customs in Shanghai), Shenbao, the 1 th of the 3 rd month the year kueyou (1873). Chapter Three The Society 106 23 The Sincere Company (Xianshi gongsi) is the first Western-style department store in Shanghai; the Sanyou Company (Sanyou gongsi) is a local manufacturer specialising in quality interior decorative items and bedclothes. 24 Li Boyuan, Wenming xiaoshi (A short history of civilisation) (Beijing: Tongsu wenyi chubanshe, 1955), pp. 101-2. Originaly published in serial form 1903 to 1905, set in the early twentieth century against the background of the whole nation, this novel provides vignetes of change in al areas of Chinese society under Western influences. For an English version, refer to Li Boyuan, Modern Times: A Brief History of Enlightenment, trans. Douglas Lancashire (with an introduction by Douglas Lancashire, Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1996). 25 Wen-Hsin Yeh, ‘Shanghai modernity: commerce and culture in a republican city’, China Quarterly, 150 (1997), p. 384. 26 Yuan Jin, Yuanyang hudie pai (Mandarin duck and butterfly school) (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1994), p.36. 27 Xu, Shanghai Shenghuo, p. 32. 28 Acording to a 1950 census, 85% of the population in Shanghai before 1949 were first-generation imigrants from other parts of China, many form the countryside. Zou, Jiu Shanghai renkou bianqian de yanjiu, p. 113. 29 Yu Ling, Ye Shanghai (Shanghai night) in, Yuling juzuo xuan (A selection of Yu Ling’s stage plays) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1979), p. 266. 30 Qian Nairong, Shanghai fangyan liyu (The Shanghai dialect and slang) (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexue yuan chubanshe, 1989), p. 73. Chapter Three The Society 107 31 Yeh, ‘Shanghai modernity’, p. 387. For the subject of tanci as a new advertising medium for women’s fashion clothing, refer to Carlton Benson, ‘Consumers are also soldiers: subversive songs from Nangjing Road during the New Life Movement’, in Sherman Cochran (ed.), Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 1900-1945 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornel East Asia Series, 1999), pp. 91-132; for the use of calendar-poster as tobaco advertisements, se Sherman Cochran, ‘Transnational origins of advertising in early twentieth China’, ibid., pp. 37-58. 32 Pictorial from the Stone Tablet Studio was first isued in May 1884 as a supplement to The Shun Pao Daily (Shenbao). For a study on how this pictorial shaped Chinese readers’ views of politics and society, refer to Christopher A. Red, ‘Re/collecting the sources: Shanghai’s Dianshizhai Pictorial and its place in historical memories, 1884- 1949’, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 12:2 (2000), pp. 44-71. 3 For more details of how pictorials of this kind and art magazines promoted commercial arts and consumer industries, se Carie Wara ‘Invention, industry, art: the commercialization of culture in Republican art magazines’, in Sherman Cochran (ed), Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 1900-1945 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornel East Asia Series, 1999), pp. 61-89. 34 The creation of ‘mandarin duck and butterfly school’ fictions can be traced to a best-seling sentimental novel Jade Pear Spirit (Yulihun) of this type, writen by Xu Zhenya and first published in 1912. The term ‘mandarin duck and butterfly’ was coined due to the frequent use of poems comparing lovers to pairs of mandarin ducks and butterflies in novels of this kind. Se E. Pery Link, ‘Traditional-style popular urban fiction in the tens and twenties’, in Merle Goldman (ed.), Modern Chinese Chapter Three The Society 108 Literature in the May Fourth Era (Cambridge, Mas.: Harvard University Pres, 1977), pp. 327-30. 35 Zheng Yimei, Shubao hua jiu (Talk of old times in books and newspapers) (Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe, 1983), p. 164. 36 Zhang, Jindai Shanghai chengshi yanjiu, p. 1099. 37 For a succinct introduction of the development and performance of Chinese opera, refer to Jiang Xinyu, ‘Traditional Chinese drama’, in Wu Dingbo and Patrick D. Mauphy (eds), Handbook of Chinese Popular Culture (London: Grenwood Pres, 1994), pp. 215-35; for a discussion on the use of terms ‘opera’, ‘drama’ or so on in Chinese stage performance, se Jonathan Stock, Huju: Traditional Opera in Modern Shanghai (Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 2003), pp. 4-7. 38 Lu, Beyond the Neon Lights, p. 297. 109 Chapter Four The Platform This chapter presents details of the participants and the activities in which they were involved the Shanghai popular music industry, the platform where music products were created and delivered to the audience. Following the physical flow of musical products as suggested in the hypothetical flowchart of the industry proposed in Chapter Two, the reconstructed platform is divided into thre sections: the making, seling and consuming proceses. I. The producing proces The producing proces involves record companies, songwriters, instrumentalists and singers. Although there were some functioning departments, similar to today’s A&R, marketing and sales, in major record companies such as EMI and RCA-Victor, few documents were left to ilustrate how diferent departments cooperated with each other. However, it is clear that after Chinese composers were employed by major record companies as full-time staf, they started taking charge of the production, deciding what to record and coordinating singers and sesion musicians. This section reveals the operation of record companies and backgrounds and activities of al the involved artists – songwriters, instrumentalists and singers. Chapter Four The Platform 10 1. Record companies After a series of mergers and acquisitions betwen those record companies which owned subsidiaries in China, the Electric and Musical Industries (China) and the RCA-Victor Company of China became two major foreign record companies equipped with recording studios and manufacturing facilities operating in Shanghai. The forerunner of EMI (China) is Pathé Phono Cinema Chine which was founded by a Frenchman, E. Labansat, in Shanghai in 1908 and was reorganised to Pathé Orient in 1921 when the company expanded and built a new recording studio. In 1928 the British-based Columbia Gramophone Company purchased Pathé Frères, Pathé Orient’s parent company in France, and took over Pathé Orient’s properties in Shanghai in 1930. Thus, the French Pathé Orient became the British Pathé Orient. Thre years after the Columbia Gramophone Company merged with the Gramophone Company to form the Electronic and Musical Industries, Ltd. in Britain in 1931, the Electric & Musical Industries (China) was formaly established in Shanghai on 25 th June 1934, with an authorised share capital of 1,000,000 Mexican dollars registered as manufacturers and distributors of gramophone records, gramophones, cinema equipment and radios. 1 Interestingly, although reorganised and given a new name, the company was stil caled Pathé Record Company (Baidai changpian gongsi) by Chinese people. EMI ceased operation in April 1949, a month before Shanghai was ‘liberated’ by the Chinese Communist. The Victor Talking Machine Company in Shanghai was originaly controlled by Nippon Victor, a Japanese subsidiary of Victor Talking Machine. In 1928, the giant Radio Corporation of America acquired Victor Talking Machine Company and RCA-Victor Company formed. In China, the title ‘Victor Talking Machine Company’ with a supplementary line of lengthy words ‘Radio America-Victor Chapter Four The Platform 11 Talking Machine Corporation’ (Meiguo wuxiandian shengli changji hezu gongsi) was used until July 1930 when the company officialy turned its name to ‘RCA-Victor Company of China’. 2 RCA-Victor Coompany of China was registered as an agent throughout China for the American RCA-Victor group, which also manufactured radios and some other domestic appliances, with an authorised share capital amounting to 500,000 US dollars. 3 As with EMI, RCA-Victor was habitualy caled Victor Record Company (Shengli changpian gongsi) by consumers. As most equipment was badly damaged during the Sino-Japanese War, RCA-Victor shut down its factory in 1945 and has never resumed production ever since. Besides the two majors, there were another two foreign companies, Beka China (known to Chinese consumers as Beikai) and Odeon China (known as Gaoting), which had once been involved in the production of Chinese popular music. In Germany, Beka and Odeon had been acquired as early as 1910 and 191 respectively by Lindström, which was in turn sold to the Columbia Gramophone Company (UK) in 1926 and became part of the EMI concern. However, Beka China and Odeon China were stil operated under their own trademarks as independent companies through their agents in Shanghai. Unlike EMI and RCA-Victor, Beka and Odeon did not build their own factories in Shanghai, but instead made recordings and stamped their records on a smaler scale with EMI’s facilities. The two companies appeared to be out of busines in the 1940s, after the Japanese took control of the whole of Shanghai following the Pacific War, because no information on them has since been found in either yelow pages or advertisements in other print media. Although it was foreign companies that started and dominated the Chinese record industry, Chinese people had their indigenous record companies. The Great China Record Company (Dazhonghu changpian), which was established by Dr Sun Chapter Four The Platform 12 Yat-Sen with Japanese capital in 1916 but had turned into a localy owned company by 1927, was the only Chinese company that owned facilities to make recordings and manufacture records. However, Great China ran its busines with limited facilities on a much smaler scale compared to the other two major foreign companies and could never compete with them. There were also a number of local record companies, dubbed ‘pocketbook companies’, operating in Shanghai. The reason for being so caled is that the most valuable aset of a ‘pocketbook company’ was usualy a ‘pocketbook’ which held details of recording contracts with artists, manufacturing contracts with the major companies and a smal amount of pety cash. These local companies specialised mainly in traditional repertoire, such as folk songs, regional operas and story-teling balads, not in popular songs. Renting studio and manufacturing time from those companies equipped with production facilities, they caried out al production activities in Shanghai and then distributed records to the diferent regions in China they specificaly catered for. 4 Although there were many record companies in Shanghai, by the end of 1930s EMI controlled most of the popular music market in China and most songwriters and singers signed exclusively to that company during the most crucial stage of their carers. EMI’s activities and its interactions with other institutions or individuals can be viewed as the epitome of the popular music industry in China in the first half of the twentieth century. Taking into consideration EMI’s dominant position and the imbalance in the types of information available, particular atention wil of necesity be paid to EMI and RCA-Victor in the following historical acount of record companies’ activities. Chapter Four The Platform 13 Production organising At the early stage of the development of recording industry in China, both major and local pocketbook companies were dedicated to making recordings of traditional operas. As knowledge of Chinese music was not widespread in the West, directors of foreign record companies had to count on local intermediaries to arange the selection of artists and music to be recorded. These middlemen, presumably, had to look for performers who were wel-known to most people or vocalists who could perform what was popular at the time. Since Li Jinhui captivated audiences with his children’s musical dramas and love songs, record companies had been keen to approach him about recording his compositions. It was because of Li’s reputation and the enormous financial benefit his works could bring in that record companies contacted him through local middlemen. By the mid-1930s, some Chinese were formaly employed to be in charge of music production within the recording organisation. A post of Musical Director was created in Pathé Orient in 1932 whereas in RCA-Victor positions of A&R were taken by Chinese employees by 1935. It was not until then that Chinese personnel in foreign record companies began to lead the production. Although during the time of the French Pathé Orient a Chinese collaborator, Zhang Changfu, had been engaged by Labansat to arange recording contracts with local artists since the busines started in Shanghai, he was never regarded as a member of the production team in the company, but rather only a comprador. 5 Ren Guang, a musician who studied composition in France, was invited by a foreign manager to work in Pathé Orient upon his return to Shanghai in 1932. The company engaged him as Musical Director and concurrently as Chinese Manager (huaren jingli), as opposed to foreign managers, in the hope that he would help to Chapter Four The Platform 14 select appropriate works for new records, from the repertoire of Chinese regional operas and Cantonese music, in order to increase its sale volume. He may have been the first Chinese to be offered an official position in charge of record production in a foreign record company. Thereafter, Pathé Orient had its own ‘expert’ on Chinese music and thus maters such as scouting for artists and negotiating contracts with local musicians were procesed within a department in the company, rather than dealt with by agents who might have no fixed connexion to the company. Ren left EMI and moved to Paris again in 1937 because the Japanese Consulate in Shanghai found out that he was the one who, under the pseudonym Qianfa, composed the anti-Japanese song ‘Fighting the Way Back Home’ (Da hui laojia qu) which had been a great morale booster for Chinese people following the outbreak of Sino-Japanese War. 6 The vacancy was soon filed by another Chinese, Fu Xiangxun, with a diferent title, Dramatic Director. Fu worked as Dramatic Director there for several years, probably including the period 1942 to 1945 when the company was under Japanese control. There is litle information left about Fu’s personal life, but during his term in EMI more Chinese composers certainly joined the company. Before 1937, songwriters usualy worked frelance though some of them might have been employed by film companies to write film songs and supervise the audio production. 7 These composers received royalties from record companies only when their compositions were made into records and released. However, after Fu joined the company, from the late 1930s EMI began to engage composers as full-time staf and provided offices where everyone had his own piano and worked al day. 8 It was not clear when Fu left EMI, but Li Jinguang, a ful-time employed songwriter, was promoted to take up the position of Musical Director no later than 1945. Despite the fact that British owners had regained control of the company from Japanese directors Chapter Four The Platform 15 after the end of the war in 1945, British managers only paid atention to sales figures and it was Li and other songwriters who made al decisions regarding music production. J. P. O. Yang and M. T. Poo are the earliest A&R personnel of RCA-Victor in Shanghai who can be identified in the extant documents. Poo worked in the company with the title A&R until 1942 when the Japanese took it over and appointed a compatriot, Y. Kishi, to head the A&R department. Nevertheles, Poo continued to be employed as Inspector and Chinese Manager, and then transfered to be the manager of the record department after the Americans reclaimed the operation following the end of the war in 1945. Except for these names and official job titles, there is unfortunately no information left about the duties and responsibilities of the A&R personnel in RCA-Victor, nor were their biographical details recorded. Contracts & royalties Artists signed recording contracts with EMI, which stated the numbers of recordings to be made in a specified period of time. Whether a singer was given only a fixed amount of revenue after a recording sesion or would receive royalties in the future depended either on her reputation in the field or the sales of her previous work. The company would usualy sign a new contract with a new artist when the sales reached a certain level. As Wu Yingyin remembered, In the office, there were column charts on the wall showing sales of albums. When the column representing my album went surprisingly beyond Zhou Xuan’s and Yao Li’s, which no one had ever did, they asked me immediately signed a new contract. 9 Chapter Four The Platform 16 In the 1930s, while singers, acording to their rank in the company, would receive 3.5%, 2.5% or 1.5% of the wholesale price of records as royalties, composers were paid at a fixed rate of 2.5% and lyricists at 1.5% of the price. The rate applicable to singers rose to betwen 4% and 6% in the 1940s. Singers could choose to receive either an advance, against future sales of 2,000 records, after recording sesions and collected more when the sales figures exceded 2,000, or receive only a one-off payment based on sales of 2,000 records. When the former option was chosen, royalties were generaly paid to artists on a monthly basis. 10 The mechanism dealing with copyright of songs, lyrics and recordings has continued to operate surprisingly wel, because, as mentioned in the pilot study, even EMI (Hong Kong) stil today pays royalties to the living elderly singers of the Shanghai era, or their descendants, when old recordings are reisued. Terms and conditions of a contract with EMI might vary from artist to artist, but once it was signed, it was strictly forbidden to make recordings for other record companies. While no case has been found, so far, in any available documents and archives where a singer violated a contract, there was a case in which a breach of an agrement led to a composer’s resignation. In April 1934, Nie Er, a young leftist composer and communist, approached Pathé Orient to make recording of his songs. Recommended by Ren Guang, he was able to sing five songs, which he had just composed, to Ren’s acompaniment on a piano in front of foreign directing managers. The foreign managers approved Nie’s proposal to release these songs, and, moreover, they engaged him to work with Ren in the company. Thus, Ren became the first Asistant Musical Director, and the only one, in EMI’s history in China. Unwitingly, at the request of Cai Chusheng, the director of the famous film Fisherman’s Song (Yuguangqu), Nie Er composed two songs for a new film, Flying Flower Vilage Chapter Four The Platform 17 (Feihuacun). As the film company, Yi Hwa Motion Picture, insisted that the recordings had to be made for RCA-Victor, the two songs were released under the RAC-Victor label. This action was a violation of the agrement betwen Nie and EMI, which stated that he must not compose for other record companies, and caused serious offence to the directing board. 1 In November the same year, Nie resigned from EMI, partly because of this incident. Manufacturing Only thre major companies were equipped with recording and manufacturing facilities. In the 1930s, EMI owned twenty-four record-presing machines in the factory in Shanghai, RCA-Victor eighten and Great China a mere eight. Acording to Jones’ estimation, by 1932 domestic production had reached 5.4 milion records per annum, of which EMI acounted for a half of them, i.e. 2.7 milion, RCA-Victor 1.8 milion, and Great China only 900,000. 12 A negative metal-matrix was usualy produced imediately after a performance was recorded on a wax plate, so that the musical director could listen to it and determined if the quality of recording and performance was up to standard. A qualified recording was then filed away and would not be touched until it was scheduled to be released. 13 Record companies released new records in batches on a regular basis. A list of the newly released records of a company published in a newspaper or magazine would always cary a title indicating which batch it was. EMI released new records quarterly in 1941; the number of releases per year increased after 1945 and reached its peak in 1947 with twelve batches a year. Chapter Four The Platform 18 Advertising & publicity Before 1937, a great number of advertisements were placed in the print media, including leading dailies, local tabloids, and magazines dedicated to broadcasts, films or and other entertainment. The advertisements included information of newly released recordings together with eye-catching lines of words. It was not uncommon to se words drawing atention to the company’s ability to sign up artists, such as ‘Pathé has recruited al film stars to make recordings’ and ‘Al nationwide famous singers make recordings in Pathé’. There were also advertisements which showed portraits of various artists aserting ‘Al the recordings are made by briliant singers’, as wel as those for individual artist where their photos and lists of latest albums were presented. 14 Perhaps due to social and political instability, during the eight-year Sino- Japanese War and after 1945, the number of advertisements in the print media decreased sharply. Although no specific statistics can be shown here, it is a fact that virtualy no advertisements were placed in the leading The Shun Pao Daily (Shenpao), and full- or half-page advertisements comparable to the size of those appearing prior to 1937 could no longer be sen in magazines. In July 1937, EMI published Pathé Semionthly (Baidai banyuekan) as its official magazine and an alternative way of advertising, with a view to communicating publication information and production notes and introducing new artists to the public. However, since only the first isue of Pathé Monthly has been located so far and, surprisingly, no elderly fan or collector remembers this magazine, it remains to be sen how many isues were released and whether the magazine was distributed exclusively to retailers. Besides print advertising, EMI also instaled neon lights or signboards for major record shops and placed advertisements on main strets in the city centre. 15 The company was Chapter Four The Platform 19 concerned about how its products were aranged and exhibited in the front windows of records shops. In the first isue of Pathé Monthly, an article, with photos of outstanding window-dresing designs taken from some of its agents in Shanghai, emphasised the importance and benefits of proper window displays and required al retailers to arange the merchandise in ways similar to those shown in the photos. 16 Promotional events With a view to increasing sales volumes, major record companies usualy held special promotional events. These events included prize-giving and live performances. A ‘favourite star contest’ was a good method of drawing people’s atention to new recordings from those stars who played leading roles and sang songs in films. A case in point is the event held by Pathé Orient in 1934. 17 A balot paper was given out when a record was purchased and the more records one bought the more balots one got. Consumers wrote down and ranked the names of their favourite stars and sent the balots back to Pathé. Thre lucky participants who gave the ranking that was closest to the overal result were awarded a cash prize of one hundred dollars, a portable Pathé gramophone and a set of six records respectively. Undoubtedly record companies asumed that people would not only buy records for themselves but also try to persuade their friends to buy some, in order to get more balot papers. Therefore the star they supported would be voted the most popular and, at the same time they would have more chances to win a prize. Record companies also took opportunities to promote their products at various events held by other organisers. In an event named ‘the election of the queen and the top ten female Chinese movie stars of 1934’ in the famous Paramount Dancehal Chapter Four The Platform 120 (Bailemen wuting), EMI organised another competition – voice recognising. 18 Customers were invited to listen carefully to seven records played in public and decided who the singers were. They were then to write down the names on a voucher with seven blanks which could be found inside the record sleve of every record purchased. Those who gave correct answers would be eligible to enter a prize draw and might be awarded a Columbia five-tube radio, a Pathé gramophone machine or a set of twelve records. As EMI signed contracts with many film stars to make recordings of scren songs, playing records on this occasion was meant not only to be adding entertainment to the event but also to show the company’s capacity for recruiting singers to make recordings – ‘al great film stars are included on its roster’. In addition to giving away valuable prizes, live performances featuring stars also helped to bring consumers’ atention to the latest recordings. In the spring of 1941, in order to promote its newly released records, EMI organised a premiere concert in a dancehal during its ‘tea dance’ and invited singers, al of whom were also film stars, to deliver live performances of their new songs. 19 As some members from Shanghai Municipal Orchestra had long been engaged as sesion musicians, they were undoubtedly employed for this event. Interestingly, every song was played twice in this premiere. Guests were asked to remain seated the first time and listen to the singing, but they were fre to dance with their partners when the song was repeated by the music band only. Normaly, there was no additional admision fe; a customer usualy purchased several dance tickets and gave away one of them each time he danced with a taxi girl. However, on this occasion EMI charged extra fes for fear that too many guests and fans would flock into the venue, not only for dancing but also to se their favourite stars. Chapter Four The Platform 121 Licensing Radio stations had long been playing records without paying licensing fes to record companies because they were never required to pay. EMI regularly sent fre samples to radio stations of its own acord which they asked them to play to help promote new releases. However, in June 1935 H. L. Wilson, one of the directors of EMI (China), sent a leter to the radio stations in Shanghai and asked them to pay licensing fes for playing records, claiming that it was the norm in Europe and America. The leter required al the stations who played records released by EMI to pay 100 US dolars every month from the 1 st of July the same year on and that The records must be those which are specifically released for broadcasting; The records must be purchased at ful retail price; The airtime of record playing must be limited within three hours a day; Any record cannot be played more than once a day in the first week in which it is released and once a week from the second on; The producer, series number and title of the record should be announced before and after it is played; The recording to be played must be intact or the record company which releases it may recall it if the sound quality is not god for broadcasting. 20 Other foreign record companies such as RCA-Victor, Beka and Odeon soon also put forward the same requirements. To cope with the request, the Broadcasting Industry Asociation caled an emergency meting and then sent a reply. On the one hand, they claimed the request unreasonable because EMI had been aware of the situation for a long time and had once informed them by official leters that special offers were available for broadcasting. Moreover, since there was Chapter Four The Platform 12 no regulation regarding ‘gramophone records’ in the Chinese Law of Publication, even though it had been the norm in Europe and America to pay a licensing fe to record companies, these radio stations would not do so. They then appealed to the Ministry of the Interior and the Judicial Yuan for adjudication concerning the payment of licensing fes. On the other hand, the radio stations then asked EMI either to buy back al its records by the 8th of July 1935 because they would al become waste material as it was forbidden to play records on the air without paying the fes, or otherwise they would resume airplay despite the request. EMI did not respond to this warning and the radio stations decided to play records again. 21 About a month later, the Ministry of the Interior announced that regulations regarding copyright in the Law of Publication did not apply to gramophone records because the item ‘publication’ as used in the Law did not include gramophone records. In December, a commite in the Judicial Yuan adjudicated on the dispute and gave its verdict. As gramophone records were neither publications nor works with copyright, the so-caled exclusive right of public performance did not exist and the owner of a record might play it frely. Disputes betwen radio stations and record companies were thus setled, and these foreign companies remained silent on the licensing isue thereafter. 2 Record companies never received any fes from radio stations. 2. Composers and lyricists Shanghai popular song originated from Li Jinhui’s song-and-dance troupe, but apart from Li himself and some members in his troupe, it was songwriters from diferent backgrounds who joined the industry one after another throughout the whole Chapter Four The Platform 123 Shanghai era and gave impetus to the continuous creation of Shanghai popular song. They wrote songs for record companies or acepted commisions for films. While some composers such as Chen Gexin, Li Jingguang, Yao Min and Li Houxiang also wrote lyrics for their own or other composers’ songs, others such as Fan Yanqiao, Li Juanqing and Chen Dieyi only dedicated themselves to writing lyrics. With their musical talent, some composers learnt composition by themselves. Li Jinguang, Yan Zhexi and Yan Hua, members from Li’s song-and-dance troupe, not only started composing in the troupe but also continued their own songwriting carers after the troupe disbanded in 1935. After Li Jinguang was employed by EMI as a full-time composer in the late 1930s, he also invited Yan Zhexi to join the company. Yan Hua worked as a frelance songwriter with connexions to both EMI and RCA- Victor. Yao Min, a self-taught songwriter who started his carer composing, singing and playing instruments for the Great Unity Club on radio, also joined EMI in the late 1930s. Li Houxiang never received formal training in music either, but was employed by EMI and commisioned to compose for many film companies. Although receiving no formal music education, some of these composers continued expanding their musical knowledge along their carer paths by studying with private tutors or colleagues in record companies. For example, Li Ginguang studied instrumentation with the pianist Singer, and Yao Min and Li Houxiang with Chen Gexin. Besides those self-taught composers, there are some who received proper music education in academic institutions or from private tutors. Yang Gongshang and Liang Yueyin studied composition in Japan, He Lüting and Liu Xuean studied in the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Ren Guang studied composition and piano tuning in France, and Chen Gexin took lesons on various of compositional techniques from a private tutor. Chapter Four The Platform 124 Lyricists of Shanghai popular song also came from diferent profesional and social backgrounds. However, in comparison to composers, lyricists were seldom mentioned on newspapers and magazines in the Shanghai era and thus few of their biographical detials were left. It is known that only Chen Dieyi and Li Juanqing wrote lyrics for a living and continued their carers with EMI after it moved to Hong Kong. While Chen Dieyi was actualy a journalist before he turned his pasion for writing popular song lyrics into a ful-time job, it is not clear how Li Juanqing joined the popular music industry. 23 Other lyricists wrote occasionaly on commision or because of their involvement in film production. For example, Fan Yanqiao was a novelist and scriptwriter and Hu Xinling and Wu Cun were both film directors and often wrote lyrics for songs in their films. It is not clear how composers collaborated with lyricists on the creation of songs. However, when a song was adapted from a folk tune or foreign hit, the composer would engage a lyricist to prepare new lyrics for it. For example, He Lüting asked Tian Han to write new words for ‘The Wandering Songstres’ (Tianya genü) and ‘The Song of Four Seasons’ (Siji ge). As for a film song, lyrics based on the plot were usualy prepared by the film director or commisioned lyricist, and then set to music by a composer. For example, Chen Dieyi recaled that once Chen Gexin came to him and asked if he could remove one Chinese character from the lyrics of ‘Paired Phoenix’ (Fenghuang yufei) so that the words would fit beter into the melody. 24 In this case, the lyrics were obviously writen before the music. However, tunes might also be created before lyrics. Yao Li remembered that when a composer finished a tune, he would tel a lyricist the sentiment or feling that it was meant to deliver, such as sadnes, happines, tendernes or love, and the lyricist would then compose set words to it. 25 Chapter Four The Platform 125 Unlike lyricists who merely worked on words, perhaps because some composers were employed ful-time by record companies and in addition to create melodies they had to asume more responsibilities. They also aranged instrumental acompaniments for songs, conducted in the studio and chose singers to make recordings for specific works. For example, sometimes Li Jinguang and Chen Gexin would prepare scores for sesion musicians and conduct the band and singer in recording sesions. When a song was finished, the composer usualy had in mind an ideal singer to perform the piece and would just choose that specific singer for the recording. As pointed out by Zhang Fan and Jin Yi, singers always had trust in the composer and would simply follow his instruction, rather than arguing why a particular song was not asigned for them. 26 3. Instrumentalists Filipino bandsmen had already cultivated an appreciation of jaz and acquired relevant performing techniques in their homeland due to the influence of American colonists. They came to Shanghai of their own acord to cater for the city’s nightlife with their musical expertise. Unlike their Philippine counterparts, White Russian clasical musicians, fleing the October Revolution, came to this metropolis unwilingly. Some of these musicians were fortunate to continue their musical carer by teaching in the Shanghai Conservatory of Music or providing private music lesons, some managed to join the Shanghai Municipal Symphony Orchestra, and others had no alternative but to play in cabarets. Those who had to play dance music and American jaz probably developed the technical skils after they switched from the concert hal to the dancehal. A Rusian instrumentalist, Tino, amazed at the Shanghainese people’s exceptional adoration for dance music, said to a tabloid in an Chapter Four The Platform 126 interview that he would never understand why the Chinese were so much ‘enchanted by jaz, a weird product of Western music, to such an unusual high degre’. He was personaly much more fascinated by clasical music but played jaz at the dancehal only to earn a living. 27 Although it could not be denied that there were more admirable Philippine musical bands performing in Shanghai, it was White Russian musicians from the Municipal Symphony Orchestra who were more often engaged by record companies to play in recording sesions because they were able to play both clasical music and jaz to a high standard. No wonder another Russian instrumentalist, Mick Korin, maintained that even though most the Shanghainese regarded Filipino jazmen as more competent, those who had a real taste of music would know who were beter. 28 Obviously, from his personal view, White Russians should have been ranked higher than the Filipinos. It is generaly believed that Chinese instrumentalists were far les proficient in playing jaz and were thus never appointed to acompany singers in the studio, yet it is stil not clear to what degre they were involved in recording sesions. Zhu Zhonghua, a former employee of EMI working in the recording studio from 1942 to 1945, remembers that there were Chinese playing Western instruments. Zheng Deren, a basist who used to play in dancehals in the 1940s, also indicates that EMI once required members of its Chinese music ensemble to learn to play Western instruments. To give an example, Huang Yijun, who used to play huqin, went to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music to learn the trumpet, viola and piano and Qin Pengzhang, who used to play pipa, learnt the clarinet. 29 Zhu and Zheng’s statements suggest that Chinese musicians might occasionaly be hired to play Western instruments in the studio. Chapter Four The Platform 127 Although music scores were prepared before a recording sesion so that the instrumentalists could simply follow the arangements, sometimes they would arange their own instrumental parts as wel. Acording to Zhang Fan and Wu Yingyin, foreign instrumentalists were competent to play without pre-aranged music in the studio. They usualy first made themselves familiar with the tune, and then had a quick chat before the recording sesion to alocate parts and reach agrement on isues, such as who would play the introduction of the song and who would give a solo fil-in musical phrase or an improvisation on the tune. Those instrumentalists were so experienced and skilful that they could start recording a song imediately after only a few rehearsals with the singer. In addition to acompanying in such an extemporaneous way, some of them probably were also involved beforehand in the work of instrumentation and arangement. 30 Since White Russian clasical musicians and Filipino jazmen were capable of aranging instrumental acompaniments on the spur of the moment, it is reasonable to asume that some of these foreign instrumentalists also participated in arangements for recordings. However, few details about their actual involvement were documented. Acording to Li Jinguang, Aaron Avshalomov, a clasical musician who composed much orchestral, opera and balet music featuring Chinese themes, was once engaged by EMI to prepare music arangements and supervise recording sesions. Aleksandr Slutskii, a profesor of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, took on the job after Avshalomov resigned in 1936. EMI also once employed the pianist Singer as a conductor in the recording studio. 31 While record companies would sign up singers and employed songwriters, no record company actualy maintained an in-house jaz band or Western orchestra for its recording sesions. EMI maintained a close relationship with members of the Shanghai Municipal Symphony Orchestra as wel as with some other Filipino Chapter Four The Platform 128 instrumentalists active in cabarets, and engaged them to play in recording sesions. As for RCA-Victor, in order to save the cost of hiring foreign bands, the company once organised a Victor Wind Band composed of Chinese students who had just graduated from senior high school. However, due to its poor performance in recording sesions, this wind band was later relegated to play at a dancehal and no longer played in the studio. 32 As for Chinese music bands, Nie Er once set up a Pathé Chinese Ensemble, also known as Sensen Chinese Music Band (Sunsun guoyuedui), in EMI for the purpose of recording Chinese instrumental works as wel as acompanying popular songs aranged in the traditional style. Ren Guang continued to lead the ensemble after Nie resigned from EMI, but the ensemble disbanded in 1937 when Ren left the company. After that, as the famous lyricist Chen Dieyi remembers, no other in-house traditional Chinese musical band was organised, and anyone who played huqin might be hired to form a pickup band. Even the prolific songwriter Yao Min once played huqin for a recording sesion. 3 4. Singers Shanghai pop singers entered the industry from various musical backgrounds. As with songwriters, some singers received training and started their singing carers in Li Jinhui’s song-and-dance troupe. Even before Li’s troupe disolved, some of them, for example, Li Lili, Wang Renmei, Bai Hong and Zhou Xuan, had already performed on radio or acted on the scren from the early 1930s onwards. Gong Qiuxia, previously a member of the Peach Blossom song-and-dance troupe (Meihua gewutuan), became a record singer and film actres after she left the troupe. Yao Li entered on her singing carer as a radio singer and began making recordings on Yan Hua and Zhou Xuan’s recommendation. Wu Yingyin was scouted by Li Jinguang Chapter Four The Platform 129 after she acepted the offer to perform regularly at Ciro's Nightclub & Balroom (Xianlesi). Jin Yin was discovered by Chen Gexin at the age of twelve when she sang along outside a glas studio in a department store, and then formaly engaged to make records for EMI when she was sixten. Bai Guang once studied with Miura Tamaki in Tokyo in the early 1940s. Although she was originaly a soprano, she developed a lower and thicker voice and became an alto during her singing carer. 34 Li Xianglan, a Japanese, who learnt singing with a Russian coloratura soprano, Podolev, began her carer as an actres in Manchuria and then came Shanghai to join the pop industry. Some singers, such as Li Lihua, Chen Yumei and Hu Die, were indeed actreses, but since they were required to sing in films and make recordings for record companies, and so were equaly adored by the audience, they were also participants in the Shanghai pop industry. Strictly speaking, the audience diferentiated betwen singing stars (gexing), such as Yao Lli and Wu Yingying, who only made records and gave live performances, and film stars (yingxin), such as Hu Die and Li Lihua, who were profesional actreses. However, as some were both great singers and actreses, such as Zhou Xuan, Bai Guang and Li Xianglan, the line betwen gexing and mingxing became blurred, and they were just perceived as ‘stars’ (mingxing, literaly ‘bright stars’). Although singers contracted to a record company usualy followed the instruction given by composers to make recordings of whatever songs were asigned to them, there was no guidance on singing, nor was there any training provided to enhance musicality and technical proficiency. They had to rely on their own talent and experience. 35 Those singers who only received basic training in song-and-dance troupes, as wel as those who were self-taught and never atended any singing course, Chapter Four The Platform 130 usualy took private lesons to advance their singing skils after they became wel known. For example, after signing for EMI, Wu Yingyin and Jin Yin started learning vocal techniques with Chinese tutors from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Both Ouyang Feiying and Qu Yunyun studied European clasical music and art songs with an American singer, Mrs Ford, and a Russian soprano, Mrs Levi. Even most celebrated Zhou Xuan also engaged a Russian vocalist to teach her proper Western singing skils nine years after the release of her debut record. Record companies in the 1930s and 1940s did not launch promotions for individual record singers, nor were there any known talent agencies that organised publicity for artists. Therefore, in addition to improving singing skils to produce more outstanding works, it was esential for singers to make the most of every occasion where they met the audience. While those who sang on the scren might make frequent public appearances in promotional events organised by film companies, record singers had les opportunities to contact their fans. Yan Fei remembered that some devoted fans would come to the radio station when she performed live on radio, and watch through the glas partition of the studio while listening to the programe delivered from the speakers. She would then be glad to met and talk to them afterwards. Zhang Fan remarked that she never had any schedule for meting fans like pop idols do today, and she did not have much contact with the audience except when atending ribbon-cutting ceremonies for various venues or performing on special occasions, such as festivities, charity concerts or other one-off guest performances. She was always in a good mood to se supportive fans. Zhang maintained that film stars and record singers were not keen on performing regularly at dancehals or other entertainment venues. Nevertheles, Yao Li and Wu Yingying continued to perform at dancehals regularly even after signed Chapter Four The Platform 131 up by EMI. Although film companies, record companies and magazine publishers would give away autographed photos on request, singers who did not appear regularly at specific venues often replied to fan leters personaly and gave autographs when approached by their fans in strets. For instance, once when strolling down a stret, Zhou Xuan and Bai Hong were suddenly surrounded by a crowd of fervent fans. They then both spent plenty of time signing autographs for the crowd. Bai Guang also sent autographed photos as often as possible to her fans when requested, although she complained that it did cost a lot to prepare those photos. 36 I. The seling proces The seling proces basicaly covers al the major channels through which music moved on to the consuming proces. While some institutions, such as film companies, maintained closer relations with record companies, others such as publishers or dancehals primarily distributed music in their own right. Whereas retailers sold physical records, radio stations delivered sounds over the airwaves. In whatever form the musical products were distributed, it was through various participants that Shanghai popular songs reached the audience. This section explores the activities of publishers, retailers, film companies, radio stations and dancehals, and regulatory institutions which might influence the distribution of musical products. 1. Agents and promoters As shown in the hypothetical flowchart of Shanghai popular music industry, there should have been agents who facilitated distribution of records and cooperation betwen record and film companies, as wel as promoters who organised live Chapter Four The Platform 132 performances in radio stations and many other entertainment establishments. However, neither existing documents nor information gathered from fieldwork interviews reveal those individuals who were responsible for this work. It remains to be discovered who they were and how they played the role. 2. Publishers From the outset most popular songs reached the audience through sound films, gramophone records or broadcasts in the 1930s and 1940s. A songbook compiler would decide whether or not to publish them later acording to their popularity among the audience. Although some film companies released sheet music of film songs in newspapers or magazines before the screning of films, it was just part of their advertising and promotion activities. Only few of the Shanghai popular songwriters in the 1930s had writen songs at the request of publishers or released their works in the form of sheet music or songbooks. Li Jinhui and Xu Ruhui are the only two prolific pop composers in the Shanghai era who had once used printed music scores as a primary approach to present their compositions to the public without recording them before. 37 Apart from his musical dramas for children published by the China Book Bureau (Zhonghua shuju), Li Jinhui had writen popular songs for publishers twice during his musical carer. The first was at the beginning of 1929 when he found himself stranded in Singapore, as described in the introductory chapter. The second time was in the autumn of 1935 when the Bright Moon Song-and-Dance Operatic Society (Mingyue gewujushe), which he reorganised in 1932, fel into desperate financial straits. In order to cover the basic cost of living for members in the society, Chapter Four The Platform 13 Li approached the Uni-Sound Bookshop (Tongsheng shudian) to publish some ‘new songs’, which were in fact compositional exercises writen by some of the members and several pieces of Li’s earlier works. As he remembered, anyone could imagine how ridiculous these publications were, because the number ‘80’, which was in fact the score he marked on a sheet of a member’s compositional exercise, was surprisingly mistaken for music notation and printed in a songbook. 38 When the proceds from the publication of one songbook had been spent, he collected more ‘new songs’ and compiled another. In this way, twenty volumes were published in succesion, each of which contained betwen twenty and thirty-five songs. Unlike Li Jinhui who submited his pop works to eke a living, Xu Ruhui published his songs with great ambition at his own cost. Xu founded the Midnight Music Society (Ziye yuehui) in 1929 with the intention of promoting popular songs to a wider audience in society. During the development stage of the society, he wrote twelve songs and commisioned the North New Bookshop (Beixin shudian) in Shanghai to publish a songbook. This collection of songs won great popularity and sold very wel, so he began to compose more and wrote one song per wek, publishing the sheet music in a title Midnight Wekly Song (Ziye zhouge). 39 With the exception of those songbooks and sheets published by or for Li Jinhui and Xu Ruhui, there appeared to be no further close cooperation betwen pop songwriters and publishing houses. Composers tended to establish solid relationship with film and record companies through which their works could reach the audience, in the form of real sound rather than words and music on sheets. Publishers did not deal with individual composers, but rather compiled songbooks from a variety of films or recordings. They functioned more as conveyors of pop songs than as purveyors in the industry. Most pop songbooks published in this period became Chapter Four The Platform 134 supplementary information which provided lyrics and tunes of latest songs for listeners who had no aces to original copies of sheet music which were found in record sleves, and for members of singing clubs who delivered live performances on radio. An editor once indicated in the preface of a songbook that composers’ works were no longer submited straight for publication and therefore ‘anyone who was fond of singing felt that there were no songs to sing’. 40 Aware of this situation, he collected some Chinese and foreign popular songs and published them so that those who enjoyed singing could obtain the material. Unlike music specialists in the American Tin Pan Aley on the eastern shore of the Pacific, those who published popular songbooks in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai were normal publishing houses who operated their own bookshops and printing plants and whose main busines was non-music publishing. Although it is dificult to track down how these publishers came to set up this line of musical products in addition to ordinary publications, it is believed that composers must have been on good terms with some executives in bookshops. Li Jinhui could not have had his works published when he was in financial dificulties, had it not been for his former afiliation with publishers and people in the publishing circle whom him worked with when engaged to edit Mandarin Chinese textbooks for primary school pupils in Shanghai. On the other hand, publishers must have sen the potential profits pop songbooks could bring in and so invested in individual composers’ works and other compilations to create additional revenue streams. While a publisher would be interested in releasing a collection of the latest or most popular songs, a radio station, a radio singing club or individual enthusiast could also print a selection of club specialities or an audience’s favourites. They either released a songbook in their own right or under the Chapter Four The Platform 135 sponsorship of various advertisers, or requested a publisher to print and deliver it to the market. To give several examples, the Setled Vila Radio Station (Anding bieshu guangbo diantai) published songbooks at intervals in its own name in 1934. The editor stated that it was for the audience’s benefit that the station compiled this collection of songs so that ‘having an isue in hand, every listener listens to and reads music in a carefre and joyous way and learns to sing at the same time.’ 41 Also a group caled the Starlight Song and Dance Research Society (Xingguang gewu yanjiushe) compiled and published 1000 Famous Film Songs (Dianying mingge yiqian qu) in 1934 and 500 Famous Film Songs (Dianying mingge wubai qu) the following year. Interestingly, songs collected in these two volumes are not al from the scren but also included several works from song-and-dance programes, arias of Beijing operas and, surprisingly, political songs such as ‘Song of the Chinese National Party’ (Zhongguo guomindang dangge) and ‘In Memory of the Prime Minister’ (Zongli jinian ge). Moreover, they did not include as many songs, 1000 and 500, as the titles of these two songbooks revealed, but rather only 218 and 170 respectively. These overstatements were just embelishment which was intended to make the songbooks look more encyclopaedic. Rather than publishing songbooks in its own right, like the Setled Vila Radio Station or the Starlight Song and Dance Research Society, the Star Club (Mingxing she) released a compilation of popular songs through a publishing house, the Generous Bookshop (Dafang shuju), as shown on its back cover. 42 There is often publication data, together with words such as ‘copyrighted, reproduction forbidden’, inside or on the back cover of some songbooks which were released through a publisher. However, those colections compiled by a radio station Chapter Four The Platform 136 or club sem to be ‘not copyrighted’, because most of them did not cary proper information about publication. In most cases, only the group or radio station’s title and the compiler’s name were given but no clear statement regarding copyright was made. Although song recordings were not regarded as copyrighted publications in this period, songbooks were definitely of a ‘documentary mater and ilustrations printed by machinery or technical proceses and intended for sale or distribution’ under Article 1 of the Law of Publication. 43 Even so, since the statutory rights of the composer and lyricist were not explicitly stated in the Chinese Law of Publication, publishing houses and other groups might not contact songwriters for royalty isues nor take into acount any potential legal obligation. As a result, not only was there a lack of publication detail in most songbooks but also the names of composers and lyricists were even sometimes omited from the top of a page where the information could have conventionaly been given. Songbook editors probably did not even know who the writers were. While a publisher paid Li Jinhui royalties on the publication of his compositions in the early years, other songwriters did not receive any financial reward when their works were put together and published. 3. Retailers Although both EMI and RCA-Victor had their own showrooms in Shanghai, records were mostly sold by four types of retailers – music shops, gramophone shops, bookshops and department stores. Gramophone shops also sometimes functioned as wholesalers. Chapter Four The Platform 137 Music shops When introduced to China in the early twentieth century, gramophones and records were mainly sold in foreign music shops which specialised in Western musical instruments, particularly pianos, and printed music. Among these music shops the long-established British Moutrie & Co. and Robinson Piano Co. opened in the 1870s while the wel-known Sam Lázaro Brothers was founded later by a Goa- born Portuguese pianist Sam Lázaro in 1924. 4 Before the emergence of profesional gramophone shops in the late 1920s, music shops were the primary distribution channels for gramophone records and most recordings available there were mainly Western music and some Chinese operas. These shops either imported records of Euro-American music direct from abroad or made purchases through the local agents of record companies. 45 However, in relation to other existing merchandise, records were just extra items offered in a music shop and it sems that the major music shops never regarded records as important stock items, particularly after record shops came to the fore. It was inevitable that in due course music shops would give way to gramophone shops in the record trade. Among the music shops listed in yelow pages published in the late 1930’s when a few record shops had opened in Shanghai, only the Grand Music Store, run by a Czech, Alois Suchochleb, clearly stated that it provided gramophones and records. 46 Gramophone shops Although being important distributors of records in the early years, music shops did not play an important part in the disemination of Shanghai popular songs. The creation of Chinese popular music in modern times started in the late 1920s when Chapter Four The Platform 138 music shops were no longer the main channels of gramophone records in the marketplace. After a series of acquisitions and mergers betwen record companies in Europe and America in the early 1930s, the time when the production of Shanghai popular songs was about to take off, surviving recording conglomerates overseas became larger and stronger and thus their subsidiaries in China could move in to establish local sales networks. With a stable supply of a wide range of records from major record companies and the growing popularity of record playing among Chinese people came a strong demand for a profesional supply service. Therefore a number of gramophone shops opened up to provide al kinds of music recordings and various models of gramophones and radio receivers. Among these were the Shanghai Talking Machine Company (Dasheng wuxiandian changji hang), the Sing Sung Phonograph Company (Xinsheng changji gongsi), the Golden Sound Phonograph (Jinsheng changji gongsi) and the Pao Fang Company (Baofang gongsi), whose shop windows were al pictured and taken as models of good window-dresing designs in the first isue of Pathé Monthly. These shops maintained close connections with record companies and most of them could place purchase orders straight to the major companies where their order departments were responsible for order procesing. Those shops which had a bank’s endorsement and an adequate amount of busines capital were also alowed credit to purchase records in large quantities, and therefore some were able to provide a mail order service or, functioning as wholesalers, supply records nationwide to other shops in smaler cities. 47 Bookshops Bookshops had been seling records from probably about the time that records of Li Jinhui’s children’s musical drama, recorded by the local Great China Records, Chapter Four The Platform 139 were atached to the scripts, published by the China Book Bureau and sold in bookshops. For example, the Civilisation Book Bureau (Wenming shuju), one of those bookshops which published sheet music of Li’s love songs, sold records of al major labels in the 1930s, in a similar way to those profesional gramophone shops. Unlike music shops, some bookshops maintained a busines in record retailing throughout the whole Shanghai era of Chinese popular music even though not al bookshops offered records, and in the late 1940s, the Central Book Store (Zhongyang shuju), for instance, was stil exclusively offering al kinds of the latest pop records released by EMI. 48 Department stores Another notable outlet was the department store, and there were four premier department stores in Shanghai. The first among them, the Sincere Company (Xianshi gongsi), came into existence in 1917, and the other thre, Wing On (Yongan), Sun Sun (Xinxin) and Dah Sun (Daxin) opened respectively in 1918, 1926 and 1936. The way in which these department stores operated, by displaying a wide range of consumer products tastefully in a wel-organised order and seling at a fixed price, was quite diferent to the traditional Chinese retail practices in which prices were always negotiable and aces to goods of high value and quality was only given to a limited number of wealthier customers who had ben properly introduced. 49 In these department stores, with the requirement that al commodities be presented atractively, records together with gramophones and radios were usualy sold in a specific area in a way that resembled a smal gramophone shop. The vast number of prospective customers atracted by the novelty and the collection of goods, together with the spacious shopping area, also made a department store an ideal place for promotional Chapter Four The Platform 140 events. For example, in 1934 Win On held a thre-day live performance in asociation with RCA-Victor, in which recording stars were invited to sing their latest numbers in the ‘music section’ of the store, which was then also broadcast live by a local radio station. The store also offered singers’ photos in a buy-one-get-one-fre promotion to those who purchased records during the event. 50 4. Film companies The use of songs in films did not, of course, begin until the introduction of sound into films in China. The years 1930 to 1936 saw a period of transition when production turned gradualy from silent films to sound films and both silent and sound films became available in the marketplace. In the early 1930s, after the introduction of sound on the scren, its use was simply to fil up the soundtrack of a film with songs or acompanying music but dialogue and other audio content were usualy not recorded. Not until 1935 did sound films become dominant. 51 Major film companies in Shanghai had diferent atitudes towards the production of sound films and never shared common ground on whether or not to invest in this new technology. In 1930 the Star Motion Picture (Mingxing yingpian gongsi) made the first sound film in China – Sing-song Girl Red Peony (Genü hongmudan) featuring four arias from Beijing opera. With the technical support of Pathé Orient, this film used the earlier sound-on-disc format to record the dialogue and music. Acquiring the asistance of thre American engineers, the Unique Films (Tianyi yingpian gongsi) also produced its first sound film The Romance of the Sing- song House (Gechang chunse) in 1931. This film utilised the more advanced optical recording, which photographicaly recorded sound directly onto the side of the strip of Chapter Four The Platform 141 motion picture film. The United Photoplay (Lianhua yingye gongsi), which was inclined to support leftists, opted to retain its interest in silent films, although it had also produced several tentative sound productions using the sound-on-disc format, such as Loose Women Picked Up by Men (Yecao xianhua) in 1930 and Twin Stars of the Silver Scren (Yinhan shuangxing) in 1931. 52 However, Lianhua’s Loose Woman Picked Up By Men did set a record with regard to the history of Chinese cinema. ‘Words on Seking Brother’ (Xunxiong ci) in the film is the first song exclusively writen for a Chinese film. It is also the first time that the leading actors had sung on the scren. The lyrics were writen by the film director Sun Yu and the music was composed by his brother Sun Chengbi. To ensure that the singing was synchronised with the actors’ lips on the scren, Sun Yu took his asistant to the cinema and played the disc himself for thre days. In addition to the original disc played in the cinema, this song was also recorded by the local Great China and New Moon Records, acompanied by a Chinese ensemble and a Western band respectively, and the gramophone records together with the sheet music were put up for sale on the film’s release day. 53 Although there is no extant report or evidence as to whether this record was commercialy succesful, the release of film songs on records set an example for the industry and the film and recording industry have been closely linked ever since. As the sound-on-disc format could cause synchronisation problems, there was a need for it to be supplanted by the technology of sound on film. With the steady development and increasing popularity of sound films, film companies maintained their own recording facilities, recruited music profesionals, organised the production of film songs and recorded them opticaly on film. 54 However, these recordings could only be played through the optical projection of films in the cinema and it was Chapter Four The Platform 142 impossible to retrieve the sound by other methods. Since there was no equipment capable of converting to audio from optical signals, any song intended for release to the public in the form of a gramophone record had to be re-recorded. Actors who performed in the film, or other designated singers of the song, were thus required to sing again in the recording studio of a record company. Film songs could be released either before or after screnings or might never even be made into records. It al depended on how a film company decided to promote a film and whether a record company saw financial benefit in making a recording of a film song. For example, it was part of the filmaker’s marketing plan to isue ‘Words on Seking Brother’ as a record before the film was shown on the asumption that the audience would buy the record imediately after seing the film. Film advertisements in newspapers in the 1930s usualy stresed that songs in a film had been recorded and released. For example, thre days before the premiere of Stret Angel (Malu tienshi), the Star Motion Picture announced that two film songs, the famous ‘The Wandering Songstres’ and ‘The Song of Four Seasons’ both performed by Zhou Xuan, had been recorded by EMI. Because EMI had made its name known to the Chinese people in the 1930s, placing an advertisement with the information that film songs were isued by an established record company would impres on the audience that the production of songs had met a high enough standard to be released. 5 Similarly, to demonstrate its close connection to RCA-Victor, Yi Hwa Motion Picture (Yihua yingye gongsi) ran an advertisement for the film Exile (Taowang) one day before its release to declare that two of the songs in the film, ‘Song of Exile’ (Taowang qu) and ‘Girl from the Vilage in the North’ (Saibei cunnü), had been made into a record by RAC-Victor. 56 Chapter Four The Platform 143 Sometimes a film company could even publicise extra information about film songs. For example, for its new film A Red Chamber in the Dep Spring (Honglou chunshen) together with the scren song ‘Song of Picking Lotus’ (Cailian ge), in 1934 the Unique Films ran a full-page advertisement in The Shun Pao Daily on the release which proclaimed that Al dancehalls from today onwards play the music ‘Song of Picking Lotus’ from A Red Chamber in the Deep Spring Al radio stations from today onwards play the record ‘Song of Picking Lotus’ sung by Chen Yumei Pathé from today onwards is releasing the record, Chen Yumei singing ‘Song of Picking Lotus’, No. 34671. 57 Obviously the song was a major seling point for the film company. While the film companies promoted films by highlighting film songs and demonstrating the support from major record companies for these songs, the record companies found that both film stars and the films themselves were also an endorsement for records. EMI, for example, placed a half-page advertisement for its newly released record compilations of songs from six films produced by diferent film companies in Young Companion (Liangyou) in 1934, with distinctive catch lines: An unprecedented contribution [in which] Pathé has sought and colected songs from sound films of all major companies Grand exhibition of contemporary Chinese songs; general mobilisation of stars from the screen 58 The advertisement gave details of the composer, lyricist and singer of each song, the title of the film from which each song came, the catalogue number of each record and Chapter Four The Platform 14 pointed out that al six films had been screned around 10 October, a month before the publication of the advertisement. The text of the advertisement, particularly the catch line, was apparently intended to show off the record company’s matchles capacity to recruit film stars to in order to make recordings. As a mater of commercial interest, record companies reacted to the market and took the initiative by recording any film song which they considered potentialy profitable. They usualy requested film stars to make recordings of film songs, yet sometimes other celebrated singers would also be invited to reinterpret the songs. After the screning of the legendary film The Wandering Songstres in the Golden Castle Theatre (Jindu da xiyuan) over the Chinese New Year in 1941, EMI imediately recognised the potential of the film songs to be great hits, so the stars in the film were asked to re-record the songs. There were originaly ten songs in the film, eight of which were sung by the leading lady Zhou Xuan and the other two by guest performers Yao Li and Du Jie. Zhou Xuan was stil selected to make the eight songs into gramophone records and Yao Li was appointed to perform the other two. 59 As by then Yao was also a famous radio singer and had made her name known to the public in several recordings, the reason for EMI’s decision was self-evident. On the one hand, a record company would seize any opportunity to make records of songs from succesful films, yet on the other, it might ignore songs which it considered les appealing to the audience. A case in point is the musical film Orioles Flying on Earth (Ying fei renjian), which was produced by the famous director Fang Peilin in 1946. The film featured extravagant scenic setings and twelve exquisite songs, composers of which included the reputable pop songwriters Li Jinguang, Chen Gexing and Yao Min, and a musician from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Huang Yijun. The clasicaly trained soprano Ouyang Chapter Four The Platform 145 Feiying was the leading actor and singer and the eminent tenor Huang Feiran was also invited to sing a duet with her in this film. EMI only selected ten songs in Orioles Flying on Earth to make recordings, supposing that the rest of them were too unatractive to be popular with the general public. Le Leng-kok indicates that since ‘The Theme Song of Orioles Flying on Earth’ (Yingfei renjian zhutiqu), one of the two unreleased songs, was not a solo piece for Ouyang but a mixed chorus performed by students from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, and that its lyrics were full of satirical atacks on profiters at that time, it was not surprising that EMI chose not made a record of it. 60 No mater how the recording industry made the decision whether to record a film song or how filmakers promoted their films by using songs, they were now tied to each other in taking advantage of the channels that they dominated and shared. Composers of Shanghai popular songs were a bridge betwen the two industries. Although the terms of RCA-Victor’s relationship with film companies are not clear, the critical roles of the Chinese musical director and composers working in EMI ilustrate this point. On paper, the foreign manager’s decision was final, but in fact the Chinese musical director also had a pivotal role in the asesment of prospective new releases. Ren Guang was a composer who had a close connection with many leftists, including musicians, writers and filmakers. On the one hand, as a head of the recording studio he had to discover musical works of commercial potential, ranging from traditional operas to newly composed popular songs, and keep foreign managing directors satisfied with sales figures. It cannot be denied that many of Li Jinhui’s love songs and other songwriters’ works which were harshly condemned by leftists were indeed released by Pathé Oriental, or later by EMI, during Ren’s term as Musical Director. 61 Chapter Four The Platform 146 On the other hand, as a member of several left wing societies which maintained covert links with the Chinese Communist Party, he asumed the responsibility of introducing more leftist musicians’ compositions and songs in leftist films to a wider audience. Although song lyrics were usualy translated into English to be approved by foreign managers before a recording sesion, the example of the song ‘Huangpu River’ (Huangpu jiang) from the film New Women (Xin nüxing) shows that this was not always the case. This film featured two songs, ‘Song of New Women’ (Xin nüxing ge) and ‘Huangpu River’ both of which were made into records by EMI. While the former was succesful and gained popularity, the later was not only censored before the film was screned but also officialy banned. ‘Huangpu River’ was in fact adapted from Li Jinhui’s romantic ‘The River of Peach Blossom’ (Taohua jiang) with rewriten lyrics for the film. Because the lyrics described the Huangpu River, which the Bund was adjacent to and most foreign banks and companies were located by, as ‘the den of enemies’ and cursed that ‘those who ocupy the land are al devils’, the song was considered to be a mesage of anti-imperialism which could lead to chaos. As a result, EMI could only leave al copies of the record in the stockroom. 62 Obviously, if foreign managers had read the lyrics carefuly and appreciated the innuendo, Ren Guang would have not been able to produce the record in the first place. In the years of Fu Xiangxun’s term as dramatic director, those composers who were employed full-time in EMI also wrote songs at the request of film companies and kept on good terms with other musicians in the industry. They would therefore have participated in the decision-making with regard to whether or not to record a song, particularly their own compositions. After one of these prolific songwriters, Li Ginguang, was promoted to take the position of musical director in EMI in 1945, the Chapter Four The Platform 147 production and release of film songs was completely undertaken by Chinese personnel. 5. Radio stations The number of stations varied from time to time in the 1930s and 1940s due to the change in the political and social situation, but there were always approximately twenty radio stations broadcasting in Shanghai. 63 Although state radio stations may have alocated timeslots for pop programes, it was primarily through two dominant forms of entertainment programes, record playing and live performances by singing clubs, which were broadcast by commercial stations that popular songs were heard across the whole of Shanghai. Record playing Playing records on the air was probably the simplest and most economical way to produce a programe, particularly for those smal stations equipped with nothing more than a low-powered radio transmiter and operated by amateur radio clubs. 64 It semed that to most of the audience in the 1930s and 1940s the songs being broadcast were more important than those who chose and played them. Since there was neither any feature article or column concerning programe hosts in the print media, nor was there any programe with a particular host known to the public, there semed no specific personnel in the radio stations functioning as profesional disc jockeys, playing records and giving introductions to or comments on songs. The names of programe sponsors and some introductions to their products or services were also delivered live to the public by the staf of a station because there was no pre-recorded Chapter Four The Platform 148 radio advertising at that time. Typicaly a record-playing programe appearing in a schedule was usualy only titled ‘Records’ rather than the name of a DJ or programe host, sometimes with supplementary words merely to describe the music content, ‘Chinese’ or ‘Latest’, for example. The length of a record-playing programe might generaly range from fiften minutes to an hour. A shorter one was usualy meant to introduce new releases or to fil in the time gap betwen longer programes, while an hour-long programe was beter organised and would play listeners’ requests. Some of the audience prefered listening to records rather than songs performed live by singing clubs because they thought that every record was a masterpiece made with meticulous care by a famous artist and an ordinary radio singer’s technique was simply not as good as that of a trained recording star. 65 They would try their best to get a request played by writing to the radio station or by telephoning when a programe was being broadcast. To met the various needs of the audience, radio stations did their utmost to sek out and collect al kinds of records and borrowed from record companies when a specific record was not available on the market. However, the audience were seldom satisfied. As it took almost seven minutes to play a two-side gramophone record, taking into consideration time reserved for advertising, only six records at most could be played in an hour-long programe and even les in a shorter one. An infuriated listener, under the pseudonym ‘a female vilain’ (baixiangren saosao), made a complaint in The Shanghai Radio Wekly (Shanghai wuxiandian): I thought you should have received my last letter but why didn’t you play my requests? Are you blind or something? From today onwards, should you fail to play my requests, your station wil be shut down son. 6 Chapter Four The Platform 149 Obviously, this disatisfied listener’s requests had never been played due to the limited time available for the programe, partly because there were too many requests made by listeners and partly because advertisements took up so much time. As a reader of The Shun Pao Daily indicated, there was often a five-minute, sometimes even ten, commercial break after a thre-minute song. 67 No wonder the ‘female vilain’ was iritated. Live performance In the 1930s and 1940s people had more choice of vocal music than before. Traditional folk and operatic music was no longer the only option in Chinese people’s musical life after school songs, children’s musical dramas, love songs, leftist mas songs and diferent kinds of film songs came into existence and were delivered through gramophone records, radio broadcastings and sound films. Those who were more keen on singing than listening to songs organised other like-minded people to form the so-caled ‘music club’ (yinyueshe) or ‘singing club’ (geyongshe), and gathered regularly to sing the latest songs acompanied by several members playing instruments. These clubs gradualy moved from singing in private gatherings to performing on radio. The first radio singer group is the Art Transformation Club (Yihua she), which was founded in 1932 and had its debut in the China-West Radio Station (Zhongxi diantai). 68 As the Art Transformation Club was an amateur group, the members only went to the radio station once a wek on Sunday. Although there had already been on radio a wide range of live programes of traditional story-teling balads, folk songs and operas, the audience in the early 1930s could only listen to records playing Chapter Four The Platform 150 popular songs on the air. Despite being broadcast only once a wek, the brand-new live programe of popular songs soon caught the audience’s atention. Enthusiastic about the programe, the owner of the China-West Radio Station even donated several musical instruments to support the Art Transformation Club. The succesful amateur live performance of popular songs on radio paved the way for future commercial programes. Six months later, the first commercial singing club, the Wonderful Sound Group (Miaoyin tuan), was organised by Ma Loufen, a former member of Li Jinhui’s song-and-dance troupe who left the troupe during the Southeast Asia tour. 69 By the third day of the group’s trial run on radio, four shops had approached them and agred to offer sponsorship. Seing the group’s impresive performance and the financial reward they had reaped, more and more radio music clubs mushroomed and joined the broadcasting industry. When Ma Loufen set up the first commercial radio singing club, the rate at which they charged a sponsor for a programe broadcast on a daily basis was 320 dollars per month, out of which each member received from 20 up to 50 acording to his or her capacity and status in the club. In comparison to a factory labourer whose average monthly pay rate in 1933 was approximately 15 dollars, performing in a couple of programes a day a singing club member could be amply rewarded with a huge salary every month. 70 To those who were able to sing several tunes or play an instrument nothing could be more atractive than performing on radio and making a decent living, and therefore one after another music clubs went to radio stations. Acording to timetables of singing programes, there were no more than thre pop singing programes everyday in Shanghai in March 1933, in July 1934 there were nine clubs delivering live performance on radio, and by September 1935 the number of radio singing clubs soared to twenty-thre. 71 Chapter Four The Platform 151 The increase in the number of music clubs over the airwaves in Shanghai caused problems. Al of them faced heavy competition and thus were forced to bite the bullet and cut prices to bid for advertisers resulting in a drastic decline in 1936 to 50 dollars in the revenue a programe generated each month. Additionaly, the quality of the singing programes went down due to poor organisation and a lack of proper training. Some members, who were in fact neither competent singers nor skilful instrumentalists, joined a club just because radio singing was in fashion. They could not read music, not articulate words of lyrics properly, and sometimes not even follow the beat. Moreover, some undisciplined club members invited non-singer friends to the studio and romped with female singers, which could even be heard by the audience during the broadcast. 72 This chaotic mes ended up with a string of music clubs disbanded. In the late 1930s and early 1940s the number of singing clubs stayed at ten, whereas only four clubs were stil singing regularly on radio upon the liberation of Shanghai in 1949. A singing club could be composed of as few as thre or up to ten members, usualy including at least a male pianist, sometimes one more violinist or guitarist, and two or thre female singers. However, the size of a club was not a factor in its succes as there were also smal groups which had won great popularity. The famous Great Unity Club (Datong she), headed by the brother and sister Yao Min and Yao Li, had only thre artists and a presenter. During its heyday in the late 1930s, the club had to split their afternoons and evenings among five stations in Shanghai and the four members were obliged to do an entire forty-minute show, where Yao Li was the leading singer, Yao Min played piano and sometimes sang as wel, their uncle played the violin. 73 Similar to record-playing programes, live performances also caried Chapter Four The Platform 152 commercial advertising. In Great Unity Club, it was the presenter, the elder sister Yao Ying, who was responsible for advertising their sponsor’ products or services. Although singing clubs might be hired by a radio station, most of them prefered to sek their own sponsorship to earn more for themselves and just paid the studio rental fe to the owner of station. Hence, some artists formed their own club and looked for more opportunities after they had ben employed by a radio station for a period. 74 While some clubs made their own lists of songs to perform in a programe, some took requests from listeners in order to encourage audience participation, to show the great number of songs in their repertoire and to convince sponsors that their programes were recognised by a wide audience. Some shops distributed their own flyers, or placed adverts in newspapers or magazines, in which the audience could find a request form and relevant information such as programe timetables, station frequencies and the names of the clubs they supported. Any listener who was interested in making a request could send the request form by post to the music club or the radio station or to the sponsor. Some proprietors supported a music club by periodicaly isuing a collection of songs as a guide for tunes and lyrics, with pictures of leading singers on the cover page endorsing their products or services. Such a collection of songs provided the audience with a clearer idea of a club’s repertoire so that songs they requested would be the club’s specialities. 75 Curiously no record company, in its capacity as a copyright holder or on behalf of its contracted songwriters who kept the copyright, ever raised any isue of the right of reproduction of music and lyrics in those collections of songs. Above al, in addition to sending a request form by post, the easiest and perhaps most eficient way, though costly, was making a phone cal to the radio station when a show was on the air. Chapter Four The Platform 153 6. Dancehalls Western style social dancing was considered alien upon its introduction to China after the Great War, yet in the 1930s it became one of the most fashionable leisure activities in some coastal cities among Chinese people. With the boom in the popularity of dancing and its integration into Chinese people’s daily life in Shanghai, dancehals in diferent sizes and styles emerged in profusion, not only in the foreign concesions but also in the Chinese area. As Andrew D. Field describes, in Shanghai while the daytime economy suffered from political instability and busines recesion, ‘the shadow-world of cabarets continued to prosper, to the chagrin of failing businesmen and patriots alike.’ 76 Whatever clas a dancehal was rated, there were always Chinese patrons and thus a need for variety in music. Although Euro- American music, such as big band jaz or crooners’ latest hits, were undoubtedly the standard programes in top clas places favoured by foreigners and the local Chinese elite, jazy Chinese popular songs, which were coming to people’s ears in the early 1930s, and other familiar folk tunes semed more atractive to ordinary local customers. Tunes from Hollywood films and Broadway musicals were never superseded by Chinese pops in dancehals, except during the Japanese occupation of the entire city. However, those numbers were no longer the only choice after Li Jinhui’s love songs and other Chinese songwriters’ works marched into dancehals. Although the exact timing of the adoption of Chinese pop at dancehals in Shanghai is unclear, extant documentation shows that the Wind Dance Band (Qingfeng wuyuedui), which was trained by Li Jinhui himself, was the first group that brought Li’s musical works to the dance floor. 7 In 1934, the gangster Du Yuesheng commisioned Li Jinhui to organise a jaz band for the newly opened dancehal in the Yangzi Hotel (Yangzi fandian), and required that the band be composed exclusively Chapter Four The Platform 154 of Chinese members, especialy the tal and strong Northern Chinese so that they would not be mistaken for Filipinos. Instructed by Li, the band had a repertoire consisting of foreign music, like that played in first clas cabarets, and Chinese tunes, together with some vocal works which sing-song girls could sing to the band’s acompaniment. Working in a room of the hotel with the asistance of two members of his song-and-dance troupe, Zhang Huang and Zhang Xian, Li rearanged his own works together with other folk tunes and turned them into dances. The whole idea was a great succes, which filed the dancehal to capacity every night. As Chinese melodies were certainly welcome and it was much cheaper to hire a Chinese band, in comparison to the Filipinos and White Russians who had long dominated the cabarets in Shanghai, other dancehals followed Yangzi’s new path. Li also gave much asistance to some of them, including recruiting instrumentalists and providing music for fre. 78 In this way, besides the silver scren and the airwaves, another stage had been set up for Chinese popular music. Along with the trend of employing Chinese jaz bands, some dancehals started to hire Cantonese bands, which were amateur ensembles organised by Cantonese people in Shanghai and devoted to Cantonese opera and folk music. In 1936, several members of the established Thre Surplus Cantonese Music Club (Sanyu yueyue she) were invited to deliver a live performance in the Lunar Palace Dancehal (Yuegong wuting). As their music made a favourable impresion on the customers, they were engaged to perform regularly. Although it is perhaps beyond one’s imagination today how traditional Cantonese music fited into Western style balroom dance, Lunar Palace set a new fashion and led some establishments to follow it. While in the beginning al programes came from the traditional repertoire, the latest popular tunes were later added on to met patrons’ various Chapter Four The Platform 15 requests. In 1942 a Cantonese band leader, Chen He, tried to integrate Western instruments, including the acordion, violin, piano, guitar, bas and drummer’s kit, into the band and, with an audacious step, discarded the most important huqin and substituted popular songs in the traditional repertory. The move was exceptionaly succesful and, consequently, other dancehals had no alternative but to require their Cantonese bands to do the same. 79 Despite the fact that Chinese jaz and Cantonese bands had been playing their part in the disemination of Chinese popular song, they were in a minority. Moreover, they were undeniably far les skilful than their White Russian or Filipino counterparts, and thus could hardly compete for the opportunity to enter high-clas cabarets. It is generaly believed that it was the foreign bands that took on the work of playing Chinese pop at most dancehals as they did in the recording studios. Nevertheles, several places stil excluded Chinese music from their programes. It was not surprisingly reported as unprecedented in 1939 when the Paramount Dancehal decided to include five film songs from Songs and Tears (Gesheng leihen) in its regular programes. 80 The unshakable dominance of American jaz and dance music in upmarket cabarets remained firm until the Japanese military took over the whole of Shanghai in 1942. Regarded as ‘the enemy’s cultural products’, the latest Hollywood scren songs and big band dance numbers were forced to withdraw from the dance floor and give way to Chinese songs in the entertainment world. Even top dancehals had to modify their programes to acommodate the political change. For example, in 1942, Paramount advertised for female singers in the long-established The Shun Pao Daily. In the same year, a Chinese group, Appreciation Band (Zhiyin dayuedui) led by the pop songwriter Yan Gefan, made their name by playing in Cathay (Guotai). 81 Although American music reclaimed its place following the end Chapter Four The Platform 156 of the War, Chinese songs had come to the fore and were now esential in most live music venues. The iresistible charm of cabaret dancing, apart from the swaying bodies of taxi hosteses, was the live music delivered by a competent band with singers. For this reason, most dancehals made every efort to arange live performances in order to compete with one another for more customers. Sometimes a good band and singers could drive male guests so excited after a dance that they dashed to the stage and, with harsh and raucous voices, gave an obviously uninvited solo recital. Perhaps geting bored with shuffling and swinging endlesly or having an ambition to become songstreses, some dancing hosteses also got on the stage and delivered the latest popular tunes. 82 However, in order to cut cost or simply being unable to aford a band, some smal-scale dancehals or cafés just played records, including American big band jaz and Chinese popular songs. It was generaly aceptable, or even welcomed, to play records in a café which had not originaly been intended as a place for dancing, whereas a dancehal would be considered inferior if a gramophone was used there instead of a musical band. The last two years of the Sino-Japanese War saw a sudden increase in the number of Chinese pop concerts in Shanghai’s cinemas and theatres as wel as of live performances at restaurants and cafés. Though both condemned by the Nationalists as ‘decadent sounds’ (mii zhi yin) and regarded by the leftist critics as vulgar entertainment detrimental to national salvation, it sems that under the puppet regime controlled by the Japanese, Shanghai popular songs had broken through the ideological barier and risen to an even higher status. Concerts held in 1944 and 1945 were unprecedented and entirely diferent from song-and-dance programes in the 1930s. A song-and-dance troupe was a self-contained group consisting of its own Chapter Four The Platform 157 instrumentalists, actors and other administrators, whose typical show in an ordinary Chinese theatre included singing and dancing, most of the time based on a connected series of events that made up a story. Unlike those song-and-dance performances, these later Chinese pop concerts usualy featured the most popular recording singers and film stars delivering either the latest hits or their personal specialities, with acompaniment by a full-scale orchestra conducted by pop songwriters themselves, or sometimes foreign profesional orchestra conductors. Taking in several forms, such as solo or joint recitals, charity concerts and non-stop performances by various artists, these concerts were mainly held in upmarket venues such as the deluxe Grand Theatre which used to scren first-run Hollywood films until 1942 and the Lyceum Theatre which had long been a stage exclusively for Western dramas, balets and clasical music. Sometimes, Western clasical orchestral works, art songs or arias from operas might even be woven into a pop concert. A case in point is Bai Guang’s solo recital held in the Lyceum Theatre in May 1945. The whole concert was divided into four sections. The first quarter featured the overture from Jacques Ofenbach’s opereta Orphée aux Enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld), performed by the orchestra, and two arias from a French opera by Bai Guang. The second included selections from Franz Lehar’s operetta Die Lustige Witwe (The Mery Widow) and two Chinese songs. With the songwriter Chen Gexin as orchestra conductor, after thre popular songs performed by herself and two violin solos given by a guest violinist in the third quarter, in the fourth Bai sang another thre songs and gave an encore piece to end the concert. In a similar fashion, other singers, including Bai Hong, Li Xianglan, Ouyan Feiying and Qu Yunyun, also had their solo or joint concerts, in which they performed not only the most favourite Chinese pops but also some Western clasical works. Although the celebrated singer Chapter Four The Platform 158 Zhou Xuan was not as proficient as others in Western clasical works, in March 1945 she gave a most succesful concert of film songs, titled the Silver Scren Trilogy (Yinhai sanbuqu), in which she sang many songs from thre of her smash hit films with an orchestra conducted by the writers of those songs Chen Gexin and Li Jinguang. Above al, a concert of Chen Gexin’s works in the Lyceum Theatre on 30 June 1945 was unprecedented and unrepeatable. The announcement for the concert was placed in The Shun Pao Daily for six consecutive days, with a ringing endorsement given by four other wel-known songwriters. Supported both by EMI and by RCA-Victor with an orchestra conducted by Chen himself, over fifty singers and film stars gathered in Lyceum to perform Chen’s works. 83 With regard to live performance at restaurants and cafés, although it is believed that programes of Chinese popular songs had been introduced in the 1930s, it was not until 1944 and 1945 that a great number of these establishments, either renowned hotel-restaurants or ordinary cafés, began to promote shows featuring female singers and musical bands delivering the latest Chinese songs. Some of them also provided a dance floor so that guests could bop and jig the night away after having a good meal. Unlike pop concerts, which were no longer held on the same scale as previously mentioned after 1945, live performances in dining venues continued to thrive until 1949. Restaurants competed with one another, as wel as with dancehals, to employ celebrated singers and placed a mas of advertisements both in leading daily newspapers and in tabloids. An interesting case of a music café ilustrates how an owner strove to gain the initiative in this competitive environment. In 1942, the Japanese-organised Chinese United Production (Zhonghua lianhe zhipian gongsi) released Four Sisters (Si jiemei), staring four established film and singing stars, Gong Qiuxia, Chen Qi, Zhang Fan and Chapter Four The Platform 159 Chen Juanjuan. They played the four sisters in the film and had been identified by the audience as the elder, second, third and younger sisters ever since. Seing the strong impresion Four Sisters had made, someone opened a ‘Four Sister Music Café’ (Si jiemei kafei yinyueting) and invited these four sisters and other singers to give a live performance. 84 Another advertisement in The Shun Pao Daily run by the Golden Gate Hotel (Jinmen da jiudian) for its atached restaurant sheds more light on this kind of promotional stunt: Would you care to see the band from the Pathé Records? Right here in our place Would you care to meet stars on the records?Right here in our place Regal Orchestra led by Gingang playing with excitement 85 As Jingang is in fact one of the several pseudonyms of Li Jinguang, the musical director of EMI at the time, and EMI never maintained any in-house band, it is possible that through Li the operator of the restaurant could arange performances by recording stars and a group of instrumentalists frequently hired in recording sesions by the record company. 7. Regulatory institutions As there were only thre record companies equipped with manufacturing facilities in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai, piracy of copyrighted recordings was never a problem in the recording industry. The dispute over whether radio stations had to pay licence fes to play records on the air in 1935 appears to be the only case in this period in which isues concerning copyright had been brought up and finaly setled by the judicial department. There had been no further arguments ever since, and no governmental institution or trade asociation had dealt with maters of copyright. There was no specific institution responsible for the regulation of the production and Chapter Four The Platform 160 distribution of popular music, but instead censorship over popular songs was generaly exercised under the film censorship and broadcasting regulations by diferent governing bodies. Before 1937, al thre distinct municipal entities had their own organisations in charge of film censorship and the administration of broadcasting. The Ministry of Transport and Communication of the National Government set a national policy on the operation of radio stations in 1929 and began its nationwide control over al private stations, including those owned by Chinese in the concesions. The Ministry also laid down guidelines for radio programing in the mid 1930s, which stipulated that a broadcast must have a clear and righteous purpose; not be detrimental to public security; conform to the principles of the party [KMT]; not be obscene; not contain superstition, spirits and ghosts; not defy scientific principles; not defy the ethic spirit; not contain low-class vulgarity; not promote feudal ideology. 86 To establish its control over broadcasting organisations, the Shanghai Municipal Council proposed in 1932 to cal for a taxpayers’ meting to discuss isues regarding the regulation of radio stations in the setlement. However, due to the intervention of the Chinese Telecommunication Bureau of the Ministry of Transport and Communication, the Council never realy implemented whatever resolution the Chapter Four The Platform 161 meting had pased. In the Frenchtown, the French Municipal Council promulgated a code in 1933, which stated that political propaganda, news liable to disturb public order, programes against morality and private leters must be excluded on the radio. In 1938 the Council ordained that al radio stations within the French jurisdiction submit programes to the Service of Police Force before broadcast to the public and the Council then set up an organisation to monitor radio broadcasts in the same year. 87 The ordinance was in fact redundant. As a result of the Japanese military entering Shanghai, a supervision department of radio broadcasting was set up to take over the position of the Ministry of Transport and Communication as a telecommunications regulator, and the Shanghai Municipal Council and French Municipal Council soon recognised the Japanese military’s supervision over broadcasting in Shanghai. In late 1941, following the outbreak of the war in the Pacific Ocean, the Japanese military police and information department started to take part in the administration of radio stations in the foreign concesions and shortly thereafter closed down al the radio stations in Shanghai that were not asociated with the Japanese by the end of that year. 8 From April 1942 onwards, the propaganda department of the Japanese- controlled puppet regime asumed authority over radio stations in Shanghai, until the end of the war. Although the Chinese authorities had long condemned Shanghai popular songs as decadent sounds, as institutions involved in the production and distribution were primarily based in the foreign concesions, no actions could be taken before 1945. Nevertheles, even when the Chinese government regained control over the mas media after the war, there were stil no efective measures caried out to discourage the general public from listening to popular songs, because ‘popular songs were hummed by civil servants, sung by the academic staf, heard in the governmental Chapter Four The Platform 162 propaganda unit, and even taken as materials for music courses at school.’ 89 Despite an ordinance that restricted ‘decadent sounds’ being delivered over the airwaves, the state-owned Shanghai Radio Station stil did not withdraw popular songs from its programes. In response to a writen reprimand isued by the Central Department of Broadcasting Administration in 1946, the station claimed that as popular and film songs were the audience’s favourites, for the sake of advertising revenue it was simply out of the question to stop playing these songs. 90 As for the film censorship, in the International Setlement, the Police Department of the Municipal Council had been granted the authority to examine and approve the screning of films since 1930, which was previously exercised by the Film Censorship Commision. Films containing obscenity or indecency or liable to cause a breach of the peace or afect the good order were not alowed to be shown in the setlement and had to be removed. Likewise, in 1932 the Service of Police Force began to take charge of the censorship in the French Concesion and adopted similar criteria that contents considered to be imoral or injurious to public order were strictly forbidden. 91 In Chinese teritories, the censorship was performed by the Central Board of Censors (Zhongyang dianying jiancha weiyuanhui) established in 1933, under the Law of Film Censorship promulgated by the Ministry of Education in asociation with the Ministry of the Interior in 1930. The Board developed criteria against which films were examined. These were whether the contents afronted the dignity of the Chinese people, defied the principles of the party, breached traditional morality or threatened public order and advocated superstition or heretical ideas. Although the Japanese in Shanghai had long intervened in film censorship, it was not until the Japanese military invaded and occupied Chinese teritory in 1937 that the Shanghai Japanese Consulate Chapter Four The Platform 163 General began to exercise their power both within the Chinese authorities and in those of foreign concesions. After the war, the Chinese National Government promulgated provisional regulations to control al sorts of mas media, and hence for the first time the Chinese government got control of film censorship in the whole city. However, it appeared that the authorities would concentrate more on the plots and images of a film rather than on scren songs, whoever conducted the censorship. When part of a film was cut out or simply the entire film was banned because of its story line, songs it caried would certainly be removed and the recordings not released, but few films had been partialy deleted or banned because songs they contained were regarded as politicaly inappropriate. The Japanese-controlled puppet Shanghai City Government once publicised a list of officialy banned songs in 1943, announcing that: As lyrics and tunes have an immense impact on the moral of a country and the morale of its people, in order to eradicate the evil and heterodox belief, every effort should certainly be made to ban all those which are oposed to national policies and incompatible to the value of the times. 92 Nedles to say, the policy and value of a puppet government was to keep on good terms with the nation which had control over it. Thus, anti-Japanese songs and songs with connotations of the fight against Japan were al on the list, including two of Nie Er’s film songs, ‘Graduation Song’ (Biye ge) and ‘March of the Volunters’ (Yiyongjun jinxingqu), which had been released by EMI in 1935. Chapter Four The Platform 164 II. The consuming proces Although the most active participants in the consuming proces would appear to be the audience, the critics and the pres are also discused in the consuming proces. From the viewpoint of the product flow, what the pres reported and critics commented on were basicaly musical products, other participants in diferent proceses and events occurring around the products. However, due to the lack of sufficient information about how the pres operated in the pop industry and no strong evidence for the existence of critics, this section focuses on the audience’s listening habits and the coverage of popular music in the pres. 1. Audience Phrases such as ‘hot in main strets and narow aleys’ (hongpian dajie xiaoxiang) and ‘taking the whole country by storm’ (fengmi quanguo) were usualy used to describe the great popularity of Shanghai popular song, this raising the question of who were listening to these songs. In fact, producers of Chinese popular song in the early years did not target a specific audience, or rather they probably had no idea who the audience would be. Li Jinhui created children’s musical dramas only for primary education. However, he would neither expect that later on these works could reach more age groups through song-and-dance performances, nor would he anticipate that his love songs, an unplanned by-product, could draw a mas audience. Before approaching him to record his love songs, while record companies were sure that the records would sel wel, they were never certain what group of consumers would buy them. It is generaly acepted that the audience of Shanghai popular songs in the 1930s and 1940s was the so-caled ‘pety urbanites’ (xiao shimin). 93 Chapter Four The Platform 165 This term was actualy coined by Chinese film critics in the early 1930s in atempt to identify the community of people to whom leftist films appealed. 94 Film songs in the leftist cinema, which featured progresive and patriotic lyrics writen by leftist intelectuals, were often distinguished from popular songs, and refered to as mas songs, as a result of the diferent mesage they were meant to deliver. However, these songs also played a part in the development of the newly rising popular music culture in the 1930s. As Laikwan Pang indicates, ‘the commited [leftist] filmakers were highly aware that the popular taste could not be sacrificed in the name of artistic and ideological excelency.’ Therefore, while politicaly these film songs were used as a propaganda tool to expres social criticisms by the filmakers, commercialy they helped to atract those who were fascinated by the audio-visual efects of motion pictures. 95 However, while leftist filmakers intended to employ songs which took the same format as ‘popular song’ to convey their political mesages and to denounce biterly the Western popular music for its asociation with imperialism and corruption, they could not locate their audience. As a result, the made-up term ‘pety urbanites’ was adopted by the filmakers. Like most conventional labels for social clases, ‘pety urbanites’ was never precisely defined. Film critics never realy explained the composition of ‘pety urbanites’, but only described them as those who were iritated by the socio-economic reality and were powerles to strive for a change. The term was nevertheles believed by most people to include smal merchants, various kinds of clerks and secretaries, high school students, housewives and others of the so-caled ‘petit bourgeoisie’, and also refered to by the leftist intelectuals as a new middle urban clas active in consumption. It sems that the term only denotes those who were more financialy secure, but covers neither those who earned a humble living, such as factory labours, Chapter Four The Platform 16 rickshaw pullers and dock workers, nor those who were economicaly beter-off, such as factory owners or managers. However, besides ‘pety urbanites’, ‘non-pety urbanites’ also listened to popular songs, enthusiasticaly or pasively, and al of them would be captivated by these songs, sooner or later. Although the economicaly underprivileged could not aford a radio, not to mention a gramophone, they could listen to popular songs whenever they pased by those loudspeakers in strets or whenever a gramophone record was played next door. As there were no noise regulations in the 1930s and 1940s, in order to draw people’s atention shops owners could equip themselves with radios or gramophones and often turned up the volume as much as possible. 96 As a Westerner commented, Somebody was playing records, all the time, and the tunes were amplified through loudspeakers of super strength. The Chinese loved noise, went crazy about it, and Shanghai ofered its noises, as it offered everything else a Chinaman could ask for. It produced a great, grotesquely cacophonous rhapsody. It was in the department stores and in the open shops, in the factories and in the workshops. 97 Wang Weishang remembers that he went to a shop to listen to popular songs everyday after school and learned al of them in front of big loudspeakers on stret corners. Wang Tingfu also recals that his sister had a radio, and therefore he could listen to the latest songs al the time. There was also a gramophone in the duvet shop beneath his father’s flat and al the residents in the same building could hear it whenever a record was played. Even those pasive listeners, neighbours who used to pay litle atention to the ‘decadent sounds’, would get used to the tunes and later became true fans. 98 Chapter Four The Platform 167 To most Chinese people in the 1930s, Chinese popular songs were modern as opposed to traditional operas or story-teling balads, yet to some wel-off Chinese, newly released Hollywood scren songs or American crooners’ works were more fashionable. Before the Japanese military took over the whole Shanghai city in 1942, the latest American films and music were acesible to those who were able to aford the entertainment in first-clas cinemas and top cabarets. American musical products were usualy the focal point in the daily lives of those who made a decent living, kept up with the fashion and had a penchant for Western innovations. They did not pay particular atention to Chinese popular songs but came to learn of Chinese songs through gramophone records played by others or radio programes delivered from loudspeakers. 9 They did not turn to Chinese songs until the Japanese authorities imposed a ban on American culture products and thus cut off the supply of American popular music. Partly because Chinese songs were their only choice, and partly because more musical elements which they had been used to, such as Western instrumentation and jazy-styled arangements, could be heard in Chinese songs now, they started taking pleasure in these songs. After the war, although the ban had been lifted, they found that they enjoyed the jazy Chinese popular songs as much as American music. These pasive listeners had turned into enthusiastic fans. Shanghai popular song could be the music for the pety urbanites, but in the event it embraced a wider range of audience, as described by the phrases ‘hot in main strets and narow aleys’ and ‘taking the whole country by storm’. Regardles of their individual social and economic backgrounds, there are some typical listening habits shared by most of the audience. Chapter Four The Platform 168 Fan gatherings It appears that listeners of popular songs in Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s neither organised fan clubs nor held regular fan gatherings as we have today. So far, no announcements of such activities or reports on related events have been found in newspapers or magazines. Additionaly, no interviewed elderly fans can recal or have ever heard of any such occasions. Rather than cal public metings, fans usualy spent their leisure time with families or friends to listen to and sing along with the tunes on radio or gramophone records and talked about updates of pop stars. Homes of those who owned listening facilities were undoubtedly ideal places for these occasions. It is noteworthy that in such smal gatherings, song lyrics were one of the most important types of information to share. To most fans, the pleasure of songs came not only from listening to them but also from singing them. With the help of those loudspeakers in strets, it was al too easy to become acquainted with the tune, but due to poor radio reception or limited personal listening comprehension, it was dificult to understand al the words in lyrics. Therefore, to be able to sing along with the voice of favourite singers instead of humming the tune, it was always important to obtain printed lyrics. There were several approaches to collecting song lyrics. While lyrics of selected hits and film songs might be found in the pres and magazines, for lyrics of the others one had to look up in the latest songbooks or the song collections published by radio singing groups. Some fans might buy a newly released songbook for the sake of the lyrics of only one song which they did not have, despite its other unnecesary contents. 10 There were also copies of sheet music, or sometimes only lyrics sheets, enclosed in record sleves. In the late 1930s it was sometimes possible to ask for a fre copy of sheet music of a film song by writing to the film company, Chapter Four The Platform 169 yet filmgoers in the 1940s had to buy it in the box offices of major cinemas or newstands. For example, in 1937 fre copies of the sheet music of songs from the film Singing in the Midnight (Yeban gesheng) and New Year’s Money (Yasuiqian) were available on request. However, those from Laughter Marriage (Sanxiao) in 1940 and Orioles in Wilow Waves (Liulang wenying) in 1948 were sold in cinemas, and those from Song of the Songstres (Genü zhi ge) in 1948 had to be purchased in newstands. 101 At dancehals It goes without saying that people went to dancehals to dance, but some pop fans went there solely to hear live performances. Yao Li believed that the audience paid more atention to the voice of a singer than her appearance, remembering from her experience in the Yangzi Dancehal (Yangzi wuting), I didn’t dress myself up – plaiting my hair into two braids and puting on a qipao. I didn’t wear make-up at all. [I’m] a simple girl… In those days, all [of the audience] came to listen to you, with their eyes closed. They would not lok at you. 102 Yao Li’s remarks reflect an age-old habit from the Beijing opera theatre. As a Westerner observed in a theatre, the Chinese audience rarely watched the players but most of the time listened to dialogue and singing. 103 The les they looked at the stage, the more experienced and knowledgeable with the play they were considered. The audience did not have to close their eyes al the time to show how wel they knew about a song at a dancehal but they certainly imersed themselves in the singing, so much so that a live performance could change their impresion on a particular song. Chapter Four The Platform 170 Perhaps because of the feling of participation and the intimacy and imediacy conveyed by live performance, which were not available elsewhere, some fans would buy a record or pay more atention to a song only after they had listened to it in a live performance, even though the song had been played on radio for a while. Ms Li remembers that sometimes her family and friends often bought records because they had watched the performance of songs at the dancehal. 104 However, not al songs were equaly appreciated by the audience at the dancehal. Jin Yi indicates that there are two major factors contributing to the popularity of a song. Firstly, it required no advanced singing skils so that it can be performed by singers of al levels and secondly, it must be a danceable piece regardles of tempo or at least easily turned into a piece in dance rhythm. The famous ‘How Could I Forget Her’ (Jiao wo ruhe buxiang ta), which had originaly been an art song but later became a popular tune was once rearanged and sung to a waltz rhythm at dancehals. However, it was poorly received by the audience. 105 Perhaps dancehal singers were not competent enough to reinterpret it succesfully or perhaps it was not regarded as danceable despite the waltz rhythm. Obviously, although ‘How Could I Forget Her’ had long been perceived as a popular song by pop fans, those who went to dancehals for live performance stil deemed it not suitable for such a location. In addition to enjoying songs performed live by singers, some of the audience might atempt to take part in the programe. To those who were fascinated by popular songs, it was definitely a privilege to sing to a band acompaniment at that time, which was undoubtedly a wonderfully diferent experience from singing along with records or radio programes. Wang Yixian recaled that at a dancehal in the early 1940s he once ‘bribed’ a bandleader with a beer to be alowed to sing on the stage. 106 Chapter Four The Platform 171 Going to the cinema No mater what kind of tone quality the audience could hear through radio and records, either syrupy, sonorous or husky, al the songs they heard were disembodied sounds rather than a face-to-face musical experience. People went to dancehals or cabarets for this experience, yet even in those establishments, they could not always se their favourite stars as not al pop stars gave performances in such places. Some singers would not perform regularly because while, making recordings and singing on radio were a pleasure to them, singing before an audience in a cabaret could be asociated with ‘seling songs to earn a living’ (maichang) and considered a disgrace. 107 As many popular songs were actualy scren songs and originaly sung by the actors in films, going to the cinema was a popular way of acesing popular songs and singer. Through high-quality speakers, and sometimes comfortably with air-conditioning, fans were able to listen to the latest songs and watch their favourite artists at the same time. Some frenetic fans even caried a torch to the cinema, and then one held the light so that another could write down the lyrics shown on the scren when the song was played. 108 Therefore, going to the cinema was also an economical way to collect lyrics. Although some obligatory songs were not relevant to the scenes in films, but just added as a publicity stunt in order to promote the films, for those who enjoyed listening to songs and watching the singer on the scren simultaneously, it did not mater how these songs fited into the story, but rather how many songs there were in a film. With the increasing atractivenes of film songs to cinemagoers, directors were required by producers or distributors to incorporate as many as possible into the films. For example, there were ten and twelve songs in The Wandering Songstres (1941) and Orioles Flying on Earth (1946) respectively. It became an irational fad in Chapter Four The Platform 172 the late 1940s with fiften and eighten obligatory songs especialy writen for Celestial Music Sounding Everywhere (Xianyue piaopiao chuchu wen) (1948) and Orioles in Wilow Waves (1948) respectively. Songs produced for Celestial Music Sounding Everywhere were particularly criticised as bearing nonsensical content merely to add more musical scenes in the film. 109 Nevertheles, the audience kept flocking to the cinema no mater how unfit those obligatory songs appeared to be for the films. Some people even went to watch the same film several times just because they wanted to listen to the songs. Atending concerts The audience behaved quite diferently at early song-and-dance performances and at pop concerts in the 1940s because of the form and venue in which performances were given. In Beijing opera and other regional operatic genres, the first one or two vocal phrases of an aria were usualy followed by a strain of instrumental fil-ins and conventionaly, the audience clapped their hands and roared ‘bravo’ (hao) imediately after the first several phrases when the instrumental fil-ins started despite the performance stil being in progres. In a traditional Chinese theatre, one would be considered ignorant for failing to give wel-timed applause. This practice was stil sen during a song-and-dance performance in the first half of 1930s. As a song-and-dance troupe usualy gave their performances either in cinemas where only Chinese films were screned, or in theatres where Chinese modern stage plays and traditional operas were presented, the audience were liable to follow the conventional method of showing their approval of a programe and admiration for performers. Moreover, since a song-and-dance programe was delivered by a group of actors and could consist of a connected series of songs and dances, the audience Chapter Four The Platform 173 were inclined to cheer whenever they felt that one of the performers had completed a section without making a mistake. However, the audience in pop concerts in the 1940s prefered to enjoy the entire song without interuption rather than clapping their hands at every opportune moment. On the one hand, limited to the available playing time on each side of a 78- rpm SP record, composers were supposed to write songs not exceding a time frame of thre minutes. The audience did not find it dificult to concentrate their atention and energy on listening for those thre minutes and therefore to control their emotions before bursting into heavy applause. On the other hand, perhaps the good manners at Western concerts had gradualy become known to Chinese people, and thus the audience were aware of the importance of keeping the performance going smoothly. In fact, going to Western concerts was once a mark of urban superiority and part of the native elites’ life. Recaling her childhood experience of atending a Western orchestral concert, the famous writer Eilen Chang wrote in an esay: When my mother tok me to a concert, she would admonish me repeatedly before we arrived, ‘You must not make a sound or say a word during the concert. Don’t let them [Westerners] say that Chinese people are undisciplined.’ 10 As Chang revealed, keeping silent during the performance was the absolute priority in a concert, not only because it was good manners but also because it was a mater of honour. Although Chinese pop concerts were not regarded as serious clasical concerts, when taking place in first-clas cinemas where there were usualy not only screns but also huge stages for live performances, an atmosphere of formality and seriousnes could be created. Since Shanghai Municipal Symphony Orchestra used to give concerts in first-clas cinemas, such as Grand Theatre (Daguangming xiyuan), Chapter Four The Platform 174 Nanking Theatre (Nanjing da xiyuan), Carlton Theatre (Kaerdeng da xiyuan) and Lyceum Theatre (Lanxin xiyuan), the Chinese audience would also regarded pop concerts in these establishments as formal and observe ‘good manners’. Instead of whistling, screaming or waving hands excitedly like the way young fans today revere their pop idols in live concerts, most audiences in Shanghai in the 1940s showed much gentlenes and politenes. Undoubtedly, they might stand up and give a singer thunderous applause and shout out ‘bravo!’ or ‘encore!’ at the end of the performance of a song, yet they would never jostle one another to the front of the stage, cry out words such as ‘I love you’ and try to grasp a singer’s hand. Some elderly fans indicate that whistling and screaming during the performance in a concert was considered bad manners at that time and they would remain seated and silent until the end of a song. 11 2. The pres There were always pages or supplements devoted to entertainment in major newspapers, for example, a page caled ‘The Annals’ (Chunqiu) and a wekend Special Film Supplement (Dianying zhuankan) in The Shun Pao Daily (Shenbao), a daily column caled ‘Art Sea’ (Yihai) in The News (Xinwenbao) and a film page in The China Evening News (Dawanbao). However, most of these pages were taken up with Chinese opera and cinema, and there was no space for regular reports on popular music. What pop fans could expect was only information about titles and singers of new film songs. For more coverage of popular music, a pop fan had to turn to tabloids. While some of these tabloids were fully dedicated to specific areas as their titles reveal, for example, Movie Daily News (Dianying ribao) and Daily Dance Chapter Four The Platform 175 Review (Tiaowu ribao), others covered both entertainment news and reports on political and domestic events, such as The Crystal Daily (Jingbao) and The Wind Daily News (Dafengbao). Unlike major newspapers in which entertainment news was just embelishment among other hard news, tabloids offered more details about new released songs and singers, together with interviews and their personal revelation. 12 Apart from newspapers, reports on popular music and related isues were also covered in a range of entertainment magazines. Among these magazines, Pop Star Pictorial (Gexing huabao), launched in 1935, is perhaps the first and only one published during the 1930s and 1940s that was exclusively for popular music. However, in this magazine ‘stars’ refered mainly to those radio singers, and al the articles and reports solely concerned these singers. There were articles regarding singers’ performances in programes and discussion on singing skils. For example, there was a short note in the maiden isue emphasising the importance of articulation in singing and instrumental introductions to songs. The pop songwriter Xu Ruhui also once contributed a commentary on radio singers’ and instrumentalists’ musical capacity. 13 However, no record review or comments on specific songwriters’ works were available. Therefore, this pictorial was indeed more a periodical for broadcasters and listeners rather than a popular music magazine. In addition to Pop Stars Pictorial, information about popular songs, such as up-to-date record singers’ movements, gossip about singers’ private afairs and comments on new releases, was scatered in those periodicals dedicated to radio, films and other types of entertainment. In other words, the audience in 1930s and 1940s had to obtain news about popular music from other fields of entertainment to which popular music was closely tied. With the rapid growth of the broadcasting industry came various magazines for radio listeners, such as China Radio (Zhongguo Chapter Four The Platform 176 wuxiandian), Shanghai Radio Wekly (Shanghai wuxiandian), Broadcasting Monthly (Guangbo yuekan) and Broadcasting and Radio (Guangbo wuxiandian). These provided listeners with a range of information, including timetables and guide to programes, knowledge of asembling and repairing radio receivers, comments on the productions, gossips and anecdotes about singers and their colleagues in music clubs, and lyrics and song scores. However, the contents often varied from isue to isue and there was no regular item for popular music. For example, a reader who found a section devoted to news of singing clubs and their song repertoires in one isue might find nothing on a similar subject in the next one. As Shanghai in the first half of the twentieth century saw a wide variety of entertainment imported from the West, there were also magazines containing al kinds of updates on urban leisure activities, such as Ciro’s Pictorial (Xianle huabao), Variety Wekly (Yule zhoubao) and Movietone (Diansheng). These magazines usualy covered cabaret dancing, dog or horseracing, beting on jai alai games, together with articles on films, broadcasts and traditional Chinese performances. However, as with radio magazines, there was no regular coverage of popular music. With the potential of sound film oving away from arginal experimentation into mainstream in the mid-1930s, more and more members from song-and-dance troupes who had trained as singers turned to the scren for more opportunities to further their carers in the entertainment industry. Producers in film companies also required actors to sing in films regardles of their singing abilities. To the audience, both former troupe members and newborn film actors were now ‘stars’ who sang on the scren. To acommodate a fast-growing demand for information about sound films, not only did ordinary magazine publishers launch a range of film magazines, but also film companies released their official periodicals, such as Movie Star Chapter Four The Platform 17 (Mingxing) published by Star Motion Picture, United Pictorials (Lianhua huabao) by United Photoplay (Lianhua yingye gongsi), Denton Gazete (Diantong zazhi) by Denton Sound Product (Diantong gongsi) and Hsinhua in Pictures (Xinhua huabao) by Hsin Hwa Motion Picture (Xinhua yingye gongsi). 14 Although the coverage of ‘songs’ was limited in film agazines, information about ‘stars’ could always satisfy fans’ curiosity. Nevertheles, sometimes ‘serious articles’ could be found in these magazines, particularly those circulating in the second half of 1930s. Discussions on composition of scren songs, comments on newly released songs and harsh words on the poor quality of music in Chinese films al had their place there. 15 However, from 1942 when the Japanese took over the whole city of Shanghai up to the end of the 1940s, articles of this kind somehow no longer appeared in film agazines. EMI’s Pathé Semionthly is the only magazine that was published by a record company that has so far been located, but unfortunately only the maiden isue survives. Unlike magazines isued by film companies which would occasionaly touch on songs and singers in films, there was curiously no coverage of popular music, either film songs or other popular songs, in Pathé Semionthly. The first isue basicaly focused on Chinese opera and story-teling balads. Since it is unclear if more isues were released, it remains unknown whether any pages would be reserved in the future for popular music, one of the most important product lines of EMI. Apart from gathering information about musical products and related activities in the Shanghai pop industry, newspapers and periodicals had organised activities to gauge the popularity of singers by readers’ response. As there were no sales charts, airplay charts or request charts produced by any institution in the Shanghai era, these should have been held frequently and pop fans would have been keen to show their support to favourite singers. However, only two were held in the mid-1930s. One of Chapter Four The Platform 178 them had been reported in other printed media and is stil remembered by elderly fans today, the other proved to be a failure and no similar activities were organised thereafter. Moreover, both events were basicaly for radio singers, and therefore those ‘singing’ film stars and record singers who did not perform on radio were not considered. The China Evening News organised a ‘top thre radio singers contest’ in 1934 in which the audience were invited to send in balots during the two weks from 26 May to 8 June to vote for their favourite radio singers. The promoter of the contest made a full-page announcement in the newspaper to encourage the audience to pas judgement on singers’ natural talents from voice and on singer’s personalities and upbringing through the contents of songs. The contest was meant to be a survey on how singers in Shanghai were perceived by the audience. In order to offer the audience a general picture of the singing circle, brief biographies of some singers, whom the promoter considered briliant, together with information about music clubs to which these singers belonged, were also given on the same page where the contest announcement was isued and a balot printed. Readers had to make their decisions within those two weks on who was the best radio singer. The newspaper also kept count of the balots being received so that the number of votes cast for each singer could be disclosed on a daily basis during the contest. The contest result was announced on 14 June and Bai Hong, Zhou Xuan and Wang Manjie won the first thre titles. 16 Although the contest was held for radio singers rather than for al pop stars, which broadly speaking should have included those who had made recordings but had never sung on radio, this unprecedented and unrepeated contest was unique and the only succesful one for popular music that had ben organised by the pres. More Chapter Four The Platform 179 than a year later in September 1935, Pop Star Pictorial announced another ‘ten best pop stars in Shanghai contest’, in which readers were also requested to send in balots ranking their ten pop stars. In order to promote the contest, the publisher had fre copies of the magazine to give away to the first 10,000 voters. A reader commented in the next isue following the announcement that it was esential to select distinguished singers in order to save the ‘depraved industry’. The radio singing circle had previously been a place where high-clas entertainment had been promoted and art for the mases developed, yet due to a plethora of music clubs in Shanghai composed of incompetent members delivering performances of poor quality, an unpleasant atmosphere began to fil the circle. Outstanding singers should have been role models for those who wanted to participate in a radio singing club. 17 However, it sems that this second contest was not succesful because Pop Star Pictorial never announced the result and this event was not reported in any other newspaper or periodicals. 3. Critics It is dificult to locate in Shanghai during the 1930s to 1940s popular music critics who wrote record reviews and commentaries on musical works regularly, as happens in the pres today. On the one hand, since there was no real popular music pres during that period, it is impossible to identify any wel-known or authoritative critic from a respectable popular music magazine. On the other hand, a lack of regular coverage of popular music in the pres also makes it hard to look into how critics, if there were any, responded to new releases and what they contributed in the industry. However, skiming through the pages of major newspapers and periodicals, one can stil read comments on singers’ voices, singing techniques and Chapter Four The Platform 180 specific musical works. Most of these articles were usualy published under pseudonyms which seldom re-appeared in the same magazine or newspaper, or sometimes anonymously. These comments could either be prepared by editors or journalists, or contributed by readers in forms of short chaty articles or leters to the editor. For instance, in the tabloid The Wind, an anonymous journalist made a comparison of Yao Li’s ‘Unrequited Love’ (Debudao de aiqin) and Wu Yingyin’s ‘I Wanna Forget You’ (Wo xiang wangle ni) in a short report, surprisingly without a headline, and argued that the former did not showed as much sorrowfulnes as the later. 18 Words delivered in such way occasionaly appeared in almost al magazines and tabloids. In another short article headlined ‘Rambling on new Chinese film songs’, published under the pseudonym of Siji in The Shun Pao Daily, the author examined seven songs and argued that compositional techniques of film song in China had been considerably improved after the outbreak of Sino-Japanese War. Judging from the melodies and rhythms of these songs, he indicated that their form and style was very close to similar works in Euro-American films. 19 As neither the name Siji nor any more articles on related subjects appeared again in this newspaper in the ensuing months, it is impossible to track whether Siji worked as a critic who contributed regularly. To take another example in a magazine, there was a paragraph under a pseudonym in Cinema Wekly News (Dianying zhoubao) giving a remark on Bai Guang’s new record. It commented that the grief of a deserted woman could be felt through Bai Guang’s husky voice in the new song ‘Waiting for You’ (Dengzhe ni huilai), which indeed surpased the previous ‘Never Too Late to Come to Know You’ (Xianjian bu hen wan). 120 This short piece appears to be a ‘guide to new releases’ in a Chapter Four The Platform 181 music magazine writen by a member of the editorial board, but actualy it is not. It is just a one-off comment made by an ordinary reader in a film agazine. ‘Waiting for You’ was not a film song and it is because Bai Guang was a famous actres that the comment was placed in the magazine. Similar to the article in The Shun Bao Daily, there is no way to evaluate the author’s connection to the industry in this wekly. Apart from those comments made by unknown readers or short reviews writen by nameles editors, sharp criticisms of popular songs, like those leveled at Li Jinhui in the first half of 1930s, were never absent during the whole Shanghai era. Popular songs were denigrated as, for instance, ‘voice of a conquered nation’, ‘part of urban vice’, and ‘love songs poisoning the minds of youths and juveniles’. 121 As these derogatory criticisms and negative opinion are not specific to individual works or persons, but rather to a wider range of the whole popular music circle, they should be regarded more as social commentaries than music reviews. Therefore, those who expresed their deep aversion to popular songs in articles should not be considered music critics. Endnotes 1 The Comacrib Industrial and Commercial Manual (Shanghai: The Commercial & Credit Information Bureau, 1935), p. 152. 2 Shenbao, 5 July 1930. 3 Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshang huiyi Shanghai shiweihui wenshiziliao gongzuo weiyuanhui (ed), Jiu Shanghai de waishang yu maiban (Foreign companies and compradors in old Shanghai) (Shanghai: Remin chubanshe, 1987), p. 284-5. Chapter Four The Platform 182 4 To give several examples, North Sea (Beihai) produced Beijing operas and other traditional music of the North China for audiences in Hebei. Emei recorded Sichuan operas (chuanju), traditional art songs (qingyin) and folk songs in Shanghai and shipped them back to Sichuan. Hundreds Songs (Baige) specialised in Shanghai opera (huju) and Yue opera (yueju) which served mainly the audience in Shanghai and neighbouring area. Unistar (Lianxing) and Conscience (Liangxin) recorded regional operas and traditional music of Fujian and both had their market in Fuzhou and Xiamen. Great Wal (Changcheng) made its name by signing up prominent performers of Beijing opera. Other companies, such as Asia (Yazhou), Harmony (Hesheng), Enlightenment (Kaiming), Pacific (Taiping), National Music (Guoyue), Wakening Lion (Xingshi) and Kunlun, also operated in a similar way. Among al these pocketbook companies, New Moon Records (Xinyue liushengji changpian gongsi), a Hong Kong-based company, is worthy of special notice. It released primarily Cantonese opera and traditional Chinese operatic arias, together with a hybrid genre that incorporated Cantonese folk melodies with Western instruments such as the saxophone and guitar. For a detailed discussion on New Moon’s role in the promotion of indigenous Chinese record industry, refer to Jones, Yelow Music, pp. 65-68. 5 North-China Hong List (Shanghai: North-China Daily News & Herald Ltd., 1930), p.227. 6 Se Qin Qiming (ed.), Yinyuejia Ren Guang (The musician Ren Guang) (Anhui, China: Anhui wenyi chubanshe, 1988), p. 44. Chapter Four The Platform 183 7 For example, Xu Ruhui, one of Li Jinhui’s contemporaries, was engaged as a contracted composer in Star Motion Pictures (Mingxing yingpian gongsi) in 1931 and became a full-time employee the following year. 8 Zhu Zhonghua remembered that during 1942-45 when she worked in Pathé, composers Li Jinguang, Li Houxiang and Yan Zhexi usualy came to their office in the morning and then worked there al day. Yao Li, who made her recording debut in 1937 for EMI, also remembered that composers went to the office everyday, like nine-to-fivers, and wrote songs there. Personal interview ith Zhu Zhonghua, former employee of EMI (China), Shanghai, 10 February 2004; Wong Ke-Chee, The Age of Shanghainese Pops: 1930-1970 (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, 2001), p. 42. 9 Personal interview with Wu Yingyin, Shanghai pop singer, Shanghai, 31 December 2003. 10 ‘Baidai gongsi banshui Zhou Xuan gaoju diyiwei’ (Zhou Xuan in the first place of royalties income in Pathé), Yihai huabao, 5 (October 1948), p. 3. Al figures above are cited from Dangdai Zhongguo de guangbo Dianshi Bianjibu (ed.), Zhongguo de changpian chubanshiye (The record industry of China) (Beijing: Beijing guangbo xueyuan chubanshe, 1989), p. 14, except those of the 1940s from a personal interview with Zhang Fan, Shanghai pop singer, Beijin, 31 January 2004. 1 Saito Kyouharu, Nie Er: shanliang de shengya (Nie Er: a splendid life), trans. Zhuang Li (Shanghai: Shanghai yinyue chubanshe, 2003), pp. 185, 197. 12 Dangdai Zhongguo de guangbo dianshi bianjibu (ed.), Zhongguo de changpian chubanshiye, pp. 2-4; Jones, Yelow Music, p. 165. 13 Personal interview ith Zhu Zhonghua. Chapter Four The Platform 184 14 Se Mingxing banyuekan, 1:3 (May 1935), n.p.; Yisheng, 1:4 (September 1935), n.p.; Diansheng, 3:22 (June 1934), n.p.; Liangyou huabao, 88 (May 1934), p. 38. 15 Dangdai Zhongguo de guangbo dianshi bianjibu (ed.), Zhongguo De Changpian Chubanshiye, p. 15. 16 Tan Yi , ‘Chuchuang chenlie: zui wei youxiao zhi guanggao’ (Window exhibition: the most efective advertising), Baidai banyuekan, 1:1 (July 1937), 19-20 17 Shenbao, 1 June 1934. 18 Shenbao, 29 December 1934. 19 ‘Baidai gongsi jiang juxing mingxing gechang dahui (Pathé to hold a star concert)’, Dianying ribao, 13 and 14 March 1941. 20 Shanghaishi dangan guan, Beijing guangbo xueyuan and Shanghaishi guangbo dianshi ju (eds), Jiu zhongguo de Shanghai guangbo shiye (The broadcasting industry of Shanghai in old China) (Beijing: Guangbo dianshi chubanshe, 1985), p. 211. 21 Se ‘Xiren changpianshang xianzhi bosong changpian: guangbo diantai dashou daji’ (Western record companies place restrictions on airplay: radio stations under vehement atacks), Diansheng, 4:27 (July 1935), 563; ‘Ge diantai xubo waishang changpian’ (Radio stations resume the broadcasting of records of foreign companies), Diansheng, 4:30 (July 1935), p. 628. 2 ‘Chanpianshang yu diantai jiufen guangbo diantai zhangao shengli’ (Radio stations take the upper hand on the argument betwen record companies and radio stations for the time being), Diansheng , 4:31 (August 1935), p. 648; Shenbao, 21 December 1935. Chapter Four The Platform 185 23 Chen Dieyin indicated in an interview that he was so moved and inspired by Li Juanqing’s lyrics for ‘Steadfast Afection’ (Bubian de xin), composed by Chen Gexin and sung by Zhou Xuan in 1944, that he decided to give up his journalism carer and started writing lyrics for popular songs. For more details of the interview, se Shuijing, Liuxing gequ cangsang ji, pp. 132-156. 24 ‘Paired Phoenix’ is a song sung by Zhouxuan in the same-name film Paired Phoenix. For more of Chen Dieyi’s comments on Chen Gexing, se Chen Gang (ed.), Meigui meigui wo ai ni: gexian Chen Gexin zhi ge (Rose, rose I love you: songs of the imortal Chen Gexin) (Taipei: Vista Publishing, 2003), pp. 15-8. 25 Interview clip shown in Yibai nian de gesheng (official English title: The Last Century Pop Music of China), a four-series documentary first broadcast on Channel 10, China Central Television, 22~25 January 2004. 26 Personal interview with Jin Yi, Shanghai pop singer, Shanghai, 7 January 2004; Zhang Fan. 27 ‘Yangqingui koushu: Tino’ (Foreigner instrumentalists’ own words: Tino), Tiaowu ribao, 11 March 1941. 28 ‘Yangqingui koushu: Mick Korin’ (Foreigner instrumentalists’ own words: Mick Korin), Tiaowu ribao, 10 March 1941. 29 Personal interview with Zheng Deren, former dancehal instrumentalist and currently basist in Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai, 29 December 2003; personal interview ith Zhu Zhonghua. 30 Personal interview ith Wu Yingyin, Jin Yi and Zhang Fan. Chapter Four The Platform 186 31 Interview with Li Jinguang by Shuijing. Se Shuijing, ‘Li Jinguang tan liuxing laoge’ (Li Jinguang on old popular song), Lianhebao, 22-23 December 1988. Avshalomov had spent thirty years in China before he moved and setled down in America in 1947. Nevertheles, he actualy earned his living as a bookseler, and later a librarian, during his years in China, first in Beijing and Tianjin, and finaly in Shanghai where for fiften years he was the head librarian in the Shanghai Municipal Library. For more biographical details and musical works of Avshalomov, se Jacob & Aaron Avshalomov, Avashalomov’s Winding Way: Composers Out of China – A Chronical (Philadelphia: Xlibris Corporation, 2001). However, interestingly, nothing about his arangements for popular songs was mentioned in this book. 32 Personal interview with Zhao Jiying, former leader of Great China New Music Band (Dahua xin yinyuedui) in Cosmo Dancehal (Gaoshiman wuting), Shanghai, 29 December 2003. 3 Shuijing, Liuxing gequ cangsang ji (A record of the vicisitudes of popular song) (Taipei: Dadi chubanshe, 1985), pp. 166-7. 34 Personal interview with Wu Yingyin and Jin Yi; Ji, ‘Fang bielai wuyang de Bai Guang’ (Interview: Bai Guang back and wel), Xin yingtan 3:2 (1944), 28. Bai Guang learnt singing from Miura Tamaki (1884-1946), the first Japanese-born vocalist to have a succesful international carer, whom the Italian composer Puccini praised as the most ideal person in the world for the prima donna in his Madam Butterfly. 35 Personal interview ith Wu Yingyin, Zhang Fan and Jin Yi. 36 Personal interview with Zhang Fan; Yan Fei, Tianjin, 5 February 2004; Shuhua, ‘Mingxing lu nanxing baowei Zhou Xuan Bai Hong’ (Dificult pas – Zhou Xuan and Chapter Four The Platform 187 Bai Hong surrounded), Dianying ribao, 15 May 1941; Bai Guang, ‘Bai Guang riji’ (The diary of Bai Guang), Yingmi julebu, 2 (October 1948), p. 15. 37 There were also at this time musical periodicals and other publications in which academic musicians, serious composers or those who felt disdain for ‘love songs’ in Li’s style had published vocal works. However, those songs were mainly patriotic songs, revolutionary songs, experimental compositions and art songs with acompaniments for piano. As most of them were usualy circulated within a limited circle or had no connexion to the entertainment industry, they are beyond the scope of the study of the Shanghai popular music industry and thus not included in the category of printed popular music discussed here. 38 Zhengxie Hunansheng Xiangtanshi weiyuanhui wenshi ziliao yanjiu weiyuanhui and Hunan Xiangtan Li Jinhui yishuguan , Li Jinhui (Li Jinhui) (Hunan, China, 1994), pp. 242-3. A system of music notation known as the simplified notation, which was adapted from a French system of teaching sight-singing, the Galin-Paris-Chevé method, and was introduced to China in the late ninetenth or early twentieth century. Despite considerable opposition from profesional musicians and musical educators, the simplified notation, which features a notation of numerals from 1 to 7 representing the seven sol-fa syllables respectively, had been taught in schools and widely employed in various songbooks. A rest is shown as 0 in this system, yet 8 is not used. For details about the usage, se Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. 4 (London : Macmilan, 1980), pp. 99-100. 39 Xu Wenxia, ‘Wode fuqin Xu Ruhui yu Zhongguo zaoqi liuxing gequ’ (My father Xu Ruhui and Chinese early popular songs), Musicology in China, 1 (2001), pp. 66-7. Chapter Four The Platform 18 40 Se the preface in Chen Yike (ed), Dianying mingge ji (A collection of famous film songs) (Shanghai: Xiandai yinyue yanjiushe, 1943), n.p. 41 Se the postscript in Hu Zhimei (ed.), Gepu di er ji (Songbook, isue 2) (Shanghai: Anding bieshu guangbo diantai, 1934), n.p. Since only the second isue has so far been found among the collection in the Shanghai Municipal Library, it is not clear how many isues the radio station had released and if those songbooks were available on request or had to be purchased. 42 Yin Mengxing (ed), Dianying mingge yiqian qu (1000 famous film songs) (Shanghai: Xingguang gewu yanjiushe, 1934); Madame Yingying (ed), Dianying mingge wubai qu (500 famous film songs) (Shanghai: Xingguang gewu yanjiushe, 1935); Mingxing she (eds), Dianying mingge ji (A collection of famous film songs) (Shanghai: Dongfang shuju, 1939). 43 For more details about the Law of Publication in the Republican China, se The Nanking Government’s Laws and Regulations Vol. VI (Shanghai: British Chamber of Commerce, 1931). 4 These music shops played an important part in the trade of Western instruments not only in Shanghai but also in the whole of China in the first half of the Twentieth century. Se Shanghai wenhua yishu zhi biazuan weiwenhui Shanghai yiyue zhi bianjibu (eds), Shanghai yinyue zhi (Shanghai music chronicle) (Shanghai, 2001), pp. 317-9. 45 Before major record companies built factories and studios in Shanghai in the 1920s master recordings of Chinese music were transfered abroad to their headquarters overseas, made into records there, and finaly shipped back to China. Chapter Four The Platform 189 46 Shanghai Hong List (Shanghai: The Investigation Bureau of Commerce and Industry, 1939 and 1940). Nevertheles, it is not clear if this shop sold both Chinese and Western popular music, or only specialised in Western recordings. 47 The organisation structure difered from company to company. While there was a specific order department within EMI (China) responsible for wholesale busines of al their products, as opposed to its retail branch which was in charge of the showroom, in RCA-Victor record sales was subordinate specificaly to the record department which dealt with both recording and seling activities. Se Shanghai Directory (Shanghai: North-China Daily News & Herald Ltd., 1941), pp. 123, 320; Dangdai Zhongguo de guangbo dianshi bianjibu (ed.), Zhongguo de changpian chubanshiye (The record industry of China) (Beijing: Beijing guangbo xueyuan chubanshe, 1989), p. 14. 48 Advertisements of the Civilisation Book Bureau in Shenbao, 10 August 1932 and the Central Book Store on the back cover of Dianying gushi, 1 (September 1948). 49 For more details about how the four department stores developed and thus established a new commercial culture, se Welington K. K. Chan, ‘Seling goods and promoting a new comercial culture: the four premier department stores on Nanjing Road, 1917-1937’, in Sherman Cochran (ed.), Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 1900-1945 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornel East Asia Series, 1999), pp. 19-36. 50 As advertised in Shenbao, 19 October 1934. 51 There were 256 films produced in China during 1932 to 1934, yet only thirty percent of them were sound films. Se Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, Zhongguo wusheng Chapter Four The Platform 190 dianying shi (A history of Chinese silent films) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1981), p. 300. 52 For example, Lianhua’s thre clasic films produced in 1934, The Fisherman’s Song, Great Road (Dalu) and New Women (Xin nüxing), are al ‘sound films’ with songs but without dialogue or other miscelaneous sounds. Se Cheng Jihua, Li Shaobai and Xing Zuwen, Zhongguo dianying fazhan shi, diyijuan (A history of the development of Chinese film, vol. 1) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1981), pp. 604-14. 53 Chen Yiping, Zhongguo zaoqi dianying gequ jingxuan (Selections of songs from Chinese early films) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubashe, 2000), p. 6; Wang Wenho, Zhongguo dianying yiyue xunzong (Tracing Chinese film music) (Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe, 1985), p. 90. 54 For example, upon its reorganisation in 1936 the Star Motion Picture set up a music division responsible not only for the arangement of film music but also for voice training. To cater for the potential need of song-and-dance performers in future productions, Hsin Hwa Motion Picture (Xinhua yingye gongsi) also founded a song- and-dance training unit and recruited twenty girls from nearly a thousands applicants. Se ‘Mingxing yingpian gongsi gexin xuanyan’ (Declaration of the reformation of Star Motion Picture), Jingbao, 20 July 1936; ‘Xinhua gongsi sheli gewu zu’ (Hsin Hwa Motion Picture set up song-and-dance unit) Xinhua huabao, 4:1 (April 1939), n.p. Chapter Four The Platform 191 5 The film was released on 24 July 1937. The film company started a series of advertisements in The Shun Pao Daily on 18 July and announced the release of the record on 21 July. Se Shenbao, 18-24 July 1937. 56 Shenbao, 22 March 1935. 57 Shenbao, 5 October 1934. The song was composed by the leftist Ren Guang and its lyrics writen by An E. 58 In addition to relevant information about the songs, a line of words ‘Musical Director: Ren Guang’ was printed in the bottom centre of the whole column. Se Liangyou, 98 (November 1934), back cover. 59 Du Jie’s piece in the film was ‘The Cherished Memory of Autumn’ (Qiu de huainian). It was reinterpreted by Yao Li on the gramophone record, and the other side of that record was Yao Li’s own ‘Rose, rose, I Love You’ (Meigui meigui wo ai ni). Se ‘Tianya genü jingcai’ (The briliant Wandering Songstres), Dianying ribao, 18 October 1940; ‘Zhou Xuan zhi Tianya genü chaqu Baidai gongsi guanwei changpian’ (Pathé Records made recordings for Zhou Xuan’s film songs in The Wandering Songstres), Dazhong yingxun, 30 (February 1941). The film The Wandering Songstres has nothing to do with the song ‘The Wandering Songstres’ from the film Stret Angel. 60 Liner notes to Zhongguo Shanghai sansishi niandai jueban mingqu si (Deleted 30- 40s hits of Shanghai China, vol. 4), 2002, Le Leng Kok, LK-11042002. The other unreleased song of this film is ‘Ideal Lover’ (Lixiang de qingren). The reason why it was not released remains unclear. Chapter Four The Platform 192 61 For example, Li Jinhui’s ‘Drizles’, composed in 1927, was later recorded by Pathé Orient around 1932 by when Ren Guang had become the musical director in the company. 62 Shen’ao, ‘Xin nüxing haile baidai’ (New Women harmed Pathé), Jingbao, 15 May 1935. 63 Acording to listening guides in radio magazines, there were 27 stations in November 1938, more than a year after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War and there were 28 in April 1941, eight months before the Japanese took over the whole city. In May 1946, nearly a year after the end of war, the number decreased sharply to 19. However, in April 1949, before the advent of Communist regime, 33 stations were operating again in Shanghai. Se supplemented listening guides in Zhongguo wuxian dian, 6:11 (November 1938) and 9:4 (April 1941); Guangbo yuekan, 1 (May 1946), Boyin tiandi, 5 (April 1949). 64 In a listening guide, it was not unusual to se the schedule of a station composed of only record-playing programes. 65 Se Pu Canxiu, ‘Qiwen gongshang’ (Marvelous writings to be read), Shanghai wuxiandian, 13 (July 1938), n.p. 6 Ibid. 67 ‘Zhenggao boyin diantai’ (Admonishment to radio stations), Shenbao, 5 June 1940. 68 Pu, ‘Shouyin zayi’ (Miscelaneous memories of radio), Shanghai wuxiandian, 12, (June 1938), n.p. 69 Ibid. Chapter Four The Platform 193 70 ‘Meikuangyuxia de boyin tuanti’ (Broadcasting groups get worse every time), Yule zhoubao, 2:20 (May 1936), p. 389; Labor Statistics in Shanghai, 1930-1937 (Shanghai: International Labor Ofice, China Branch, 1938), p. 16. 71 As the number of music clubs on radio was calculated based on broadcasting timetables in magazines, the actual figures can be slightly higher due to the incompletenes of programe information at the time of going to print. Se Zhongguo wuxiandian, 1:5 (March 1933) and 2:13 (July 1934); ‘Quanshi geyongjie boyin jiemubiao’ (A timetable of singing clubs in the city), Gexing huabao, 2 (September 1935), p. 16. 72 Se ‘Meikuangyuxia de boyin tuanti’, Yule zhoubao, 2:20 (May 1936), p. 389; Hongcao, ‘Sui shi xia oshiqing ye shi da wenti’ (A trifle can be an isue), Gexing huabao, 4 (March 1935), p. 9. 73 Acording to a supplementary listening guide in China Radio in 1938, the Great Unity Club had five programes a day in five diferent stations at 1:45-2:30, 3:30- 4:10, 5:20-6:00, 7:20-8:00 and 8:40-9:20, which showed their typicaly tight daily schedule as wel as popularity among the audience. Se Zhongguo wuxian dian, 6:11 (November 1938). 74 Personal interview with Wei Jun, former pianist of a radio singing club, Shanghai, 20 February 2004. 75 Along with singers’ pictures in these periodical songbooks usualy came details about photographers who took the pictures and studios they belonged to as a sort of advertising for them. For example, in an isue of Collection of New Song of the Great Unity Club (Datong xinge xuan) published by the Great Unity Club, Yao Li’s portrait Chapter Four The Platform 194 was placed in an advert run by Great Central Plains Shoe Shop (Dazhongyuan pixie) with her endorsement – ‘I love wearing Dazhongyuan shoes’. Se Datong xinge xuan (Collection of New Song of the Great Unity Club), 2 (no date). 76 Andrew D. Field, ‘Seling souls in sin city: Shanghai singing and dancing hostes in prints, films, and politics, 1920-49,’ in Yingjin Zhang (ed.), Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922-1943 (Stanford, Cali.: Stanford University Pres, 1999), p. 107. By 1936, there were over thre hundred cabarets and dancehals of various sizes and styles operating in this metropolis. The guidebook Al About Shanghai, published in 1934/1935, clasifies cabarets in Shanghai into thre groups – high clas, low clas and no clas, and indicates that customers brought their own partners to the first one or danced with hosteses by paying moderate fes in the second. Se Frederic E Wakeman, Policing Shanghai, 1927-1937 (Berkeley : University of California Pres, 1995), p. 108; Al About Shanghai and Environs: A Standard Guide Book (Shanghai: University Pres, 1934/1935; repr. with an introduction by H. J. Lethbridge, Hong Kong: Oxford University Pres, 1983), p. 75. 7 Zheng Deren maintains that the first genuine Chinese jaz band was organised by Yu Yuezhang in 1935. Yu graduated from the Tokyo College of Music in 1926 and was then appointed as music profesor in the Xiamen University and later became Head of the Department of Music at the Shanghai School of Fine Arts. Turning to the entertainment industry in the hope of earning a decent salary, he managed to lead a band of nine instrumentalists to perform in a ‘third-clas’ Old Great China Dancehal (Laodahua wuting) owned by a Japanese in Hongkew, the Japanese residential area in Shanghai. However, as Zheng is not certain about the band’s repertoire and what kind of customers they mainly catered for, it remains to be sen whether Yu was one of Chapter Four The Platform 195 those pioneers who helped in the disemination of Chinese pops at dancehals. Personal interview ith Zheng Deren. 78 Zhengxie Hunansheng Xiangtanshi weiyuanhui wenshi ziliao yanjiu weiyuanhui, Li Jinhui, pp. 239-40. 79 Personal interview ith Zheng Deren. 80 Advertisement, Shenbao, 5 April 1939. 81 There is no literature about how the Japanese military dealt with American jaz and swept it from Shanghai during their control of the city. However, for more details about the Japanese authorities’ atitude toward jaz during the Pacific Ocean War, se E. Taylor Atkins, ‘The war on jaz, or jaz goes to war: toward a new cultural order in wartime Japan’, Positions, 6:2 (1998), 345-92. For Paramount’s advertisement, refer to 3 January 1942; Yan Gefan’s band to ‘Zhiyi dayuedui fengtou jian’ (The Appreciation Band makes a showy display), Tiaowu ribao, 19 March 1942. 82 ‘Zai tiaowuting: shenghuo huaxiang’ (At a dancehal: a portrayal of daily life), Dawanbao, 13 December 1940. 83 For Bai Guang’s concert, refer to the advertisement in Shenbao, 5 and 7 May 1945; Zhou Xuan’s to Shenbao, 28 March 1945; Chen Gexin’s to Shenbao, 25-30 June 1945. 84 Although advertisements for the four sisters’ live performance could be sen in newspapers on and off from 1944 to 1946, Zhang Fan indicated that they had neither connexion to the busines nor were they contracted singers at the café, but were occasionaly invited to give live performances. Personal interview ith Zhang Fan. Chapter Four The Platform 196 85 Shenbao, 2 March 1946. Unfortunately, except the presumed connexion betwen its name and the Regal (Lige), Pathé’s sub-label which released mainly recordings of new or les popular singers, no trace of this orchestra has been left. 86 ‘Zhengli guangbo jiemu zhi banfa’ (Procedures for regulating broadcast programes), Yule zhoubao 2:27 (July 1935), p. 531. 87 Shanghai zujie zhi bianzuan weiyuanhui (eds), Shanghai zujie zhi (A chronicle of Concesions in Shanghai) (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexue yuan chubanshe, 2001), pp. 544-5. 8 Shanghaishi dang’anguan (eds.), Riwei Shanghai shizhengfu (Japanese puppet Shanghai city government) (Beijing: Dangan chubanshe, 1986), p. 1083. 89 Yuan Jian, ‘Cong Lipai yinyue shuo dao shidaiqu’ (From Li’s music to songs of the time), Xinyinyue yuekan, 1:4 (August 1946), p. 23; Jin Shan, ‘Tantan gechang’ (A few words on singing), Dawanbao, 22 April 1948. 90 Shanghaishi dangan guan, Beijing guangbo xueyuan and Shanghaishi guangbo dianshi ju (eds), Jiu Zhongguo de Shanghai guangbo shiye (The broadcasting industry of Shanghai in old China) (Beijing: Guangbo dianshi chubanshe, 1985), p. 634. 91 Shanghai zujie zhi bianzuan weiyuanhui (eds), Shanghai zujie zhi (A chronicle of concesions in Shanghai) (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexue yuan chubanshe, 2001), pp. 521-2. 92 Shanghai shi danganguan (eds), Riwei Shanghai shizhengfu (Japanese puppet Shanghai city government) (Beijing: Dangan chubanshe, 1986), pp. 994-1002. 93 As Shuijing maintained, ‘popular songs belong to the clas of pety urbanites.’ Chen Gang also suggests that these Shanghai popular songs are the music for pety Chapter Four The Platform 197 urbanites. Se Shuijing, Liuxing gequ cangsang ji (A record of the vicisitudes of popular song) (Taipei: Dadi chubanshe, 1985), p. 7; Chen Gang (ed.), Shagnhai laoge mingdian (A compilation of the legendary Shanghai old songs) (Taipei: Yuanjing chubanshe, 2003), p. 3. 94 Se Mau-Sang Ng, ‘Popular fiction and the culture of everyday life: a cultural analysis of Qin Shouou’s Qiuhaitang’, Modern China, 20:2 (1994), p. 154. 95 Laikwan Pang, Building Up a New China in Cinema: the Chinese Left-Wing Cinema Movement, 1932-1937 (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Litlefield Publishers, 2002), pp. 142, 214-16. 96 An article in The Crystal proposed that the authorities should restrict broadcasting after midnight so that the citizens might slep wel. Coincidently, later on, the police in the French Concesion did enact a rule that any owner of a Chinese shop who switched on a radio after half past ten in the evening and disturbed the neighbourhood would be fined two dollars. However, this regulation did not last long. Se Fangfei, ‘Shier dianzhong yihou buzhun boyin’ (No broadcasting after 12 o’clock), Jingbao, 6 July 1933; ‘Fazujie kaiting shouyinji zhe zhuyi’ (Beware, radio listeners in the French Concesion), Diansheng ribao, 16 August 1933. 97 Ernest O. Hauser, Shanghai: City For Sale (Shanghai: The Chinese-American Publishing Company, 1940), p.242. 98 Personal interview with Wang Weishan, elderly fan, Shanghai, 13 March 2004; Wang Tingfu, Shanghai, 15 March 2004. 9 Personal interview ith Zhang Yunsong, elderly fan, Shanghai, 15 March 2004. 10 Personal interview ith Shen Fugen, elderly fan, Shanghai 11 February 2004. Chapter Four The Platform 198 101 Shenbao, 7 and 28 February 1937; 8 June 1940; 28 September and 12 Dec 1948; 102 Excerpt from an interview conducted by Sjuijing, 8 September 1983. Se Shuijing, Liuxing Gequ Cangsang Ji (A record of the vicisitudes of popular song) (Taipei: Dadi chubanshe, 1985), p. 205. Yao Li performed regularly in Yangzi Dancehal from 1942 to 1946. 103 L. Z. Yuan, Sidelights on Shanghai (Shanghai: The Mercury Pres, 1934), p. 31 104 Personal interview ith Ms Li, elderly fan, Shanghai, 21 February 2004. 105 Personal interview with Jin Yi. The art song here refers to one that was originaly writen for vocal and piano in the format similar to the so-caled Kunstlied by conservatoire-trained composers. This song was composed by Chao Yuen-ren in 1926, and Jin Yin learnt of the rearanged dancehal version in the mid-1940s. 106 Personal interview ith Wang Yixian, elderly fan, Shanghai, 1 March 2004. 107 Personal interview ith Zhang Fan. 108 Interview clip shown in Yibai nian de gesheng. 109 Se ‘Dianying gequ ci nanxie’ (It’s dificult to write lyrics for film song), Dianying zhoubao, 16 (October 1948), n.p.; ‘Liulang wenying kao qu qu nanyang’ (Orioles in Wilow Waves exported to Southeast Asia for its songs), Dianying huaju, 11 (August 1948), n.p. 10 Eilen Chang, ‘Tan yinyue’ (On music) in Eilen Chang, Liuyan (Writen on water) (Taipei: Huangguan chubanshe, 1991), p. 215. 11 Personal interview ith Peng Guokuan, elderly fan, Shanghai, 13 March 2004. Chapter Four The Platform 19 12 For detailed study on tabloids in old Shanghai, refer to Yang Jiayou, ‘Bange shiji de Shanghai xiaobao’ (Shanghai tabloids during the half century), Dang’an chunqiu, 3 (2002), 41-7; Zhu Junzhou, ‘Shanghai xiaobao de lishi yange’ (A history of Shanghai tabloids), Xinwen janjiu ziliao, 42 (1988), pp. 137-53. 13 Se Dapangzi, ‘Xiangei geyongjie’ (For the singing circle), Gexing huabao, 1 (August 1935), p. 17; Xu Ruhui, ‘Ge xiandai yuejia ji gechangjia’ (For contemporary musicians and vocalists), Gexing huabao, 4 (December 1935), p. 8. 14 The first film magazine published in China was ‘Film Magazine’ (Yingsi zazhi), which was launched as early as April 1921 with a special announcement in the two leading Chinese newspaper in Shanghai, The Shun Pao Daily (Shenbao) and The News (Xinwenbao) on 1 April 1921. 15 For example, Liu Xue’an,‘You “Chuzheng ge” shoudao yingqu de gailiang’ (From “The Song of Campaign”: words on making beter film songs), Dianying wenhua, 1 (October 1935), n.p.; He Luting, ‘Zuo gequ de jijian chubu zhishi’(Several facts of songwriting at the primary stage), Diantong, 10 (October 1935), n.p.; Bai Jian, ‘Dianying zhong de duibai, gechang yu yinyue’ (Dialogue, singing and music in films), Lianhua huabao 6:10 (November 1935), n.p. 16 ‘Sanda boyin gexing jingxuan de yiyi’ (The significance of top thre radio singers contest), Dawanbao, 26 May 1934; ‘Sanda boying gesing jingxuan da jiexiao’ (The result of thre radio singers contest), Dawanbao, 14 June 1934. 17 Se ‘Haishang shida gexing xuanju’ (Ten best pop stars in Shanghai contest), Gexing huabao, 2 (September 1935), n.p.; Xu Weigong, ‘Xiezai haishang shida gexing xuanju shi: yong shemo biaozhun lai xuanju women weilai de gexing?’ (At the Chapter Four The Platform 20 time of ten best pop stars in Shanghai contest: what is the criteria for selecting our future singers?) Gexing huabao, 3 (October 1935), p. 11. 18 The Wind, 8 April 1949. 19 Siji, ‘Zhongguo dianying xinge zatan’(Rambling on new Chinese film songs), Shengbao, 22 December 1938. Interestingly, ‘Siji’ is the last two characters in the Chinese transliteration of the name of Russian musician Tchaikovsky. 120 Yapo, ‘Bai Guang shi zheyang yiuyu de’ (So melancholic is Bai Guang), Dianying zhoubao 3 (31 July 1948), n.p. 121 For examples se ‘Duiyu gequ ciju de yijian’ (Opinions about lyrics of songs), Shenbao, 4 April 1940; Yupian, ‘Yongsu de dushi yiyue’ (The vulgar urban music), Xinyiyue yuekan (Huananban), 1:2 (May 1946), p. 30; Chenshu, ‘Xiugai liuxing gequ geci de jianyi’ (Suggestions concerning the revision of lyrics in popular songs), Shenbao, 16 February 1940. 201 Chapter Five The Products The analysis based on Franco Fabbri’s ‘formal and technical rules’ and ‘semiotic rules’ in the introductory chapter has given a general view of the components of Shanghai popular song. It clearly reveals that both Chinese and Western musical elements were direct materials used in the Shanghai pop industry. The unique social and political background of Shanghai made available a diversity of raw materials for production, which in turn contributed to the coexistence of Chinese and Western characteristics in the finished goods. How does a piece of music conveys an impresion of certain nationality or strike its audience with certain generic flavour? In the case of Shanghai popular song, while one of the most recognisable features that makes a song non-Chinese would probably be the jazy instrumental acompaniment, the Chinese language in lyrics would noticeably make it Chinese. Nevertheles, apart from the phonetic sounds of Chinese, what else in those songs could be regarded Chinese? This chapter first considers how people sense national or ethnic characteristics in music, then introduces several key ethnic features of Chinese traditional music, and lastly examines the products of the Shanghai pop industry. Finaly it wil be revealed that the Shanghai pop repertoire reflected a collective style, in which while Western musical factors played an important part, there was always room for Chinese elements. Chapter Five The Products 202 I. Ethnicity in music Studies have shown that music can be used to construct national identity and can help to maintain ethnic identity. John Baily demonstrates that music has served as an agent for creating a national identity in modern Afghanistan, a country constituted by a complex mix of ethnic groups. 1 Zdzislaw Mach indicates that even though the piano composer Chopin’s compositions have few direct references to real Polish folk music but are usualy considered cosmopolitan, international and self- emotive by many foreigners, his piano works are stil revered as part of Polish national identity. 2 Ray Alen and Nancy Groce suggest that imigration groups in New York usualy hold on firmly to traditional music from their motherlands in order to maintain group identity in a multiethnic society. 3 Although there are certainly socio-political factors involved in the construction of national identity or the maintenance of ethnic identity, there must also be some distinctive music features which can be perceived as the mark of nationality or ethnicity by Afghans, Poles or imigrants in New York. Rather than approaching the isue from a social-political viewpoint, this section is intended to discuss ethnicity in music by exploring how musical characteristics can be recognised and asociated with a nation or an ethnic group by listeners. On the asumption that the repertoire of certain geographical or cultural origins always bears its specific musical characteristics, how would listeners of the same origin, or from other backgrounds, notice them? In other words, how would a person asociate music with a nation, a culture or an ethnic group? It is human nature to make comparisons among things and then asign things to a specific clas or group. By observing and learning, people develop rules of categorising things throughout life. These rules can either be as complicated, systematic and wel acepted as the science Chapter Five The Products 203 of taxonomy, or as subjective, arbitrary and ilogical as, for instance, the clasification of personal record collections. Whatever rules are applied, whether objective or subjective, when asigning one thing to a specific category, we try to match one or several identifiable features of that thing with those of the category into which it is to fal acording to our own judgment. The activity of labeling something as a particular thing raises two isues: one is how the criteria are developed and the other how its quality is perceived. When it comes to music, the former involves how a listener gets to know that certain musical features are unique to or can be found in the music created by a specific group of people, and in the later whether a listener, with the established rules in mind, can fel and recognise a musical feature. The knowledge of formal, stylistic features of music may be acquired in many diferent ways, such as atending courses, carying out scientific analyses, listening to commentaries on radio, growing up in an environment with the music or learning from a personal listening experience. While some people may be able to give a vivid description of the musical features they have learnt about with the use of technical terms, some may find it dificult to explain as they only recognise those features when they hear the music. Whether national or ethnic features can be extracted and explained in words or can only be felt through listening, they are the fundamentals of the established rules in people’s minds, based on what a piece of music is labeled. Although it is possible to discover some common features of the music representative of a cultural or geographic area with an exhaustive and systematic study into a considerable number of works, not every listener has aces to various works from diferent areas which share same characteristics and not everyone has the opportunity to hear al the pieces from a large enough repertoire to generate a definitive view of the music of one area. Scholars can spend time collecting a corpus of works, Chapter Five The Products 204 analysing the basic structures in a scientific way from a ‘musical’ perspective, such as scales, rhythmic paterns, melodic contours, harmonies and instrumentation, as wel as from other viewpoints, such as the function of the music, the context of the performance, and the making and listening proceses of the music. If they have already come across other corpora from diferent cultures, they can also make comparisons and wil probably find corelation among those diferent music traditions. However, the general public might not be able to cary out such large-scale research. Most people asociate certain music with a specific culture, area or social group acording to, if not the findings of those scholars, their own listening experience. It is not uncommon that what one considers the general musical features of an area are far diferent from what is actualy the case. Listeners’ upbringing, daily lives and the context in which they encounter a new sound, can decide how music is imprinted in their minds and thus form a commonsensical notion of musical identity, which they simply take for granted. For example, one-off events often leave lasting and incorrect impresions. People from the Far East may regard al bagpipe music as Scottish, because they have only heard it in the world-famous Edinburgh Military Tatoo, but do not know that the instrument is actualy used in other European countries such as France or Spain. Similarly, although Flamenco, which features scales in the Phrygian mode, is just one music tradition from Andalusia, those who atended only Flamenco performances during a package holidays in Spain would always remember the Phrygian flavour as a Spanish marker and think of Spanish music as Flamenco. In fact, the Phrygian mode is also heard in Latin American guitar music, and there are other diferent types of music in northern Spain. Moreover, a particular environment can create a specific musical image in people’s mind too. For example, an elderly Englishman might Chapter Five The Products 205 believe that the melodic patern of some Japanese folk songs is Chinese because the Chinese cover versions were popular when he spent his youth in the Japanese controlled International Setlement in Shanghai in the early 1940s. In addition to their personal listening experience, people are also influenced by other external factors, such as the media, peer groups or their social afiliation. For example, the frequent use of a resounding gong as a cue of the appearance of a Chinese kung fu master in films has made the tone of the instrument an unquestionable musical image of China. Members of a philharmonic society or social club may regularly be introduced by a guest speaker or musicians to certain works which they then believe representative of an ethnic group. Although Mozart’s piano piece ‘Turkish March’ may not sound Turkish to us today at al, concertgoers or socialites at Mozart’s time would acept the idea because they were told so. 4 Thus, the various circumstances in which people acquire their musical knowledge may give diferent and partial impresions of nationality or ethnic identity in music, which wil be saved in a person’s musical knowledge base and become a reference for music labeling in the future. Since individual perception of musical quality difers from person to person, as wel as from the culture in which a person is brought up, one may not be able to diferentiate two features which others judge to be distinctive. For example, some people can sense the stylistic subtleties betwen Argentine and balroom tango music, pointing out that the former varies in speed and mood but the later generaly maintains a solitary beat and lacks of emotions. However, others may not recognise such diferences but only notice the variation in instrumentation. On the asumption that the changes of tempo and mood in a tango piece are the most striking features which makes an Argentine tango distinct from a balroom tango, those who are perceptualy incapable to take in the distinctions wil fail to recognise the Argentine Chapter Five The Products 206 characteristic in the music, even if they have already gained the knowledge. In his book How Musical Is Man, John Blacking argues that as sensory discrimination is developed in culture, people may not be able to describe the diferences betwen musical intervals they can hear if those intervals have no significance in their musical system. He indicates that although the Venda people in South Africa are regarded as very musical by white setlers, an outstanding Venda musician might fail to make a distinction betwen two obviously diferent melodic paterns and might consider the intervals of fourth and fifth the same, because their perception of sound is basicaly harmonic. 5 As can be imagined, the Venda musician might find it dificult to join a conversation where two graduate students in musicology are discussing the bulk use of several types of intervals as a characteristic of folk songs in a certain area. Therefore, the perception determined by one’s musicality or cultural background has an impact on how national, ethnic or geographical musical features can be detected. Apart from the culture background and musicality, individual listening habits or preferences also decide how the musical elements, which give nationality, ethnicity or other geographical identities, are observed and recognised. When coming across a new song, most people would always try to find the main melody so that there is a thread to folow throughout the song, dismising the strong pulsation of the bas or the piercing rif delivered by a treble instrument. Nevertheles, some people would take the sounds of al instruments and the singers’ voices as a whole, paying atention to each musical part in order to identify how diferent parts are bound together to generate musical pleasure. Others might only be atracted by some particular feature, such as a specific instrumental part or the patern of chord progresion, even though they can actualy hear every sound in the song. Because each person lays emphasis on diferent aspects of music, while some listeners would unconsciously neglect in a Chapter Five The Products 207 repertoire some musical elements which give a specific flavour, others might be able to se a colourful ethnic image or notice a unique feature created by the musical elements they have selectively observed. This can be especialy problematic when ethnic musical elements from more than one origin are integrated into a single piece, for example, if a Chinese musician plays Vitorio Monti’s Hungarian-styled Csárdás on the huqin fiddle. 6 To what extent it stil sounds Hungarian, or how Chinese it can be, depends on whether a listener is struck more by the tune, the timbre of the instrument or the new arangement. Therefore, it sems that musical knowledge has to be developed before listeners can match what is heard with the criteria in their minds, yet it should be noted that an individual’s perception of musical quality also has impacts on the proces of knowledge development. The learning proces or discovery of the stylistic components of a repertoire may wel be influenced by an individual listener’s musicality, cultural background and listening habit. For example, when hearing some foreign folk songs, a native folk guitarist may be able to work out precisely the unusual chord progresion of the acompanying guitar in those songs and thus learn the exotic features. However, a les musical person might gain an impresion that those foreign folk songs are similar to native songs because the guitar acompaniment does not sound exotic. Therefore, rules in mind and perception are not merely two independent factors that shape how people perceive musical characteristics but two factors that are also inseparably intertwined. In summary, for example, taking the world-famous Scottish tune ‘Auld Lang Syne’, it is questionable how Scottish it would stil be, or how Chinese it could be, if the penultimate bar of the tune was modified into a Chinese melismatic fragment, as shown in Ex.1, and sung in a nasal voice. Chapter Five The Products 208 Ex.1 Modified Scottish ‘Auld Lang Syne’ I. Chinesenes in music It may be dificult to give an unqualified answer to the above question regarding a modified ‘Auld Lang Syne’, yet to Western ears the nasal melismatic melody does bear a Chinese mark. 7 Westerners in the ninetenth and early twentieth centuries had made some observations from the perspective of their understandings of music. With the introduction of recording technology at the turn of the twentieth century, music from the Orient could be recorded and played to Westerners. Those who were dispatched to the Far Eastern frontline to collect those sounds appeared to be the privileged, as they could not only hear the music before it reached consumers but also witnes the performances. However, undertaking recording sesions, particularly in an enclosed space, might have been torture to those Western recording engineers or busines representatives who had no knowledge of, let alone appreciation for, Oriental music, but were simply sent by their companies to the Orient to open up a new market and at the same time to make recordings of ‘exotic’ music. As Fred Gaisberg, a busines representative of the Gramophone Company, who started his Asian tour in 1902, wrote in a field report, in Shanghai they had to stop the sesion after making ten records because, as he pointedly complained, the din had so paralysed his wits that he could not think. 8 From his point of view, the diferences betwen the tunes of any two records were so insignificant that he could hardly detect Chapter Five The Products 209 them. Obviously, whatever form of Chinese music Gaisberg had heard in Shanghai, it was no more than an unpleasant and prolonged noise, and thus to him and other recordists, listening to Chinese music in person did not sem to be a privilege. However, in those years of the ninetenth century before the advent of sound retrieving devices, a few Westerners had already recorded Chinese music via writen words and transcriptions. Their acounts in publications of Chinese musical sounds reflect the response anyone might have given when encountering a form of ‘music’ which is extremely diferent from one’s own expereince of music. For example, after viewing an operatic performance in Canton, Henry Elis, the Third Commisioner of Lord Amherst’s British diplomatic mision to China in 1816 to 1817, believed Chinese opera to be inferior to its Western counterpart and described the performance as ‘annoyance of a sing-song’ and a ‘mas of suffering’. Elis stated that he never again wanted to endure ‘the noise of actors and instruments’ which he would not even cal musical. 9 In a similar vein, the French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz contended that to cal what Chinese people produced by their vocal and instrumental noise as music was ‘a strange abuse of the term’. 10 In addition to ‘noise’ and ‘non- music’, it sems that to some Westerners in the ninetenth century, Chinese music, especialy those singing voices in theatrical productions, was so extremely disagreable that they would use any harsh words and analogies to describe what they had experienced. For example, Wiliam Tyrone Power, the Commisary General-in- Chief of the British army commented, in a book about his term of service in China, that Chinese singers employed ‘an unnatural falseto key’ ‘pitched as high as possible’, and the vocal timbre was ‘hideous and ludicrous’ which could be compared to ‘a tom cat caterwauling on the pantiles’. 1 Criticising that nothing so strange had ever struck his ear as a ‘Chinaman’s voice’, Berlioz depicted Chinese singing as ‘a Chapter Five The Products 210 series of nasal, guttural hideous tones’ and equated it with ‘the sounds a dog makes when after a long slep it stretches its limbs and yawns’, and even more derogatorily, ‘wildcat howls’, ‘death-ratles’ and ‘turkey cluckings’. 12 Nevertheles, despite those contemptuous opinions, the two British officers mentioned above also presented some slightly more favourable views. Once in a smal vilage Elis saw a performance of the yangqin, whose sound he described as the European harpsichord, and found it ‘superior in harmony to any’ Chinese music he and other colleagues had heard. 13 Power also had a more enjoyable Chinese musical experience where he heard Chinese Buddhist monks chanting and playing bels and drums. To Power, this was apparently far beter than the dreadful impresion the Chinese theatrical singing had made on him, as he remarked in his book that the chanting, together with bels and drums, was ‘awe-inspiring’. 14 Unfortunately, Gaisberg did not encounter these during his fieldwork in Shanghai, otherwise he would not have caled what he recorded ‘din’ if he shared a similar musical aesthetic with Elis and Power. There were already some personal impresions of Chinese music briefly mentioned in books writen by previous residents of China. However, a few misionaries, scholars and informed amateurs, who had closer contact with the natives or had resided in China over a longer time span, made an efort to collect and study Chinese music and finaly published their works back in their homelands. Some Jesuit Misionaries in the early eightenth century and Protestant misionaries from Britain and America in the ninetenth century had examined Chinese musical practices, instruments and theories in an atempt to gain deeper understanding and, from the viewpoint of their Western musical traditions, to explain how Chinese music was inferior to theirs. 15 Among Western works, an important and perhaps the most Chapter Five The Products 21 quoted one in the West before the 1950s is Chinese Music writen by J. A. van Aalst, a Belgian who started his carer with the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs in Guangdong Province in 1881 and then transfered to Beijing in 1883. This book was published in 1884 and probably based on an intensive study into the subject using Aalst’s musical expertise acquired in the Royal Conservatory of Ghent in Belgium. Although recognising a smal number of aceptable qualities in theatrical songs and religious and ritual music, Aalst summed up his analysis at the end of his book by listing four major shortcomings of Chinese music. In his opinion, firstly, some intervals of the scale were not properly tuned. Secondly, due to a lack of precision in manufacture, there was no exact acuracy of pitch on Chinese musical instruments. Thirdly, the melodies were always in unison, in the same key and devoid of variation in sound volume and movement and lastly, as Chinese tunes were not clearly set in a major or minor key, but fluctuated betwen the two, the distinct happy and sad emotions or the charming efects produced by the alteration betwen them were absent. 16 Besides describing Chinese music in writen works, Westerners also had their own views of China from musical compositions. The growing awarenes of and fascination with Chinese art and architecture in Europe from the mid sevententh century led to the formation of an artistic style, chinoiserie, which was the imagination or evocation of Chinese motifs and techniques in art, furniture and architecture. In the world of music, clasical composers also started to include elements they considered Oriental to evoke the flavour of such an exotic country. 17 American songwriters of sheet music in Tin Pan Aley or composers hired by theatre producers had employed some musical devices in their works since the late ninetenth century to convey Chinese or Oriental images. Acording to Krystyn R. Moon, their Chapter Five The Products 212 compositions usualy featured syncopated rhythms and disonant intervals, which were heard in African American music and in Orientalist operas, together with sounds from the properly tuned Western twelve-note scale. Moreover, recurring and droning rhythms, genuine Chinese musical instruments and pentatonic materials drawn from transcriptions of Chinese music, which were brought to the West by misionaries or those who had stayed in China, could also be found in their repertoire. 18 These musical characteristics, combined with Westerners’ general impresion of Chinese music at that time, even served as a standard for judging whether a piece of work with a Chinese theme was musicaly authentic. Songs or music in theatrical productions would receive comments from critics, who recognised the ‘Chinesenes’ from the use of grace notes, paralel fourths and fifths, a minor key, repeated semiquavers and pentatonicism, and by the noise which was typicaly Chinese, such as ‘the clash and crash of huge cymbals’ and ‘the squeak and squeal of Chinese instruments’. 19 Interestingly, the Western-produced musical Chinesenes was appropriated by Japanese songwriters in the 1930s and 1940s when the Japanese record industry started making popular songs with themes of China and other Asian countries. Edgar W. Pope singles out a distinct melodic patern featuring a descending pentatonic sequence of notes set against a repeated rhythmic figure, which he traces back to a song titled ‘Shanghai March’ (Shanhai kôshinkyoku) released by Japan Victor in 1931, where melodic fragments of this patern appeared in the instrumental introduction and interlude betwen the verses (Ex.2, I). Pope compares this melodic pasage to the commonly used Chinese theme in Hollywood film music during the same period, such as an example from MGM’s 1937 production The Good Earth (Ex.2, I). He suggests that the asociation with China evoked by melodies of this type was possibly instiled in the Japanese through American films, as Hollywood Chapter Five The Products 213 productions had been very popular in Japan as early as the 1920s. Moreover, not only in film scores but also in Tin Pan Aley songs one can find a similar melodic design. An example is a pasage from the piano introduction to ‘Chinatown, My Chinatown’ (Ex.2, II), published far earlier in 1910, which bears comparable pentatonic and rhythmic characteristics, though the melody is harmonised with a Western tone colour. This pasage also serves as a substantial sample of the musical devices, as indicated by Moon, used as a signifier of China or the Orient by American songwriters. 20 Ex.2 Melodic paterns signifying China It is questionable whether those comments on Chinese music and images of China in Western compositions are justifiable. Chinese people may want to argue that the derogatory comments on Chinese musical performance given by Westerners such as Elis, Power and Berlioz, the four specific defects in Chinese music as judged by van Aalst, and the musical devices asociated with China in film music and popular songs are al drawn from culturaly biased views, full of one-sidednes and partiality. However, considering the way in which people gain their impresions of nationality in music, as discussed earlier, those views are understandable. Those Westerners simply Chapter Five The Products 214 applied the musical knowledge they had learnt in their culture to what they heard in China. Some of them could only equate Chinese music with noise based on their definition of ‘music’, whereas others, from their technical point of view, deemed Chinese music backward. Moreover, as there was no need, and perhaps nowhere, to develop a musical capacity to appreciate Chinese singing or the acoustic efect of instrumental performances in their society at that time, a person like Gaisberg would certainly not be ‘musical’ enough to tel the diference betwen ‘din’ and Chinese music nor the variation among those pieces he recorded. In fact, it is not merely a Western practice to criticise a specific type of music from the perspective of an existing standard or dominant aesthetic. About 2,500 years ago in China, Confucius condemned the folk songs of Zheng as being over-rampant (yin, literaly ‘licentious’), and compared them to ‘those who overthrow states with their sharpened tongues’. He abhorred the music of Zheng being confused with yayue (literaly ‘elegant music’), a form of music performed in the Imperial Court, but considered the ancient music from the period of Emperor Shun perfect and held it in high estem. 21 Zixia, one of Confucius’ disciples, also contended The airs of Kang [Zheng] go to a wild excess, and debauch the mind; those of Sung [Song] tell of slothful indulgence and women, and drown the mind; those of Wei are vehement and rapid, and perplex the mind; and those of Khî [Qi] are violent and depraved, and make the mind arrogant. The airs of those four states all stimulate libidinous desire, and are injurious to virtue. 2 Unlike those Westerners in the ninetenth century who laid more emphasis on musical techniques and compositional theories, Confucius and Zixia in the fifth century BC were concerned about the impact of music on minds and morality rather than aspects of musical techniques and compositional theories. Nevertheles, they Chapter Five The Products 215 judged whether the music of a specific area was decent by using only their own principles that music was meant to cleanse one’s spirit rather than serving primarily as a source of personal sensual pleasure. 23 Therefore, in a sense, Confucius and his followers are no les culturaly egocentric, disapproving of the hedonistic nature they saw in the music of Zheng and other areas, than those Westerners who failed to perceive the charm of Chinese singing voice, nor is the tone of their language les strident than that of the Westerners’. However culturaly biased Western criticism of Chinese music may sem, these negative comments may serve as a positive basis for understanding Chinese musical features. The remainder of this section wil addres two isues which Westerners mentioned al the time, Chinese musical texture and scales, and an important third isue which Westerners did not observe in early years, which was the relationship betwen lexical tones and musical tunes in Chinese vocal works. Owing to the imense geographical size and population of China, there is definitely diversity within Chinese musical traditions, and therefore there is a risk when one atempts to generalise Chinese music of oversimplifying this diversity and overlooking minorities. 24 Therefore, this discussion is not meant to be exhaustive and wil merely focus on the features commonly heard in most forms of Chinese music. 1. Musical texture One important feature of Chinese traditional music is its heterophonic texture. Except for the music of some minorities in southwestern and southern China where there are polyphonic vocal traditions, Chinese music lays more emphasis on melodic design. 25 Since the harmonic and contrapuntal structures that are widely sen in Chapter Five The Products 216 Western works are not employed, when more than one part of voices play simultaneously the vertical alignment of intervals betwen parts is coincidental and not important. For example, in instrumental music, such as sizhu (‘silk-and- bamboo’), the chamber music tradition of the Jiangnan area (central eastern China), al members of an ensemble play a single melodic outline from memory, but each of them interprets and embelishes the same melody acording to the idiomatic practices of the instrument and personal aesthetic preferences. In this way, individual melodic lines delivered by various instruments most of the time sound in unison. Although there may be concurrence of diferent pitches when musicians interpret the same melody in diferent ways, such as adding ornamental notes or an interlude, the combination of these diferent pitches does not follow the Western system of paterned chord progresions at al (Ex.3). 26 Ex.3 The heterophonic texture in instrumental music Chapter Five The Products 217 Besides pure instrumental works, the heterophonic texture is also found in vocal performances when they are acompanied by instruments. For example, the singing in traditional opera is acompanied by an ensemble, usualy led by the high- pitched huqin, playing in much the same way as sizhu. Al instrumentalists, except the percussionists, follow the same melody as that sung by the actor, taking certain tonal and rhythmic liberty to add ornamental phrases. Likewise, in story-teling balads, such as Suzhou tanci, the acompanying pipa, sometimes together with a sanxian, produces a melodic line similar to the vocal line with inserted idiomatic decorative pasages. The excerpt from an aria of yueju (the regional opera from the Zhejiang province) in Ex.4 offers an example where the fiddle plays ornamental notes and interludes, against the vocal line, to acompany the singing. 27 Ex.4 Instrumental acompaniment in vocal music It was probable that clashes betwen pitches (acording to the Western understanding of consonance and disonance) and repetition betwen voices, together with the timbre of high-pitched singing voice and instrumentation which lacked a powerful bas section, that made Westerners asociate Chinese music with noise. Chapter Five The Products 218 Nevertheles, these are musical features with which Chinese people have lived for centuries. 2. Musical scale To Western ears, the pentatonic marker is one of the conspicuous characteristics of Chinese music, yet pentatonicism is not unique to Chinese music. It also occurs outside the teritories of China and is usualy regarded to a wider range as Oriental. In fact, pentatonic melodies can often be heard in music from other continents. Tunes constructed on the pentatonic scale appear, for instance, in the Celtic traditions in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, in the music of the Native Americans in the Andes, in melodies pased on generation by generation on Polynesian islands and in xylophone music and Sudanese songs in Africa. Despite the omnipresence of pentatonicism in many traditional or aboriginal repertoires around the world, there are variances among five-tone scales in diferent geographical or cultural regions. Acording to the patern of whole tones and semitones, pentatonicism fals into thre types (Ex.5). The most frequently heard type is characterised by its lack of semitone, containing only major seconds and minor thirds, and is thus caled the anhemitonic (without semitone) pentatonic scale. This is the most familiar and is usualy refered to as the pentatonic scale. The second type, containing semitones and other intervals, is termed the hemitonic pentatonic scale. Melodies set on this type can be found in Japanese and New Guinean music, and the example given is the Japanese hirajoshi (‘level tuning’) scale, on which the famous folk song ‘Chery blossom’ (Sakura) is constructed. The third type of pentatonic scale, radicaly unfamiliar to most people due to its intervals faling outside most musical traditions, is the equipentatonic scale, Chapter Five The Products 219 which divides the octave into five roughly equal intervals. The equipentatonic scale is used in Javanese, Balinese and some African instrumental music. Ex.5 Thre types of pentatonicism Ex.6 Thre mostly used Chinese pentatonic modes The pentatonicism used in Chinese music belongs to the first type, anhemitonic, which is widely sen in most Chinese folk songs, story-teling balads, the arias of various regional operas and instrumental music. In line with the relative order of intervals on the scale, the five notes are named gong, shang, jue, zhi and yu, and using the sol-fa syllables employed in Western European music, can be sung as Chapter Five The Products 20 do, re, mi, sol and la respectively. Al of these five notes can function as the tonic and thus form five diferent modes, each with a distinct series of intervals. The gong (do), zhi (sol) and yu (la) modes are the thre common modes, and the gong mode can be compared to the major mode in Western music and the yu the minor (Ex.6). The shang (re) and jue (mi) modes are les common compared with the other thre. While theoreticaly it is on the base of these five primary notes (zhengyin, or literaly ‘orthodox tone’), that the skeleton of Chinese traditional music is formed, Chinese music is not always strictly pentatonic. Although there are folk songs or instrumental pieces composed of only these five notes, in many works the so-caled ‘altered tone’ (pianyin), that is qingjue (fa), bianzhi (fa-sharp), run (ti-flat) and biangong (ti), are also used. These altered tones in practice can be viewed as extensions of the pentatonic scale. Starting from C, taking five consecutive pitches from the circle of fifths and transposing them to fit into one octave, one can produce a series of pitches, C-G-D-A-E, which can be rearanged to form a pentatonic scale. Picking up more pitches from the circle of fifths in the same fashion at both ends of the series, F and B-flat at one end, and B and F-sharp the other, the pentatonic scale can then be expanded to two hexatonic and thre heptatonic scales (Ex.7). Ex.7 Expansion of the pentatonic scale Chapter Five The Products 21 Though employed in Chinese music, these altered tones are subsidiary in importance to the five notes, usualy either serving as a pasing, auxiliary note, an arbitrary ornamental note or resulting from modulation. A few examples are given in Ex.8. 28 In a manner similar to the way non-chord tones function in Western musical theories, in Chinese music a pasing note links two primary pentatonic notes a third apart to alow smooth, scale-wise motion, whereas an auxiliary moves a second away below or above a primary note and returns to it (Ex.8, I & I). When an altered tone appears as an arbitrary ornamental note, it moves away from the preceding note by skip or leap and then step to another primary note (Ex.8, II). The last example (Ex.8, IV) ilustrates two altered notes resulting from modulation, featuring a strict sequence of the note group in the second half of the phrase. Ex.8 Uses of altered tones in Chinese traditional music There is a need to identify how those ‘extra’ notes are added to Chinese music if the first five of the series are the ‘basic’ or the most important notes. Going through the evolution of melody in music history from a musicological viewpoint, Bence Szabolcsi traces in his book A History of Melody the formation of diatonicism back to Chapter Five The Products 22 pentatonicism. 29 Based upon melodic material from East European and West Asian folk tunes, Szabolcsi finds that in some areas the pentatonic melody has a characteristic tendency to expansion, repeating at a lower register to form a cascade. In order to keep the pentatonic scheme intact the transposed melody in some cases changes using adjacent pentatonic notes to supply any altered tones needed, while in others the sense of maintaining a pure tonal system gives way to the desire to stick to the same melodic shape resulting in a strict transposition and adoption of altered tones. Szabolcsi argues that as the feling of diatonicism became stronger, the traditions of pentatonic discipline were weakened, first by occasionaly using altered tones as pasing notes and later by integrating these elements, which were alien to pentatonic schemes, to permanently fil gaps in the pentatonic melody. The unacented pasing notes gradualy turned to be esential notes on acented beats, which made the five-note system expand and evolve into diatonicism. To sum up, although based on pentatonicism, altered tones are definitely heard in Chinese music, and it is not only the pentatonic scale but also the way these non- pentatonic notes are used that characterises Chinese music. 3. Tones and tunes English poets make use of metre to ensure that their poetry fits a particular rhythm, and when seting poems to music, most of the time if not always, English composers match the textual rhythm to musical streses. There is the counterpart in Chinese songwriting. English is a stres language, in which there is a fixed patern of strong and weak syllables within a word, and a change in the stres point can change the meaning of a word. Thus, when writing a tune for words, a basic rule is to make Chapter Five The Products 23 the acented syllables of words align with musical acents so that the singer can articulate appropriately and the audience appreciate each word in the lyrics. The melody should not force a normaly unacented sylable to be stresed, or a wrenched acent wil be produced. However, due to distinctive linguistic diferences betwen Chinese and English, the placement of word streses in music is not a Chinese songwriter’s concern. Instead, the lexical tone is the prime isue to be dealt with. Theoreticaly, writing Chinese lyrics for an existing tune, or composing a melody for a Chinese verse, would demand an efort of coordinating lexical tones and musical contours so that the words in a song can flow as smoothly as in natural speech and to be inteligible to the audience. Before looking into how the tone may be taken into consideration in seting Chinese words to music, it is necesary to addres the fundamental characteristics of the Chinese language as these have a crucial impact on this isue. As opposed to English and some major European languages, there are two auditory features of the Chinese language, the monosyllabic nature of the characters and the tonal quality of the syllables. 30 A ‘word’ can be generaly defined as a unit of language or its representation in writing, and it may consist of one or more syllables. In English and some other writing systems spaces are used to separate words in the text but word boundaries are not clearly marked out in Chinese. Chinese words are writen in a string of characters without interword separations. A Chinese character is a writen symbol, which corresponds to only one syllable articulated in a specific tone and may be a word in itself or be part of a word. To put it another way, though a Chinese word can be mono- or polysyllabic, as is in other languages, these fixed- toned syllables are recorded in the text with characters, each of which stands for only one syllable. Chapter Five The Products 24 In a stres language, such as English, tone is mainly used to expres emphasis, to communicate a subtle nuance, or to turn a statement into a question, yet tone alone does not alter the meaning of individual words. In contrast, Chinese is a tone language, in which tone is an integral part of a word and variations in pitch are used to distinguish lexical meanings. Based on the Ancient Chinese tonal system, there are four major tone categories in Chinese, which are the ‘level’ (ping), ‘rising’ (shang), ‘departing’ (qu) and ‘entering’ (ru) tones. Each tone category may be further split into two registers, yin and yang, yielding eight tone types. 31 However, because the tonal system has developed many regional variations through time, the exact tone contour, or pitch movement, of each type changes regionaly. Although Chinese people share a standard set of characters and a comon standard in writing, there are many regional variants in modern spoken language. How a character is read can difer from dialect to dialect, in terms of both pronunciation and tone. The phonology of the official spoken language, Standard Mandarin, formaly known as ‘common language’ (putonghua) in China or ‘national language’ (guoyu) in Taiwan, basicaly draws on that of the Beijing dialect with some modification. Therefore, the pronunciation of characters in Standard Mandarin only represents the sound system of one of many Chinese dialect groups. One who only learns the standard spoken language at school would encounter unexpected changes in either vowel or consonant value, or both of them, of the pronunciation of a character when traveling from one place to another, which are similar to regional variations of English pronunciation in the British Isles. As for regional diversity in tone, Chinese dialects vary significantly in their individual tonal systems. Tones used in a dialect do not always fal into the eight types previously mentioned. For example, there are only four tones in Standard Mandarin: yinping, yangping, shang and qu. The shang and qu Chapter Five The Products 25 tones do not split into yin and yang registers, and the ru tone has through time already been distributed among the other thre tone categories. Besides, a neutral tone, which has no specific tone contour and is not included in these eight types, is also used. Cantonese has as many as nine tones, including al of the eight tone types, one of which, the yinru tone, divides further into two subtypes. Furthermore, in addition to the diferences among the numbers of tone types used in dialects, the way the pitch moves in a specific tone type varies in individual dialects as wel. For example, the yangqu tone in Shanghai dialect has a low rising contour while in Cantonese it is a flat tone. The qu tone in Standard Mandarin, which does not split into yin and yang, is a sharp faling one. 32 In addition to the considerable diversity in tone contours and the numbers of tone types, there is one more phenomenon worth noting, which is tone sandhi, or alteration of a tone to a diferent tone contour influenced by its preceding or following tone in speech flow. For example, in Standard Mandarin, a shang tone becomes a yangping tone when followed by another shang tone. Rules governing tonal alterations also vary among dialects. In some dialects such as Mandarin and Cantonese there are comparatively few sandhi environments whereas others such as Shanghainese and Taiwanese can have more complicated sandhi rules for every single tone used in the language. 3 Poetry has long been asociated with music. In poetry, paterns of metre are used among other poetic techniques to produce rhythmic efects, which are usualy regarded as an important musical quality in this literature genre. In English poetry, metre is founded on the patern of stresed and unstresed syllables and thus the composition of an English poem involves arangement of syllables into fet, whereas in clasical Chinese verse, especialy the ‘modern style verse’ (jintishi), ‘lyric metres’ (ci) and ‘dramatic verse’ (qu), there are fixed tone paterns prescribing not only the Chapter Five The Products 26 number of syllables but also what tones to be used throughout verse lines. 34 The four major tone categories in Chinese are divided into two clases for the metrical purpose. The ‘level’ tone is regarded as ‘level’ (ping), and the ‘rising’, ‘entering’ and ‘departing’ tones as ‘deflected’ (ze). Though some liberty is alowed, the tone of each character in a poem has to be consistent with its designated value, ping or ze, acording to the chosen tone patern. Therefore, when reciting a Chinese poem, in addition to the rhythmic beat, the tonal pulsation is also produced by the alternation betwen the ‘level’ and ‘deflected’ tones in the uttered syllables. Perhaps due to the tonal nature of their language, building up on overplayed syllabic tone contours, Chinese people are inclined to recite verse lines with a fluctuating intonation. Such a lilt could have easily evolved into a simple tune and finaly become a generaly recognised fixed melody for recitation. 35 Thus, a range of tunes developed through time in diferent regions for poetry chanting. For the ‘Tang poetry’, there were specific modes of tunes for poems writen in diferent tone paterns. Unlike ‘modern style verse’, in which words came first, ‘lyric metres’ and ‘dramatic verse’ were actualy poetic works composed to given tunes, which dictate tone paterns, rhyme schemes and the number of syllables. A writer chose an existing tune, or simply composed a new one, and then ‘fited’ characters into the tune in acordance with the tonal requirement. However, neither the melodies for reciting ‘modern style verse’ nor the predetermined tunes to which the ‘lyric metres’ and ‘dramatic verse’ are writen realy correspond to the lexical tones of the characters. As a tone patern only specifies how ‘level’ and ‘deflected’ tones are aranged through the lines in a poem, dividing al types of tones merely into two clases, the subtleties of the pitch movement in individual syllables are not diferentiated. For example, any character that reads in the shang, qu or ru tone is qualified to fit in a Chapter Five The Products 27 place which requires the ‘deflected’. It is not always the case that the melodic contour of the tune mirors the rise and fal of lexical tones. In brief, though the tonal quality of Chinese may have a definite role to give a distinctive musical efect in Chinese poetry, words sung to formulaic tunes, which diferentiate only ‘level’ from ‘deflected’, cannot be fully comprehended by the audience. Theoreticaly, some modification ought to be made to the melodic lines of those fixed tunes to tel betwen individual tone types. It is not clear how and to what extent several centuries ago Chinese people would have ‘bent’ the notes to serve this purpose, nor is it known if regional variations of tone were taken into consideration. However, techniques dealing with these isues can be observed in various existing traditional vocal arts. There is a wide range of regional forms of balad singing and opera in China, each of which has its repertoire of basic tunes and melodic models. 36 When creating a new piece, an artist usualy sets the text to a chosen tune from the repertoire. These tunes are not imutable, but rather they can be modified by artists from time to time to acommodate the tone of an individual character or the intonation of a sentence in the text. As an esential requirement in the performance of traditional balad singing and opera is to ensure that the content of lyrics is clearly understood by the audience, an artist has to make some alterations to the tune, using grace notes to emphasise the tone of individual syllables or developing exquisite melismatic paterns to highlight the syllable. For example, in kunqu opera, an oldest extant form of Chinese opera, there are rules for seting characters in diferent tones to music. For instance, a melismatic sequence of notes, in which the second note moves an interval of second or third downward before the melodic line ascends, can be used over a character in the shang tone (Ex.9, I & I), whereas a character in the qu tone can be sung to a melodic Chapter Five The Products 28 pasage in which the second note goes a second or third upward and fals thereafter (Ex.9, II & IV). 37 Ex.9 Melismatic design for specific tones Another example from ‘Northeast drum story-singing’ (dongbei dagu), a form of balad singing popular in Northeast China, shows how inserted grace notes make the flow of the melody roughly paralel to the change in pitch over individual syllables (Ex.10). 38 In addition to grace notes, it is noteworthy, in the example, that the melodic shape of succesive notes sung to a character, such as the first two characters in bar 2, also reflect approximately its tone contour. Although the melodic line over the second character in bar 3 moves in the direction opposite to the change of pitch in the lexical tone, the large leap of a major seventh from the grace note suggests the tone value. Ex.10 Use of grace notes and intervals A short musical phrase taken from gezaixi opera, a Taiwanese regional operatic genre, serves as an example of how a melodic line can be bent to reflect Chapter Five The Products 29 variations of pitch movement over a syllable. An artist may lower the first note in the phrase below for an interval of second, or add a grace note to it, so that the words denoting thre diferent vehicles in the text, the train (‘fire car’, Ex.11, I), the float (‘flower car’, Ex.11, I) and the van (‘goods car’, Ex.11, II), which al sound the same (huechia) if the tones are ignored, can be distinguished from one another. 39 Ex.11 Bent melodic line Unfortunately, due to their lack of knowledge of the Chinese language, in the past Westerners could not observe the devices used for dealing with tones against tunes in Chinese music, and thus failed to appreciate the art of combining words with music which were so disimilar to their own music traditions. 40 Chapter Five The Products 230 II. Examining Shanghai popular songs In one sense, just like the modified ‘Auld Lang Syne’, Shanghai popular song is a product of musical materials from more than one origin. How the nationality of this modified tune is recognised depends on a listener’s musical knowledge and perception, as does how the various musical components in Shanghai popular song can be separated for examination. While the analysis in this section draws on both the ‘knowledge’ of Chinese and Western music, which has been wel documented in literature, it relies on my own ‘perception’ of musical qualities which may difer from that of other readers, and thus some verbal descriptions such as a certain ‘flavour’ or ‘impresion’, may not be completely clearly perceived by others. Nevertheles, the analysis wil provide a guideline for identifying ethnic features and explain how they are collaborated in Shanghai popular song. 1. Singing voice Shanghai popular singers came from diferent backgrounds and thus acquired their ‘knowledge’ of singing through various routes. Some started their carers in song-and-dance troupes and received training there, some were in fact film stars and started singing simply because that was required, some studied singing by atending school or from private tutors and some were simply self-taught and developed their vocal skils through time. To audiences today, whether they are Chinese fans or Western onlookers, Shanghai popular singers’ voices in historical recordings may sound nasal and high-pitched in comparison to those of pop singers today, yet there are stil diferences among their vocal qualities. From the perspective of the singing style or vocal techniques, both ends of the spectrum of voices can be found in Chapter Five The Products 231 recordings, the Chinese traditional style and the Western bel canto style. Before examining recording examples, it is esential to understand the major diference betwen Chinese and Western vocal techniques. A fundamental diference is the way Western and Chinese vocal techniques deal with the resonating cavities. Acording to the part of the human body in which the sound mostly resonates, singing voices may be categorised into thre registers, representing the changing tonal qualities within the pitch ranges and these are the chest, the middle and the head voices. The chest voice denotes a singer’s lower range of voice, which generaly resonates in the chest cavity and is usualy described as having a deep, weighty quality. The head voice is asociated with a bright, light singing voice at the upper end of a singer’s vocal range, which resonates in the mouth and the head cavities. The middle voice refers to the warm, rich singing tones of a singer’s middle pitch range resonating in the throat cavity, which is sometimes regarded as the crossover betwen the chest and head voices. The Western clasical singing style, or precisely the bel canto, is characterised by even vocal quality with the greatest amount of resonance through the whole of a singer’s voice range where every singing note smoothly merges with the next to produce continuous lines. To achieve this, a singer has to utilise al resonating cavities properly, maintain a fine balance among various voice registers and develop seamles transitions betwen registers. Singing in this style, one is required to be able to place the head voice down to the notes that are normaly produced as the chest voice and vice versa. In other words, a trained vocalist would adjust the amount of resonance in diferent cavities to gain consistent tone quality throughout the singing range. For more favourable resonance, the larynx is lowered to expand the bottom of the pharynx and sometimes there are even adjustments in the pronunciation of vowels. Chapter Five The Products 232 In contrast, rather than seking to produce consistent tone quality across the entire voice range by using diferent resonating areas, in the Chinese traditional singing style a vocalist sings principaly in the head voice and develops brighter and lighter tones resonating mostly in the hard palate, the nose cavity and the head cavities. Therefore, resonance of sounds is fixed principaly in the anterior part of the head. When singing, the larynx is positioned higher than it is in the bel canto style and there is more laryngeal muscle tension. As every syllable has to be enunciated precisely, the pronunciation of a vowel is never modified for the sake of optimum resonance. Generaly speaking, due to the diferences betwen vocal techniques when using the bel canto method, a singer tends to produce melow, round and open-throated sounds, singing in the Chinese traditional fashion, a singer’s tone quality is relatively nasal, bright and with more tension in the throat. 41 Due to these distinctive diferences in Chinese and Western vocal traditions and thus audiences’ varied expectations for tonal qualities, what sounds admirable and properly trained in one tradition may be regarded as improper or hard to appreciate in the other. Nevertheles, there are fundamental requirements which are common in the two traditions. Trained singers are not only expected to sing in correct, steady pitches and to enunciate word syllables clearly but also have to develop an extensive vocal range and the ability to produce varying degres of volume with desired resonance, to perform with dynamics and, by breathing properly, to sing long phrases with adequate volume and consistent tone quality. Although some of those who have never received vocal training can stay in tune, keep the correct rhythm and articulate words precisely throughout an entire song, there may be a lack of ideal resonance, dynamics in their voices or of enduring firmnes when singing a long phrase. When exploring the singing styles and techniques in Shanghai popular songs, in addition to the stylistic Chapter Five The Products 23 dichotomy betwen Chinese and Western, a type of ‘untrained’ or ‘undeveloped’ voice whose quality does not met the requirements of either of the traditions can also be found in historical recordings. The practice of singing in this type of voice probably has its root in the song-and-dance performances in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Members in a troupe would certainly receive training to articulate properly and sing on pitch and beat, but as most of them were merely children or tenagers whose vocal organs were stil developing and thus have imature voices, they could hardly produce the rich, resonant sounds of adults. However, as their live performances and records sold wel, it sems that the audience enjoyed their singing style and therefore singing in an undeveloped voice became popular. Those members who entered the broadcast or film industry at a later stage of their carer obviously continued this singing style. The wel-known writer Eilen Chang once commented that because of the craze for the ‘litle sister’ (xiao meimei) style among the audience, singers would squeeze their throats to produce redy and flat sounds. 42 This ‘strangling cat’ style, as criticised by the celebrated writer Lu Xun, can be heard in some surviving historical recordings. As a result of the diferences betwen Chinese traditional and Western bel canto singing styles and the explanation of untrained voice, four major types of singing styles can be found in Shanghai popular songs. Chinese traditional The Chinese-style voice which features brighter head resonance can be heard in Li Lihua’s ‘Heaven on Earth’ (Tianshang renjian) and Bai Hong’s ‘Burying Jade’ (Mai yu). In ‘Heaven on Earth’, Li Lihua sings in a thin yet bright voice, resembling Chapter Five The Products 234 that of a songstres performing in a Chinese traditional teahouse. In ‘Burying Jade’, a tune which has a hint of Suzhou tanci, Bai Hong’s voice sounds soft and nasal in the lower register and becomes sharp and caries more head resonance when the melodic line moves to a higher pitch. This kind of sharp and head voice is also heard in Zhou Xuan’s ‘When Wil You Come Back Again’ (Heri jun zailai) and ‘Full Moon and Blooming Flowers’ (Yueyuan huahao) and Gong Qiuxia’s ‘Roses Blooming Everywhere’ (Qiangwei chuchu kai). Bel canto Examples of songs performed in the Western bel canto style are Ouyang Feiying’s ‘Shangri-La’ (Xianggelila), Qu Yunyun’s ‘Young Lady In a Pedicab’ (Sanlunche shang de xiaojie) and Li Xianglan’s ‘Evening Fragrance’ (Yelaixiang). In these thre songs we can easily observe that, with a fine balance betwen their vocal registers, singers use both head and chest cavities to produce a rich, round voice. There is neither a striking contrast betwen their lower and higher vocal registers nor does the tone of voice turn sharp as they go higher in pitches. Moreover, faster, wider vibrato can also be heard on their high notes. Bai Hong’s voice in ‘Enchanting Lipstick’ (Zuiren de kouhong) is another good example. Unlike the nasal and sharp voice in the above mentioned ‘Burying Jade’, Bai Hong uses a deeper, fuller voice to interpret this piece. Interestingly, in historical recordings examined in this study, while no male singer is found performing in the Chinese traditional style, there are however Western-style male singing voices. For example, Huang Feiran’s ‘Pasionate Eyes’ (Reqing de yanjing), Sheng Jialun’s ‘Singing At Midnight’ (Yeban gesheng) and Si Yigui’s ‘How Could I Forget Her’ (Jiao wo ruhe buxiang ta) are al sung in the bel canto style. Chapter Five The Products 235 Mixed style Although in some recordings we can recognise the distinctive tone quality produced by Chinese traditional and bel canto vocal techniques, in others it may be dificult to categorise one song rigidly into a specific style as a singers may apply both Chinese and Western skils within one song. For example, in ‘Goodbye Shasha’ (Shasha zaihui ba), Bai Hong’s vocal timbre changes in diferent vocal registers. One can fel more throat tension and a redy texture in her lower register, but as she reaches higher notes the muscle tension is much reduced and thus a melow, unstrained voice is produced. Another example is Yi Min’s voice in ‘Look at Me’ (Kan zhe wo), where the redy texture disappears and chest resonance is introduced in the higher register pitches. Wu Yingying also sings in an alternating style in ‘Met by Chance’ (Ping shui xiangfeng), but unlike the case of Bai Hong’s ‘Goodbye Shasha’, her higher notes in this song are brighter and sharper with clear nasal resonance, while the lower notes are warmer and unstrained. This singing manner can also be observed in Zhang Fan’s ‘Red Peach Blossoms’ (Taohua duoduo hong). Untrained voice For the untrained voice, a recording of the earliest Shanghai popular song, ‘Drizles’ (Maomao yü) sung by Li Minghui, serves as a good example. As Li must have been over twenty years of age when recording this song, she could have certainly sung in a richer voice with proper resonance if she had been provided with proper coaching when she was in song-and-dance groups organised by her father, Li Jinhui. 43 However, in this recording, her voice generaly stil sounds preadolescent and even rasping when striking the highest note in the song. She was therefore Chapter Five The Products 236 obviously singing in the ‘litle sister’ style. Zhou Xuan’s ‘The Expres Train’ (Tebie kuaiche) is another case in point. Although every word is articulated acurately and sung on pitch, Zhou’s voice sems to be conveyed straight away from her vocal tract without resonating in any other cavities. What can be heard in this recorded piece is an unsophisticated, childlike yet flat, thin voice. Other examples are Jiang Manli’s ‘Parting Forever My Younger Brother’ (Yongbie le wo de didi), Li Lili’s ‘New Song of Fengyang’ (Xin fengyang ge) and Yao Li’s ‘Lovesicknes for Sale’ (Mai xiangsi). 2. Instrumentation Although Western instruments had a dominant position in Shanghai popular song, Chinese instruments were never ignored. Most singers made at least a few recordings with Chinese instrumental acompaniment. A songwriter worth special note when discussing Chinese instrumentation in Shanghai popular song is Xu Ruhui. Unlike Li Jinhui, who used both Chinese and Western instruments, Xu commited himself only to using Chinese instruments. Having studied Chinese music in the Great Unity Society (Datong yuehui) for five years, he gained extensive knowledge of Chinese music and was thus in his compositions able to employ a wide range of Chinese instruments, including some unusual ancient instruments. For example, in ‘Downstairs the Jade Tower’ (Xia qionglou), a song for the film Jade Horse (Feicui ma), four Chinese instruments are used, the shuangqing (thre-string plucked instruments) and the erhu (a kind of huqin), both of which generaly folow the vocal line, the dahu (a kind of huqin pitched one octave below the erhu) which plays the tune with some variation and adds ornamental notes at the end of every phrase, and the ruan (four-string plucked instrument) which provides rhythmic support throughout the whole piece. In ‘Happy Vilage Girl’ (Cungu le), a song for the film Chapter Five The Products 237 Extremely Forceful (Shenglong huohu), he not only used the wel known pipa (four- string plucked instrument) and di (side-blown flute) but also incorporated the les frequently sen ancient instruments, the se (zither) and the xiqin (a earlier form of huqin). 4 Xu left Shanghai for Chongqing after the outbreak of Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and started to focus on instrumental and operatic works. He returned to Shanghai after the war in 1945 and had never composed any popular song ever since. Although his Midnight Music Society (Ziye yuehui) had been active until 1937 for almost a decade in Shanghai, not only promoting his popular songs on radio but also recording film music and scren songs he composed for the Star Motion Picture (Mingxing yingpian gongsi), somehow his unique choice of Chinese instrumentation did not sem to have much influence on the way Chinese instruments were used in Shanghai popular song. Not al instruments he used were equaly favoured by other composers or arangers, but instead, what can be identified in most recordings are stil commonly heard instruments. The following are examples of the use of Chinese instruments in Shanghai popular song. Basic combination Theoreticaly, a string instrument and percussion should be adequate to acompany a song as can be sen in the performance given by a songstres and a fiddler in a traditional Chinese teahouse. In Yao Li’s ‘You Are Unwanted’ (Buyao ni), with the steady beat of the bangzi (slit drum) throughout the whole song, the huqin basicaly doubles the vocal line in the first verse and then plays a modified melody throughout the rest of the piece. However, other than ‘You Are Unwanted’, no further examples are to be found in known recordings. Chapter Five The Products 238 Smal group This is probably the combination of Chinese instruments most heard in recordings. A typical smal group consists of huqin, sanxian, yueqin (four-string plucked instrument) and a percussion instrument, usualy a drummer’s kit or bangzi, yet sometimes one or two more instruments such as pipa and ruan are added. Zhou Xuan’s ‘The Wandering Songster’ (Tianya genü) and ‘The Song of Four Seasons’ (Siji ge) are both performed to the acompaniment of huqin, sanxian, yueqin and bangzi. The similar smal group can also be heard in Wu Yingyin’s ‘Spring Sadnes’ (Duanchang hong) and Pei Ni’s ‘Good Night Doesn’t Last’ (Liagye buneng liu). Bigger ensemble In some recordings, songs are acompanied by a bigger group resembling a sizhu ensemble, which normaly consists of the strings, including huqin, sanxian, pipa and yangqin, the winds, including di (tranverse-blown flute), xiao (end-blown flute) and sheng (mouth organ), and some percussion instruments. For example, Li Lihua’s ‘Heaven on Earth’ (Tianshang renjian) is acompanied by this kind of ensemble. A similar combination of instruments can also be heard in Wu Yingyin’s ‘Seting Moon And Crowing Raven’ (Yueluo wuti) and Yao Li’s ‘On The River Bank of Qinhuai’ (Qinhuaihe pan). The use of Western instruments in Shanghai popular song can be traced back to Li Jinhui’s Bright Moon Ensemble (Mingyue yinyuehui), which he founded in 1922. Acording to Li’s memoirs, rather than playing in unison as in a traditional Chinese ensemble, he integrated Western instruments into the traditional sizhu music Chapter Five The Products 239 by alowing Chinese instruments, such as the huqin and the di, and Western instruments, such as the violin and the piano, to take turns to deliver the main melody in a piece. When an instrument played the tune, others in the ensemble provided rhythmic support. Li maintained that al kinds of Western instruments could be employed in ‘national music’ (guoyue), just as the huqin and the qiangdi were adopted by Chinese people in the past. 45 Although Li’s pioneering experiment in combining Western instruments with Chinese music in performance can be heard in some early recordings made in the late 1920s, such as Li Minhui’s ‘Peach and Plum Blooming in Spring’ (Taoli zheng chun) and ‘The Poor Qiuxiang’ (Kelian de Qiuxiang), those were actualy songs composed for his children’s musical dramas which, strictly speaking, are not Shanghai popular songs. There are no recordings of his popular songs performed to the acompaniment of such combination. It sems that Li Jinhui stopped using Chinese instruments in 1929 when he started composing his love songs, the fountainhead of Shanghai popular song. In most recordings of his love songs released in the 1930s only Western instruments can be heard. For example, Zhou Xuan’s ‘The Expres Train’, Li Minhui’s ‘Drizles’ and Wang Renmei and Li Lili’s ‘The River of Peach Blossom’ (Taohua jiang) are al acompanied by Western instruments alone. It is unknown if any foreign musicians participated in the recordings of Li’s works. Howevr, it is true that after White Russian and Filipino instrumentalist joined the Shanghai pop industry in the early 1930s working at dancehals or as sesion musicians and even being involved in song arangements, Western instrumentation gradualy gained popularity among both the audience and songwriters. Among various combinations of Western instruments used in Shanghai popular song, the wind-based, the string-dominated and the smal combo are the thre Chapter Five The Products 240 most heard ones. Apart from these thre types, some individual instruments are additionaly worth mentioning. Wind-based Wind-based refers to the combination in which wind instruments such as clarinet, saxophone, trumpet and trombone, which appear commonly in jaz, play a heavy role, not only in acompanying the vocal line but also in the stiring instrumental introduction, interlude and coda of a song, although other instruments such as piano, guitar, double bas or percussion may also be engaged to provide rhythmic support. The size of a wind-based group varies. Basicaly, seven or eight players would be enough to form a group resembling a Dixieland band which usualy has the winds as the lead instruments and several other instruments in the rhythm section. Nevertheles, polyphonic improvisation by the lead instruments, one of the important features of Dixieland jaz, is not heard in Shanghai popular songs. In Bai Hong’s ‘He Is the Spring Wind’ (Lang shi chunri feng) and Wu Yingyin’s ‘Pleasant Nighttime’ (Hao chunxiao), the acompanying bands are of this kind. Sometimes, a wind-based band consists of fewer instruments. In the recording of Wu Yinging’s ‘I Wanna Forget You’ (Wo xiang wangle ni), only a trumpet, a clarinet, a guitar and a double bas are clearly heard. A wind-based group may also expand to the size of a big band, or jaz orchestra, which can be divided up into four sections, the trumpet, the trombone, the saxophone and the rhythm section. There are four or more members in each of the former thre sections, and players in the saxophone section may sometimes double on other woodwinds such as clarinet and flute. The rhythm section contains instruments similar to those used in a Dixieland band. Bai Hong’s ‘Goodbye Shasha’ and Yi Min’s ‘Look at Me’ are acompanied by this kind of Chapter Five The Products 241 expanded band. Acording to Yao Li, a group consisting of just over ten members was normaly hired for a recording sesion, yet when making ‘Rose, Rose, I Love You’ (Meigui meigui wo ai ni), EMI engaged more than thirty White Russian instrumentalists to form a band to acompany her singing. 46 String-dominated The string-dominated format features the sound of robust backing string harmony together with the adorable solo or tutti string pasages throughout a song. As with the case of the wind-based acompaniment, other instruments would usualy join a string-dominated band, and a piano or woodwind instruments are probably the most commonly used. Ouyang Feiying’s ‘Misty Rain’ (Yu mengmeng) is a case in point where the piano and flute can be occasionaly heard against the rich, full sound of a string orchestra. In Liang Ping’s ‘Spring Arives But He Doesn’t’ (Chun lai ren bulai), the flute and clarinet throughout the whole piece can be heard floating above the strings. As no existing documentation indicates the exact size of the string- dominated orchestra normaly employed in the recording studio, and few historical mono recordings stil are in good condition or of sufficiently high acoustic fidelity to make al tone-blended string parts discernible, it is dificult to tel whether al instruments of the violin family are used. Smal combo This smal group comprising of only thre or four instruments, the sort of band that might be sen on a stret corner café or restaurant, would suffice to produce a pleasant background for a song without exuberant solo pasages given in turns by Chapter Five The Products 242 several instruments. In Zhang Fan’s ‘Red Peach Blossoms’, only a piano, a violin, a guitar and a double bas were used. While the double bas lays down a steady four- beat-to-bar bas line throughout the whole recording, the piano builds up chord voicings above the bas line and inserts short melodic or scale fragments at intervals. Besides the strummed chords which are heard al the time, the guitar gives a short solo on the tune before the last vocal verse. Unlike the other thre instruments which continuously provide rhythmic and harmonic support to the singing voice after delivering a short introductory phrase, the violin plays intermitently either a glimering melodic line in its lower register or high-pitched melodic fragments. Other examples of acompaniment in smal combo setings are Yao Li’s ‘Lovesicknes For Sale’ and Wu Yingyin’s ‘Full Moon in Dep Autumn’ (Quihua yueman). Piano The piano is frequently heard in historical recordings. It either gives a melodic interlude solo or provides rhythmic and harmonic support, but is rarely used alone in existing recordings. Wu Yingyin’s ‘Infatuation’ (Nong ben chiqing) is the only example found so far in which the piano is the only acompanying instrument. It sems that the audience were not interested in songs acompanied by only one instrument. There are ‘art songs’ originaly writen by conservatoire-trained composers in the Shanghai era for vocal and piano in a format similar to the so-caled Kunstlied. Several songs of this kind are wel known and were favoured both by the audience at that time and by fans of ‘oldies’ nowadays, and so are sometimes perceived as ‘Shanghai popular song’. Interestingly, the audience prefered those which were performed with a band to those which were sung with only a piano Chapter Five The Products 243 acompaniment. For example, most fans remember Si Yigui’s recording of ‘How Could I Forget Her’ acompanied by piano, strings and glockenspiel rather than the version by Li Rengong who sings only to a piano acompaniment. In the most frequently mentioned recording of ‘Adzuki Beans’ (Hongdou ci), Zhou Xiaoyan sings to the acompaniment of piano, strings and woodwinds. Acordion The acordion is heard les in historical recordings in comparison to the piano, the winds and the strings. It is not clear if other types of ‘squeezeboxes’ such as the concertina or bandoneón, were employed in the studio, yet the most commonly used one was the piano acordion which has a right-hand keyboard similar to a piano and several rows of buttons in the left-hand manual providing chords and bas notes. 47 Because the acordion has a wide compas and can produce both chords and a melodic line simultaneously, with various tone colours on its own, unlike winds and strings which are always played with other instruments in a band, it is not only played in a group but sometimes also used alone to acompany a song. For example, in Gong Qiuxia’s ‘Under the Clove Tre’ (Dingxiangshu xia), the jaunty sound of backing chords and arpeggios on the acordion gives the song to semblance of a polka. It enriches the instrumental acompaniment by inserting another layer betwen the strings and winds in Bai Guang’s ‘If Living Without You’ (Ruguo meiyou ni) and Gong Qiuxia’s ‘Spring’ (Chun). It acompanies the performance independently by providing a rhythmic and chordal backdrop to the singing voice in Zhou Xuan’s ‘When Wil You Come Back Again’ and Yao Li’s ‘White Orchid’ (Bailan xiang). Chapter Five The Products 24 Guitar As with the piano, the guitar is usualy used as part of a group to offer harmonic and rhythmic support and sometimes solo phrases, but is rarely used on its own. Yao Li and Yao Min’s ‘Congratulations’ (Gongxi gongxi) is the only work known so far which is performed solely with a guitar. Unlike the ordinary acoustic guitar which often merges into the background, the signature sound of languid floating notes and glisandi of the Hawaian guitar is cleared conveyed to the audience. However, although this unique timbre can create a relaxed tropical atmosphere, it is not necesarily used to deliver such an image in recordings. For example, while the Hawaian guitar is employed in Yao Li and Yao Min’s ‘Malayan Scenery’ (Malai fenggurang), a song with a theme of nanyang (literaly ‘southern ocean’, refering to Southeast Asia), it also appears in Zhou Xuan’s ‘Everlasting Lovesicknes’ (Chang xiangsi), a song of a film set in the late Ming Dynasty (early sixtenth century). Xylophone The xylophone and other tuned percussion instruments which work on the same struck-bar principle are occasionaly heard in historical recordings. The xylophone usualy provides a lively and delightful aural efect to the music, but the vibraphone may give a melancholy feling. Due to the poor sound quality of historical recordings, it is sometimes dificult to tel the subtle diference in timbre among the xylophone, the marimba and the vibraphone. However, there are stil some good examples. In Gong Qiuxia’s ‘Grumbling About Parents’ (Hen dieniang), the xylophone gives a solo in the introduction and the interlude betwen verses, a pleasant Chapter Five The Products 245 Marimba solo on the tune is in Liang Ping and Yao Min’s ‘Ding-dong Bel and Drum’ (Ding ge linggu dang) and the vibraphone expreses a quiet and serene sorrow throughout Bai Guang’s ‘Don’t Go’ (Ni buyao zou). Latin percussion Latin percussion instruments such as maracas, clave, conga and, probably, bongo can be heard frequently in songs featuring the rhythm of rumba, such as Li Xianglan’s ‘Evening Fragrance’, Bai Guang’s ‘Autumn Night’ (Qiuye) and Ouyang Feiying’s ‘Shangri-La’. Sometimes Chinese instruments, such as a single instrument or percussion, would join in a Western combo to give a Chinese flavour. For example, the Chinese gong and bangzi are used with the Western strings and woodwinds in Zhou Xuan’s ‘The Litle Nuptial Chamber’ (Xiaoxiao dongfang) and in her ‘Dance of Meifei’ (Meifei wu) a pipa gives solo pasages in the instrumental introduction and coda and plays a slightly modified tune along the vocal line in the first verse. Interestingly, it has long been believed by most fans that two Chinese instruments, suona (shawm) and gong, are used in Zhou Xuan’s ‘Picking Betle Nut’ (Cai binglang) to give the regional character of the Hunan province which is where the tune originates, yet it is actualy the Western double-red instrument, the English horn, that produces the sound efect of the Chinese suona. Nevertheles, it was the composer’s intention to use the English horn to create the impresion of the suona. 48 Chapter Five The Products 246 3. Melodic content In examining the melodic materials we can find that a few Shanghai popular songs were adapted from Chinese folk tunes or operatic genres. Obvious examples are some of Zhou Xuan’s works. ‘The Wandering Songstres’ and ‘Seling Groceries’ (Mai zahuo) were actualy a tune from Suzhou tanci and a folk song of Guangdong respectively. While ‘Betel Nut Picking’ was composed by Li Jinguang based on melodic paterns from the ‘flower-drum drama’ (huagu xi) of Hunan, ‘The Song of Four Seasons’ was adapted by He Lüting from folk tunes of Jiangsu. There are also songs, though not many, whose tunes were adapted from Western or Japanese songs which were popular in Shanghai at the time. For example, the tune of Ying Yin’s ‘On The Swing’ (Qiuqian jia shang) is that of ‘Man On The Flying Trapeze’, whereas the melody of Ma Tingting’s ‘Rain Fals on Mandarin Ducks’ (Yu da yuanyang) is identical to that of the famous ‘Cheek To Cheek’. Bai Hong’s ‘Don’t Go So Fast’ (Bie zou de namo kuai) is almost the same as ‘On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe’ except some modification in the refrain. Lang Yuxiu’s ‘Toast and Sing’ (Beijiu gaoge) was a Chinese cover of ‘The Maine Stein Song’ and Yao Li’s ‘Dream of Spring’ (Chun de meng) was adapted from the Japanese song ‘China Night’ (Shina no yoru). 49 A noteworthy case is ‘Malayan Scenery’ sung by Yao Li and Yao Min. This song has long been believed to be derived from an Indonesian folk song that was chosen as the national anthem of Malaysia in 1957. However, this is in fact incorrect. Although its lyrics are about the beautiful scenery of Malaysia and the atmosphere of tropical islands, created by the instrumental acompaniment in the recordings, can be asociated with Malaysia, its melody is entirely diferent from that of the Malaysian national anthem. 50 Chapter Five The Products 247 Nevertheles, apart from those adapted tunes, most Shanghai popular songs were indeed newly composed. While there may be a range of musical elements which can give a musical work a particular ethnic character, whether subjectively or objectively, there also may be a number of factors, such as some particular intervals, rhythmic paterns or melodic contours, which can contribute to the ‘Chinesenes’ or ‘Westernnes’ in the melodies of those Shanghai popular songs. However, the discussion below wil focus on the scales on which songs are composed with an emphasis on how non-pentatonic notes, the so-caled ‘altered tones’ in Chinese terms, are used in these works. Al Shanghai popular songs are tonal music. There are songs, apparently set on the Western major and minor scales and on the Chinese pentatonic scale in diferent modes, which can be easily identified. Other types of scales, such as the Phrygian scale and the blues scale, though not commonly used, can also be heard in several songs. Here are some examples: Major scale • Liang Ping’s ‘Young As I Am’ (Shaonian de wo) • Bai Hong’s ‘The Coming of Spring’ (Chuntian de jianglin) • Li Xianglan’s ‘Evening Fragrance’ • Bai Guang’s ‘If Living Without You’ • Wu Yingyin’s ‘Spring Comes Back on Earth’ (Dadi huichun) Major scale with use of chromatic notes • Wu Yingyin’s ‘Ful Moon in Dep Autumn’ • Zhou Xuan’s ‘Good Night’ (Wan’an qu) Chapter Five The Products 248 • Yao Min’s ‘Such Shanghai’ (Ruci Shanghai) Minor scale • Bai Guang’s ‘What Sort of Night Is Tonight’ (Jinxi hexi) • Yao Li and Yao Min’s ‘Congratulation’ • Zhang Fan’s ‘Bug Song’ (Chouchong ge) Gong mode • Zhou Xuan’s ‘When Wil You Come Back Again’ • Gong Qiuxia’s ‘Welcome New Year’ (Huanying xinnian) Shang mode • Zhou Xuan’s ‘New Flower Quiz’ (Xin duihua) • Zhou Xuan’s ‘Seing Of Elder Brother’ (Song dage) • Li Lili’s ‘New Song of Fengyang’ Jue mode • Zhou Xuan’s ‘May Wind’ (Wuyue de feng) • Hu Die’s ‘Evening Fragrance’ (Yelaixiang) Zhi mode • Yao Li’s ‘Seling Lovesicknes’ • Zhou Xuan’s ‘Song of Four Seasons’ • Gong Qiuxia’s ‘Beyond the Frosty Water’ (Qiushui yiren) Yu mode • Liang Ping’s ‘Spring Has Come, He Hasn’t’ Chapter Five The Products 249 • Zhou Xuan’s ‘Seling Groceries’ • Yao Li’s ‘On the River Bank Of Qinhuai’ Phrygian mode • Bai Hong’s ‘Enchanting Lipstick’ 51 Blues Scale • Zhou Xuan’s ‘On Two Roads’ (Liang tiao lu shang) • Bai Guang’s ‘Waiting For You Coming Back’ (Dengzhe ni huilai) 52 Undoubtedly, songs on the Western major scale usualy contain the fourth and seventh scale degres, and on the minor the second and sixth, i.e., fa and ti, and the Western heptatonicism in them can also be easily detected. Just like traditional Chinese music, in which fa, fa-sharp, ti-flat and ti may also occur, there are non- pentatonic notes in some Shanghai popular songs which are set on the Chinese pentatonic scale. In a similar manner, altered tones in those songs may either function as pasing notes, auxiliary notes, or result from modulation as discussed earlier in this chapter. For example, in a pasage from Yao Li’s ‘Rose, Rose, I Love You’ the altered tone fa-sharp is obviously a pasing note (Ex.12, I), but in the last six bars of Gong Qiuxia’s ‘Beyond the Frosty Water’ (Qiushui yiren) ti functions as both auxiliary and pasing notes (Ex.12, I). In Yao Li’s ‘No One Is Not Amorous’ (Nage bu duoqing), ti is a pasing tone, and fa is the result of modulation to the subdominant key (Ex.12, II). Chapter Five The Products 250 Ex.12 Uses of altered tones in Shanghai popular songs (I) excerpt from Yao Li’s ‘Rose, Rose, I Love You’, bars 9-16 of the vocal line (I) excerpt from Gong Qiuxia’s ‘Beyond the Frosty Water’, last six bars of the vocal line (II) Yao Li’s ‘No One Is Not Amorous’ However, although we can sometimes imediately identify, in the first few lines of a song, that it is composed on the Chinese pentatonic scale, the character of pentatonicism may become blurred and thus as the melodic line moves on our Chapter Five The Products 251 judgment turns out to have been incorect. A possible explanation could be that even though some Chinese melodic characteristics in a song can be recognised with no problem, other melodic pasages may not be understood in the framework of Chinese musical tradition. In other words, when a song simultaneously contains Chinese- flavoured pentatonic phrases, Western phrases and other phrases which have ambiguous characteristics, it can be dificult to judge whether it is Chinese pentatonic or is rather a product of Western influences. For example, Zhou Xuan and Yan Hua’s ‘Repeated Advice’ (Dingning), a song writen in the 32-bar ABA form, contains both pentatonic phrases and also some phrases which may be regarded as Western (Ex.12). Ex.12 Chinese-styled and equivocal phrases, excerpt from Zhou Xuan and Yan Hua’ ‘Repeated Advice’, second A and B sections of the vocal line Whereas in section A the non-pentatonic note fa can be easily explained as a pasing note, in section B it is not satisfactory to apply the same concept to those fa’s Chapter Five The Products 252 and ti’s. It would be easier if we asumed that there was a change in composer’s musical mind when entering section B. Examined through the lens of Western theory, since this song is sung with the chordal acompaniment of an acordion, the altered tones together with several other notes in section B can be considered part of some implied chords. The sequence of chords in section B played on the only acompanying instrument in the recording may be: | F – | C – | G 7 – | C – | C G 6 | G 6 – | G – | C – | Unfortunately, it was impossible to interview any Shanghai pop songwriters active in the 1930s and 1940s as they had al had died before this study started and thus their compositional logic is unknown. Therefore, based on the above example, it can only be speculation that, when composing, a songwriter might either start with a melodic line on the Chinese scale or whatever semed to them idiomaticaly Chinese. Yet under the influence of Western music available at that period and with an intention of incorporating new materials into Chinese tunes, he would build up a melodic pasage based on a Western chord sequence in mind, just like some Western singers who picture a melody when stroking a series of chords on the guitar. Moreover, the frequent use of altered tones in section B can also be considered a remarkable contrast to section A. Acording to Western music theories, as wel as guidance given in books about how to write a succesful hit song, the melodic line of section B in the ABA-form song should be a clear and striking contrast in character compared to that of section A. Therefore, Shanghai pop songwriters might also have employed this concept in their compositions. Looking at more songs which are comprised of two distinct sections to take the ABA or ABA form, two interesting Chapter Five The Products 253 types of the use of altered tones are identified, the traditional way and a way to break pentatonicism. In some songs, whereas section A is completely composed on the pentatonic scale without using any altered tone, one or two altered tones may be introduced into section B. However, the pentatonic framework remains intact and altered tones can be easily explained within the Chinese musical tradition. For example: • Li Lihua’s ‘Heaven on Earth’: fa-sharp introduced in B, used as a pasing note • Pei Ni’s ‘Good Night Doesn’t Last’: fa and ti introduced in B, resulting from modulation and used as apasing note respectively • Lang Yuxiu’s ‘Wandering Falen Petals’ (Piaoling de luohua): fa and ti introduced in B, both used as pasing notes but the later also as an auxiliary note • Zhou Xuan’s ‘Cupid’s Arow’ (Aishen de jian): fa introduced in B as a result of modulation into the sub-dominant key In other songs, section A is usualy writen on the Chinese pentatonic scale with either no or only one altered tone that does not impair the pentatonicism, but altered tones such as fa and ti appear more frequently in section B, which drasticaly changes the Chinese pentatonicism established in section A into a new system which features the Western diatonic scale and major-minor tonality. For example: • Gong Qiuxia’s ‘Roses Blooming Everywhere’: gong-mode scale in A=> the relative minor scale with the use of the raised seventh scale degre in B Chapter Five The Products 254 • Yao Li’s ‘Rose, Rose, I Love You’: gong-mode scale (with fa-sharp as a pasing note) in A => Western major in B • Yao Li’s ‘Rencounter’ (Chongfeng): gong-mode scale (with ti as a pasing note) in A=> Western major in B • Zhou Xuan’s, ‘Where Is My True Audience’ (Zhiyin hechu xun): gong-mode scale in A => Western major in B In a study of the Beatles’ songs, Naphtali Wagner indicates that due to their inclination to write pentatonic melodies, the lack of fa and ti in the first few pentatonic phrases of a song leaves ‘holes’ in the Western diatonic scale, yet those holes are usualy filed later in the song when pentatonicism is broken. Therefore, Wagner regards the Beatles’ pentatonicism as ‘diatonicism with omision’ and suggests that the appearance of the mising fa and ti later in the song ‘provides a refreshing sense of release, especialy when other musical factors are involved in emphasising the event.’ 53 Taking this theory further, but in a diferent manner, it can be argued that the diatonicism featuring the Western major-minor tonality in section B of the above examples is ‘pentatonicism with expansion’ which provides an exhilarating feling to an otherwise monotonous Chinese-styled pentatonic song. Interestingly, whatever scale a song was composed on and whatever material was incorporated, in the Shanghai pop industry once a tune was writen it was always performed pristinely in terms of rhythm and pitch. When listening to old recordings made by American crooners, such as Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra during the 1930s and 1940s, no one would fail to notice the elegant style of phrasing and rubato. Equaly no one would dismis the elaborate vocal improvisation when playing old Chapter Five The Products 25 records from the same period by great jaz singers, such as Ela Fitzgerald and Bilie Holiday,. However, none of this is heard in recordings of Shanghai popular songs, neither in Chinese-styled tunes nor in Western melodies. It sems that a Shanghai pop singer was expected to sing on the right pitch and to the corect rhythm, precisely as it was composed. Although a singer might add grace notes or apply subtle portamento or strong vibrato as stylistic ornamentation, the original melodic pitch and rhythm was never modified. It is not clear whether Shanghai pop singers were competent to bend and shape tempo to enhance the expresivenes of a song without losing track of the basic pulse, or whether they had the skil to give a tune a slight twist while stil conveying the composer’s original intention. Yet it is true that no one interpreted a song in an extemporaneous manner. 4. Acompanying harmony In terms of melodic content discussed above, Shanghai popular song may fal into thre groups: • Chinese-styled song: one that is composed on the Chinese pentatonic scale, with the pentatonic framework kept intact throughout the whole song even when altered tones are frequently used. • Western-styled song: one that is writen in the Western heptatonic scale with clear major-minor tonality. • Song in the mixed style: one that contains both Chinese-styled and Western- styled, or equivocal phrases. These descriptions wil be applied in the following discussion of acompanying harmony. Chapter Five The Products 256 From al the historical recordings collected so far for this study, it is found that the so-caled ‘chords’ of the Western triad-based harmony only exist in songs acompanied by Western instruments. Those that are acompanied only by Chinese instruments, either adapted from folk tunes, operatic genre or newly composed, are usualy heterophonic in texture, with instrumental parts doubling the vocal line with frely added fil-in notes and ornamental fragments, as can been sen in traditional vocal performances. Examples are Wu Yinging’s ‘Spring Sadnes’ and Pei Ni’s ‘Good Night Doesn’t Last’. Perhaps because it was just inveterate practice, or an aesthetic preference of Shanghai pop songwriters and arangers that Chinese instruments were only meant to convey Chinese images, no Chinese instruments were combined to produce Western-styled backing chords. Only songs with Western instrumental acompaniment are underpinned by functional harmonies. Moreover, Chinese instruments are only used to acompany Chinese-styled songs and no Western-styled songs or those in the mixed style are sung to the instrumental combination of, say, huqin, sanxian and bangzi. It might therefore be said that perhaps under the influence of some musicians such as Liu Tianhua, who had promoted as early as the 1920s to arange and perform Chinese instrumental music in the form of a Western symphony orchestra (guoyue jiaoxianghua, literaly ‘symphonising national music’), a touch of Western compositional techniques may be felt in a few songs, for instance, Li Lihua’s ‘Heaven On Earth’ and Zhou Xuan’s ‘Seling Groceries’. 54 However, although the Western musical concept is introduced into song arangement to create a musical texture that sems to be distinct from what He Lüting described as ‘big packing of tune’ (da baoqiang), the result is stil far from the Western harmony acompaniment. 5 The most that may be expected is only an extra instrumental line, not a chordal sequence Chapter Five The Products 257 underlying the tune. For example, the tune in Yao Li’s ‘You Are Unwanted’, was originaly a folk song from Xinjiang, and although the huqin doubles the vocal line in the first verse and then plays an independent melodic line in the second and third to add some variety (Ex.13), no other instrument joins in to produce harmony acompaniment. Ex.13 Independent acompanying melodic line, excerpt from Yao Li’s ‘You Are Unwanted’, first 8 bars of verse 2 The contrapuntal design of instrumental acompaniment can also been sen in Zhou Xuan’s ‘The Wandering Songstres’ and ‘The Song of Four Seasons’, both of which were adapted and aranged by He Lüting. Once, in an interview, he emphasised that his two-part counterpoint in these two songs was widely diferent from Chinese music traditions. However, even though this was innovative in the domain of Chinese music, the contrapuntal design does not follow the rules which were observed in the common practice period of Western clasical music. For example, in the introduction of ‘The Wandering Songstres’, the treble and the bas lines are not coherently combined by adherence to the rules of voice-leading predicated on the distinction betwen ‘consonance and disonance’, but are merely Chapter Five The Products 258 two ‘independent’ lines. When the singing starts, the bas stil plays an ‘independent’ line, against the treble line which doubles the vocal line in a Chinese heterophonic manner (Ex.14). 56 Ex.14 He Lüting’s contrapuntal design, excerpt from Zhou Xuan’s ‘The Wandering Songstres’, introduction and the first 4 bars of the vocal line Unlike Chinese instruments, any combination of Western instruments is employed to acompany either Chinese- or Western-style songs and those songs in the mixed style. It sems that when, for example, piano, double bas, trumpet, clarinet and some percussion are brought together, harmony acompaniment must be produced. Even when a single instrument is aranged to double the vocal line in a song, the other instruments in the band stil have to support the whole performance with backing chords. In the collection of historical recordings no songs performed to the Western instrumental acompaniment have so far been found to be heterophonic in texture. In a Chinese-style song, while altered tones would not take esential positions in the melodic skeleton, fa and ti cannot be avoided when the dominant (or dominant Chapter Five The Products 259 seventh) and the subdominant chords, which are two of the thre primary chords in functional harmony, not to mention other secondary and related chords, are to be used in the acompaniment. A similar situation occurs when singing pentatonic Celtic songs in harmony. Malcolm Chapman argues that when arangements for traditional Gaelic songs for several voices are to be performed a cappela by Gaelic choirs, ‘pentatonic tunes of great beauty are de-natured’ by Western clasical harmonic structures based on the twelve-note equal-tempered scale. In Chapman’s view, as pentatonicism and functional harmony are two esentialy incompatible systems, ‘much is lost in the translation from one to another.’ 57 Nevertheles, the level of what he describes as ‘denaturation’ is les serious in the case of Shanghai popular song. Unlike rearanged Gaelic choral pieces performed by the interwoven voices singing the diferent parts, since those Chinese-styled songs are not ‘sung’ in harmony, the audience can stil bask in the ‘beauty’ of pentatonicism conveyed through the one-part vocal lines, even though Western chords in the instrumental acompaniment may be a distraction. The jazman and bandleader Buck Clayton once had to play Chinese popular songs in the Casa Nova Balroom (Xinhua wuting) after being expeled from the first- clas Canidrom Balroom (Yiyuan wuting) where he only played real American jaz. He commented that Chinese popular music wasn’t to much diferent from our own music except the Chinese have a diferent scale note, but as long as it could be writen in on the American scale it could be played. 58 Although Clayton did not indicate the songs and how he actualy played in Casa Nova, it was obviously pentatonic tunes that he was refering to and, moreover, it is possible to gauge how he acommodated himself to Chinese songs based on some Chapter Five The Products 260 historical recordings. When ignoring the distinctive nature of pentatonicism but treating Chinese melodies similarly to those on major or minor Western scales, Chinese-styled songs can be easily acompanied by only thre primary chords. Most of the melody notes wil be either part of the acompanying chords or very close by. Taking Li Minghui’s ‘Drizles’ as an example, the underlying chords basicaly alternate betwen the tonic and the dominant, with the subdominant used only once in bar 8 (Ex.15). The use of the first inversion of the dominant (V 6 ) and the second of the subdominant (IV 6 4 ), together with the root of the tonic (I), also offers a hint of the Alberti bas, a kind of broken chord usualy found in pieces for keyboard instruments in Western clasical music (Ex.16). Ex.15 Li Minghui’s ‘Drizles’, acompanying chords of the first half of the vocal line Ex.16 Implied Alberti bas in ‘Drizles’ Two more points in this song are worth atention. First, the first thre bars of introduction, which have the same melodic phrase as that of the vocal line, are played in unison by al instruments, including clarinet, trumpet, trombone, piano and violin. Chapter Five The Products 261 Second, the vocal line is doubled up by the clarinet throughout the whole piece, and unlike those songs acompanied by Chinese instruments, no fil-in notes or ornamental fragments are added on the duplicated melodic line. The opening thre bars of ‘big packing of tune’ and the supporting clarinet line could either be a transition betwen the Chinese heterophonic and Western harmonic acompaniment or a device purposely designed to strengthen the overal pentatonic impresion. Therefore, although Western instruments and chords are employed, a trace of Chinese musical practice can stil be detected. Apart from the primary I, IV and V chords, other chords are also used acording to common chord progresion paterns to add richnes and variety to harmony acompaniment. For example, against the vocal line of Zhou Xuan’s ‘Full Moon and Blooming Flowers’, the familiar I-I-V-I sequence is heard in the first four bars, and the cadential progresion I 6 -I 6 -V-I, which is obviously more ‘sophisticated’ than the I-V 6 -I in ‘Drizles’, is used to conclude the phrase (Ex.17). However, unlike ‘Drizles’, there is neither ‘big packing of tune’ nor any supporting instrument duplicating the vocal line in this song. Ex.17 Zhou Xuan’s ‘Full Moon and Blooming Flowers’, acompanying chords of first 8 bars of the vocal line In Yao Li’s ‘Rose, Rose, I Love You’, as opposed to the former two examples, more intricate chords are incorporated. This song takes the ABA form, with A composed of pentatonic phrases and B of Western-styled melodies. As shown in Ex.18, although the acompanying chords basicaly moves betwen I and V in section Chapter Five The Products 262 A, the IV 6 4 and I chords are applied respectively in bars 22 and 24 in acordance with the melodic movement and the chords move from the dominant through the dominant of II to the II in bars 27 and 28. It appears that the fragment which contains the altered tone fa-sharp opens up a pasage through which more colours from the Western harmonic palete can be introduced to the pentatonic canvas. In section B, although the first melodic line is almost identical to the second, except that the later fals on the tonic at the end of the phrase while the former on the supertonic, the chord progresions of the two lines are aranged in a diferent manner. In the first line it goes through the II and IV and changes every beat before ariving at the dominant in bar 34 and then alternates among the primary chords every beat before coming back to the tonic in bar 38. In the second, it moves straight to the dominant but returns to the tonic in bar 46 through the I. The first line concludes on the dominant of VI whereas the second, the final note of which lasts twice as long as that of the first, lingers on the I-V chord change at the end. Ex.18 Yao Li’s ‘Rose, Rose, I Love You’, acompanying chords of second A and B sections Chapter Five The Products 263 There sems to be no major diference betwen the ways Western chords are used to acompany Chinese pentatonic phrases and Western-styled melodies. As song arangers or sesion musicians were not confined within the limitations of pentatonicism if Western chords were to be employed, it completely depended on their own aesthetic preferences or musical capabilities whether only primary chords, or more chords and sophisticated chord progresions, were to be applied. Undoubtedly, the incorporation of secondary chords (I, II and VI) and secondary dominants (for example, V/II and V/I) enriched the harmonic language and the dynamic of tension and release in the acompaniment. However, as Wei Jun indicates, some members who played the piano or guitar in radio singing clubs in the 1930s and 1940s hardly knew anything more than the I, IV and V chords, so they would play only the primary chords to acompany almost any song. 59 Fro example, in Yao Li’s ‘Rose, Rose, I Love You’, we hear a more colourful harmonic texture, while in ‘Lovesicknes For Sale’, Yao’s first recorded song, we can only hear the same use of primary chords and Chinese heterophonic texture as that in ‘Drizles’. Nevertheles, although triad and seventh chords and their inversions can be widely heard in songs acompanied by Western instruments, other extended chords, such as the ninth, eleventh and thirtenth chords, are rarely used. 5. Words In many studies of ‘song’, be it folk, art or popular, verbal text is always one of the key subjects to be explored, from the sheer textual analysis of the verbal content, through the investigation of how lyrics reflect a social phenomenon, to how the sentiments embedded in the lyrics can be conveyed through the music. 60 Similarly, there are many aspects from which we can study words of Shanghai Chapter Five The Products 264 popular songs. Following the earlier detailed explanation of ‘tones and tunes’ in Chinese traditional vocal works, the discussion here draws particular atention to the relationship betwen the tones of Chinese syllables in the lyrics and the melodic contours in music. Chinese vocal artists from generation to generation had made their sung words comprehensible to the audience through carefully designed melodic contours and with techniques, such as bending the melodic line and adding grace notes. However these musical devices were simply dismised in ‘new’ vocal works, such as school song and children’s musical drama, which came into existence before the creation of Shanghai popular song. As mentioned in Chapter One, school songs, developed by intelectual groups in the early 1900s for clasroom use, were based either on Euro-American melodies introduced to China through Christian hymns and military marches, or on Japanese materials brought back by those who had studied in Japan. Since these tunes were not originaly composed for singing with lyrics in the Chinese language, nor were tones taken into consideration when Chinese lyrics were writen to them, it may be argued that school songs were new to Chinese people at the turn of the twentieth century, not only from the perspective of the musical style but also in view of the fact that the age-old tonal rules in songwriting were dismised. 61 Two decades later, children’s musical drama was presented to the public by Li Jinhui. It was one of Li’s intentions to teach primary school pupils Standard Mandarin through singing, yet the important tonal features of the Chinese language were surprisingly not addresed in his musical works. Li recaled in his memoir that his proposition to employ music in language education was grounded on the notion that pitch movement of the four tones in Mandarin could be represented with musical pitches. 62 However, listening to songs in his musicals, one can hardly discover any Chapter Five The Products 265 clear correlation betwen tonal and melodic contours. For example, in the wel- known ‘Tiger Caling at the Door’ (Laohu jiaomen) from the The Sparrow and the Child (Maque yu xiaohai), the lyrics are writen neither acording to a clasical poetic tonal patern nor in consideration of tonal practices in traditional vocal art. Although Li maintained that students could learn proper Mandarin pronunciation by correctly articulating every syllable in a song, they must have acquired the correct tone of each syllable before singing it because there is generaly no agrement betwen the melodic movement and the tone contours. Tones in language were stil ignored when Li turned to the creation of love songs for commercial purposes in the late 1920s, and ‘atonal’ composition has become common in Shanghai popular songs ever since. In Shanghai popular song, as lexical tones are ignored to alow more melodic fredom, the lyric inteligibility is reduced. This may explain why subtitles were always provided on the scren when songs were played in films, and why fans in the 1930s and 1940s, as described in Chapter Four, were so keen on collecting lyrics from newspapers, magazines and songbooks and even caried a torch to the cinema to jot down the lyrics. One may wel argue that fans collected lyrics only to build up their own lyric library of hit songs rather than search for the correct words, yet this does not answer why they failed to learn the lyrics simply by listening to gramophone records or radio programes, delivered through loudspeakers everywhere in ‘main strets and narow aleys’. It is the high degre of homophony in Chinese, and its tone-dependency in distinguishing lexical meanings among homophones, that hampers the correct recognition of al the words in lyrics. For example, in ‘Praise of Laughter’ (Xiao de zanmei), the first two syllables in the first line, xiao /51/ shi /51/ (‘laughter is’), may be misheard as xiao /55/ shi /55/ (‘disappear’), and the last two of the second line, xin /51/ shi /214/ (‘mesenger’), as Chapter Five The Products 26 xin /55/ shi /51/ (‘load on mind’, or literaly ‘mind’s mater’) (Ex.19). In this piece, melodic contours do not help the audience pick up the corect tones of these syllables, nor do grace notes offer any hint. Despite the fact that the grace notes in bar 3 correctly imply a faling tone contour /51/ for the syllable, those in bar 7 simply make the wrong impresion, causing /214/ to be mistaken for /51/. Apparently, grace notes here do not function as those in traditional balad singing but they are just ornamental in nature. Therefore, it is not surprising if some of the audience distorted ‘Laughter is a happy prelude/ Laughter is a happy mesenger’ into ‘A disappearing prelude/ Laughter is a swet load on mind’. A listener must have been confused as to how the ‘disappearing prelude’ was connected to ‘laughter’ if the words were understood in this fashion and no other alternative interpretation sprang imediately to mind. Nevertheles, syllables that were not uttered in right tones were not always completely indecipherable to, or misread by, native speakers. Without writen lyrics at hand, listeners could stil to a degre, with the knowledge of their mother tongue, grasp the meaning of some of the words. Ex.19 Misinterpreted homophones in the lyrics, excerpt from Zhou Xuan’s ‘Praise of Laughter’, first 8 bars of the vocal line Chapter Five The Products 267 Interestingly, as opposed to the mismatch betwen tones and tunes in Shanghai popular song, the pitch contours and relative pitch levels used in the Cantonese dialect are taken into consideration and reflected in the melodic line in modern Cantonese songwriting. 63 Cantonese popular song, also known as Cantopop in the Western literature, came into existence in Hong Kong in the mid 1970s, nearly half a century later than the emergence of Shanghai popular song, when there was a growing demand among the younger generation for popular song in their own dialect. 64 In Hong Kong, Shanghai popular songs and other Mandarin Chinese works of the similar style produced there after 1949 dominated the pop market until the advent of Cantonese popular song. The only vocal music performed in Cantonese was Cantonese opera, in which, much the same as in other traditional vocal forms, the convention requires that the undulating musical line echoes the pitch movement of lexical tones. This convention is preserved in Cantopop, making the carefully matched tonal and melodic contours a distinctive feature of modern Cantonese song. Although there are only four basic pitch levels in Cantonese (the earlier mentioned nine tones are results of pitch movement and sound clipping over a syllable), tunes of Cantonese popular song are writen with more than four notes in a scale. Words can stil be comprehensible to the audience, even when tone contours do not precisely match the melodic line or when characters of the same tone level are set on diferent scale degres, as long as the relative height betwen pitch levels of lexical tones is maintained within a sentence or verse line. 65 Therefore, Cantopop songwriters are able to adopt an ordinal mapping betwen musical notes and pitch levels rather than mechanicaly asign each pitch level to a specific invariable scale degre, so that both the inteligibility of lexical tones in the lyrics and the melodious and tuneful quality of the song can be equaly addresed. 6 Chapter Five The Products 268 This study has so far not located any study investigating how much Mandarin- speaking listeners would understand the lyrics of a Chinese song when most of the syllables are sung out of their lexical tones, some observable facts can shed some light on this subject. In a sense, the isue of understanding Chinese lyrics sung out of tone can be compared to occasions when one has to make sense of ‘atonal’ Chinese words uttered by a foreigner. When conversing with a foreigner who does not distinguish betwen tones, a native Chinese speaker may be able to interpret out-of-tone words acording to the context of the conversation, just as a native English speaker may manage to understand a non-native speaker who streses the wrong syllables in words. By the early 1930s Standard Mandarin had been taught in al levels of educational institutions and widely used in films, broadcasting and stage plays, so it would not be a problem for most people to comprehend this language although it might be reasonable to asume that not everyone spoke it in a ‘standard’ manner and without any regional acent. Therefore, lyrics in Shanghai popular songs could be understood by most of the audience to a certain degre even though the conventional tonal rules in songwriting were no longer observed. However, the extent to which al the words in a song could be recognised by listeners depended on how ‘plain’ those words were or how educated the listeners were. Generaly speaking, the more the lyrics were in writen or literary language, particularly in clasical Chinese, the les the sung words could be understood. To give an extreme example, due to its exceptionaly abbreviated style and frequent use of literary references and alusions, it required some considerable efort to decipher Clasical Chinese texts, such as Confucian Analects, let alone understand them in sung form where tones of syllables were dismised in favour of musicality. In addition to the writing style, listeners’ own literacy skil decided how wel they could appreciate the content of lyrics. Those who Chapter Five The Products 269 had neither received proper education nor developed reading proficiency would have problems in understanding words only used in formal writing, not to mention phrases originating from clasical works, and thus it was not easy for them to catch every line of the lyrics on hearing a song. Due to the tonal nature of the Chinese language, without the functional use of grace notes and proper design of melodic lines to match lexical tones no mater how elegant and flowing the words in Shanghai popular songs, there is always a possibility that the audience misunderstand what the content of songs are about. When separated, the tunes and lyrics of Shanghai popular song may be as charming as praised by elderly fans and some enthusiastic younger aficionados nowadays. However, when singing words to the tune, some of songs may appear to be incomprehensible although some can be understood with proper knowledge of the language. Nowadays it is not uncommon to hear elderly people complain that tunes of contemporary Chinese popular music sung by young pop idols are so unmelodious and the lyrics so improperly articulated that they are utterly incomprehensible. Nevertheles, no mater how precisely a singer enunciates in a recording of Shanghai popular song, when tones do not match the tune, words may be utterly incomprehensible as wel. Endnotes 1 John Baily, ‘The role of music in the creation of an Afghan national identity’, in Martin Stokes (ed.), Ethnicity, Identity ad Music: the Musical Construction of Place (Oxford: Berg, 1994), pp. 45-60. Chapter Five The Products 270 2 Zdzislaw Mach, ‘National anthems: the case of Chopin as a national composer’, in Martin Stokes (ed.), Ethnicity, Identity ad Music: the Musical Construction of Place (Oxford: Berg, 1994), pp. 61-70. 3 Se Alen, Ray and Nancy Groce, ‘Introduction: folk and traditional music in New York State’, in New York Folklore 14:3-4 (1988), p. 4. 4 Mozart’s ‘Turkish March’ is the third movement, titled Rondo Ala Turca, from his Piano Sonata in A major, K. 331, which imitates the military march music of Turkish Janisaries. The music was once very popular with the Viennese during the 17th and 18th centuries and many composers in al parts of Europe wrote alla turca pasages or pieces. Se Stanley Sadie (ed), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. 19 (London: Macmilan, 1980), p. 258. 5 John Blacking, How Musical Is Man (London: University of Washington Pres, 1974), p.6. 6 Csárdás is a traditional Hungarian folk dance, starting in a very slow and ending in a very fast tempo. This piece is originaly composed for violin and piano by an Italian violinist and composer, Vitorio Monti (1868-1922), whose name sems to be much les remembered than his work. A fiddler, Wen Chin-Lung, reinterpreted this piece on his Chinese two-string huqin to the acompaniment of midi-synthesised music. The recording is available on Chin-Lung Wen, Erhu chuanshuo(The legend of erhu fiddle), 2002, BMG (Taiwan), Audio CD, 74321373922. 7 I have demonstrated the modified Scottish tune to a few Western colleagues on several informal occasions, and al of them indicated that the twisted melody did give them an impresion of Chinese music. This observation should not be regarded as a Chapter Five The Products 271 general view of ‘Westerners’, yet it ilustrates to certain degre that Chinesenes in the modified sequence of notes is identifiable. 8 Frederick Wiliam Gaisberg, The Music Goes Round (New York: Macmilan, 1942; repr. New York: Arno Pres, 1977), pp. 62-3. Gaisberg came to Shanghai in 1903 and started recording Chinese music through the arangement of local agents. 9 Henry Elis, Journal of the Procedings of the Late Embassy to China (London: John Murray, 1817; reprint, Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1972), p. 418. 10 Hector Berlioz, Evenings with the Orchestra, trans. Jacques Barzun (New York: Alfred A. Knof, 1956), p. 248. Although Berlioz had never been to China, when visiting London in 1851 he heard Chinese music performed in the Great Exhibition by native Chinese musicians from China. 1 Wiliam Tyrone Power, Recollections of a Thre Years’ Residence in China; Including Peregrinations in Spain, Morocco, Egypt, India, Australia, and New- Zealand (London: Richard Bentley, 1853), pp. 191-2. 12 Berlioz, Evenings with the Orchestra, pp. 247, 249-50. 13 Elis, Journal of the Procedings, p. 130. The Chinese instrument yangqin, originaly from Persia, is a trapezium-shaped hamered dulcimer fited with bronze strings. 14 Power, Recollections, pp. 282-3. 15 For example Joseph-Marie Amiot, Mémoire sur la musique des chinois (Paris: Nyon l’aîné, 1779; reprint, Genève: Minkoff, 1973); G. Tradescant Lay, The Chinese As They Are: Their Moral, Social, and Literary Character; with Succinct Views of Their Principal Arts and Sciences (London : W. Bal and Co., 1841; reprint, Boston Chapter Five The Products 272 Elibron Clasics, 2005); Edward W. Syle, ‘On the musical notation of the Chinese’, Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 2 (1859), 176-179. For a succinct review of the work undertaken by these misionaries, se Krystyn R. Moon, Yelow Face: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performances, 1850s-1920s (London: Rutgers University Pres, 2005), pp. 89-90. 16 J. A. van Aalst, Chinese Music (Shanghai: Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs, 1884; reprint, New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp, 1964), p. 84. For more biographical acounts of Aalst and how such a book on Chinese music was published by ‘order of Inspector General of Customs’, as stated in its title page, refer to Han Kuo-huang, ‘J. A. van Aalst and his Chinese Music’, Asian Music, 19:2 (1988), pp. 127-30. 17 For a detailed study of the chinoiserie style, refer to Dawn Jacobson, Chinoiserie (London: Phaidon Pres, 1993); for examples of piano works of Western composers’ imagery from the ninetenth to twentieth centuries, such as Rossini, Arensky and Busoni, refer to an interesting Jenny Lin Chinoiserie, 2000, BIS, Audio CD, 1046189. 18 Moon, Yelow Face, pp. 94-5. 19 Ibid., p. 96. These descriptions, from the column ‘Music Comment’ in New York Tribune and a pres review of an unknown source, were given to a play titled The First Born produced by Francis Powers in 1897 and a song in this play, ‘Chinese Highbinder Patrol’, writen by Le Johnson. 20 Edgar W. Pope, ‘Signifying China: exoticism in prewar Japanese popular music’, in Tôru Mitsui (ed.) Popular Music: Intercultural Interpretations (Kanazawa, Japan: Graduate Program in Music, Kanazawa University, 1998), p. 114. ‘Shanghai March’ Chapter Five The Products 273 (Shanhai kôshinkyoku), composed and aranged by Matsudaira Nobuhiro, lyrics by Yamada Hiroshi, vocal by Hagoromo Utako, Japan Victor 51962 (1931); The Good Earth, directed by Sidney Franklin, Metro-Golden-Mayer (1937). Music of Ex.2, I and I quoted as in Pope, ‘Signifying China’, p. 120; EX.2, II excerpted from Jean Schwarz and Wiliam Jerome, ‘Chinatown, My Chinatown’ (New York & Detroit: Jerome H. Remick & Co., 1910). 21 Se ‘Wei Linggong v. 10 ’ and ‘Yang Huo v. 18’ in Lunyu (The analects of Confucius), my own translation. 2 ‘Yueji’ (Record of music) in Liji (Book of rite), translation quoted from James Legge (trans.) The Sacred Books of China: the Texts of Confucianism, Pt. 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Pres, 1885), retrieved at Internet Sacred Text Archive , acesed 5 February 2006. 23 For an introduction to Confucian musical philosophy, se Alan R. Thrasher, ‘The sociology of Chinese music: an introduction’, Asian Music, 12:2 (1981), pp. 17-53. 24 The Chinese government today officialy recognises a total of fifty-six ethnic groups. Acording to ethnomusicological surveys, there are roughly two hundred kinds of musical instruments stil in use, and two hundred types of balad-singing and four hundred of traditional operas stil performed amongst diferent ethnic groups in diferent areas. Zhongguo yishu yanjiuyuan yinyue yanjiusuo, Minzu yinyue gailun (An introduction to Chinese ethnic music) (Taipei: Shijie wenwu chubanshe, 1994), pp. 139, 201, 276. Chapter Five The Products 274 25 For detailed discussion on polyphonic folk songs of Chinese minorities, se Fan Zuyin, Zhongguo duoshengbu minge gailun (An outline of Chinese polyphonic folk songs) (Beijing: Remin yinyue chubanshe, 1994). 26 A sizhu ensemble primarily consists of plucked and bowed strings, wind instruments and percussion. For more details about the composition of sizhu music, se Thrasher, Alan R., ‘The melodic structure of Jiangnan sizhu’, Ethnomusicology, 29 (1985), 237-63. The music example shows the first two bars of a wel known piece, ‘Stret Parade’ (Xingjie), as quoted in ibid., p. 242. 27 The aria is titled ‘The Ninth Sister in My Family’ (Wojia yiu ge xiaojiumei), as quoted in Yang Ruiqing, Zhongguo minge xuanlü xingtai (The melodic paterns of Chinese folk songs) (Shanghai: Shanghai yinyue chubanshe, 2002), p. 153. For more explanations of several paterns used by fiddlers in acompanying folk songs, se ibid. pp. 152-3. 28 Music examples quoted from Zhang Xiaohu Wushengxing diaoshi ji hesheng shoufa (Pentatonic modes and harmonic techniques) (Beijin: Remin yinyue chubanshe), pp. 30-31, 33-4. 29 Bence Szabolcsi, A History of Melody, trans. Cynthia Jolly and Sára Karig (London: Barie and Rocklif, 1965). 30 James J. Y. Liu, The Art of Chinese Poetry (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), p. 21. 31 These eight tones are yingping, yangping, yingshang, yangshang, yingqu, yangqu, yingru and yangru. It should be noted that the English translation of these tone names used in the linguistic literature does not imply the actual tone contours. Chapter Five The Products 275 32 If using numbers to represent the way pitch moves over a syllable, the lowest being 1 and the highest being 5, a system proposed by a Chinese linguist, Chao Yuen-Ren, the yinqu tone in Shanghai dialect and Cantonese can be represented as /13/ and /22/ respectively, and the qu tone /51/ in Standard Mandarin. 3 For more linguistic features and isues of some major Chinese dialects, refer to Wiliam S-Y Wang, Languages and Dialect of China (Berkeley, Cali.: Project on Linguistic Analysis, 1991); for specific details of the tone sandhi phenomenon in Chinese dialects, se Mathew Y. Chen, Tone Sandhi: Patterns Acros Chinese Dialects (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 2000). 34 The ‘modern style verse’, also known as ‘Tang poetry’ (tangshi), developed and reached its peak in the Tang dynasty (618-907), being named so in contrast to the ‘ancient verse’ (gushi) emerging in the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 219) writen without a tone patern. The ‘lyric metres’ and the ‘dramatic verse’ are the most predominant forms of literature in the Song Dynasty (960-1278) and the Yuan Dynasty (1260-1341) respectively. For a succinct introduction to the metrical rules and development of various forms of Chinese clasical peotry, refer to Liu, The Art of Chinese Poetry, pp. 22-33. 35 For an interesting discussion on how inflection in speech may have developed into ‘speech-melody’ and gradualy formed tunes, se Szabolsci, A History of Melody, pp. 1-27. 36 Some tunes are known as qupai, literaly ‘song label’ (best translated as ‘name song’, acording to Alan R. Thrasher). These tunes originate from various genres, such as folk songs, instrumental repertoires or tunes originaly composed for ‘lyric Chapter Five The Products 276 metres’ and ‘dramatic verse’, and may be shared among diferent genres. For an introduction to the historical development and stylistic characteristic of qupai, se Gao Houyong, ‘On qupai’, Asian Music, 20:2 (1989), pp. 4-20; for instrumental qupai specificaly of the sizhu repertoire, se Thrasher, ‘The melodic structure of Jiangnan sizhu’, pp. 237-63. 37 The music and Chinese text is quoted as in Zhongguo yishu yanjiuyuan, Minzu yinyue gailun, p. 256. For more details of a clear corelation betwen lexical tones and the design of melodic contours in kunqu, se Wu Junda, Kunqu changqiang yanjiu (A study on the singing style and melody of kunqu) (Beijing: Remin yinyue chubanshe, 1987), ch. 5. 38 The pasage is an excerpt from ‘Baoyu Visits the Sick’ (Baoyu tangbing). The music and Chinese text are quoted as in Zhongguo yishu yanjiuyuan, Minzu yinyue gailun, p. 168. 39 This example draws from personal experience with gezaixi opera in childhood and only serves for an ilustrative purpose. For more discussions on the relationship betwen tones and music in Taiwanese vocal works, refer to Ding-Sng Tzang, ‘Taiyu shengdiao yu taiyu geyao’ (Tones in Taiwanese and Taiwanese folk songs), in Lin Songyuan (ed.), Taiwan minjian wenxue xueshu yantaohui lunwen ji (Procedings of the symposium on Taiwanese folk literature) (Zhanghua, Taiwan: Taiwansheng huangxi wenhua xuehui, 1997), pp. 427-447. 40 It was not until 1936 that the first book-length study of the relation betwen lexical tones and melodic contours in Chinese music caried out by a Westerner was published – John Hazedel Levis, Foundations of Chinese Musical Art (Peiping Chapter Five The Products 27 [Beijing]: Henri Vetch, 1936). For a comprehensive introduction to the diferent functions of the pitch of voice performing in the Chinese language, prosody and music, writen especialy for Western readers, se Yuen-ren Chao, ‘Tone, intonation, singsong, chanting, recitative, tonal composition, and atonal composition in Chinese’ in Morris Hale, Horace Gray Lunt, Hugh McLean & Cornelis Hendrik Van Schooneveld (eds) For Roman Jakobson: Esays on the Ocasions of His Sixtieth Birthday (the Hague: Mouton, 1956), pp. 52-9. 41 For more detailed discussion on diferences in Chinese and Western vocal techniques, se Zhou Xiaoyan ‘Zhongguo shengyue yishu de fazhan guiji’ (Tracing the development of Chinese vocal art) in Liu Ching-chih and Barbara Fei (eds), Papers and Procedings of Two Seminars on Vocal Music in China (Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, Centre of Asian Studies, 1998), pp. 3-22 and Hu Yuqing, ‘Meisheng minzu changfa yitong tanwei’ (An initial investigation into similarities and disimilarities betwen bel canto and ethnical singing), Journal of Sichuan Normal University (Philocophy & Social Sciences), 5 (2000), pp. 60-62. 42 Eilen Chang, ‘Tan yinyue’ (On music) in Eilen Chang, Liuyan (Writen on water) (Taipei: Huangguan chubanshe, 1991), p. 220. 43 Li Minhui was born in 1909 and the recording (Shanghai Pathé 34278 A & B) is estimated to be recorded in 1933, and certainly no earlier than 1930. 4 The score of ‘Downstairs The Jade Tower’, aranged by Xu himself, was published in Mingxing Banyuekan, 3:2 (November 1935), n.p. Unfortunately, neither the recording nor original score of ‘Happy Vilage Girl’ is available. The introduction of Chapter Five The Products 278 Xu’s instrumentation is given in Liuli, ‘Shenglong huohu de jieshao’ (Introducing Extremely Forceful), Mingxing banyuekan (1937), n.p. 45 Zhengxie Hunansheng Xiangtanshi weiyuanhui wenshi ziliao yanjiu weiyuanhui and Hunan Xiangtan Li Jinhui yishuguan, Li Jinhui (Li Jinhui) (Hunan, China, 1994), pp. 101-2. Historicaly, hu and qiang both refer, with derogatory implication, to the northern tribes in China and thus huqing and qiangdi are the fiddle and the flute of the northern barbarians respectively. 46 Liner note, Zhongguo Shanghai sansishi niandai jueban mingqu wu (Deleted 30- 40s hits of Shanghai China, vol.5), 2003, Ancient Sound Restore, Audio CD, ASR- 28122003. 47 Personal interview with Zhao Jiying, the former leader of Great China New Music Band (Dahua xin yinyuedui) in Cosmo Dance Hal (Gaoshiman wuting), Shanghai, 29 December 2003. 48 Acording to an interview ith Li Jinguang, the composer of this song, by Shuijing. Se Shuijing, ‘Li Jinguang tan liuxing laoge’ (Li Jinguang on old popular song), Lianhebao, 22-23 December 1988. 49 ‘Man On the Flying Trapeze’, was originaly published in the form of sheet music in London in 1867. ‘Cheek To Cheek’ was writen by Irving Berlin and first performed by Fred Astaire in the 1935 movie Top Hat. ‘On The Atchison, Topeka And The Santa Fe’ was writen for the 1946 movie Harvey Girls and sung by Judy Garland. The tune of ‘The Maine Stein Song’ was originaly a march, ‘Opie’, composed by E. A. Fenstad in 1904 and later became a song with lyrics writen by Chapter Five The Products 279 Lincoln Colcord in 1910. ‘China Night’ was composed by Takeoka Nobuyuki for the Japanese film with the same title. 50 Acording to the composer Li Jinguang, this song was forwarded to him by the Indonesian wife of a recording manager, M. Bernard, of EMI-Pathé in Shanghai in 1943. Se Shuijing ‘Li Jinguang tan liuxing laoge’ (Li Jinguang on old popular songs), Liangebao, 22 December 1988. Although this song may wel be a folk song or something popular in Indonesia during that period, Li and Shuijing are both wrong in refering to it as the national anthem of Malaysia. 51 This piece is aranged in the Spanish zarzuela style, particularly with the use of castanets, and has so far been found in the historical recordings to be the only work that is writen in the Phrygian mode. 52 The blues scale here only refers to the use of the ‘blue note’, i.e., the minor third and the flatened seventh, in a song when it is obviously writen in the Western heptatonic scale, but does not imply that the song is in the ‘blues’ style. For more discussion on the ‘blue note’, se Hans Weisethaunet, ‘Is there such as thing as the “blue note”?’, Popular Music, 20:1 (2001), pp. 99-116. 53 Wagner, Naphtali, ‘Fixing a hole in the scale: suppresed notes in the Beatles’ songs’, Popular Music, 23:3 (2004), pp. 257-69. Wagner considers these mising notes ‘suppresed notes’, which are notes consistently left out of the collection of pitch clases, or the scale, in a musical piece and later appear with considerable emphasis. 54 For more about Liu Tianhua’s life acount and work, refer to Wang, Zhongguo jinxiandai yinyue shi, pp. 95-99. Chapter Five The Products 280 5 ‘Big packing of tune’ refers to the Chinese traditional way of acompanying – al instruments in an ensemble follow the main melody of a song. This expresion is sen in Zhou Wei and Chang Jing, Wo de mama Zhou Xuan (My mother Zh Xuan) (Taiyuan: Shanxi jiaoyu chubanshe, 1987), p. 3. 56 Archive interview clip shown in Yibai nian de gesheng (official English title: The Last Century Pop Music of China), a four-series documentary first broadcast on Channel 10, China Central Television, 22~25 January 2004. 57 Se Malcolm Chapman, ‘Thoughts on Celtic music’, in Martin Stokes (ed.), Ethnicity, Identity ad Music: the Musical Construction of Place (Oxford: Berg, 1994), p. 41. 58 Se Buck Clayton, Buck Clayton’s Jazz World (Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 1987), p. 76. 59 Personal interview with Wei Jun, former pianist at a singing club, Shanghai, 20 February 2004. 60 To name a few examples, Hughson F. Mooney, ‘Popular music since the 1920’s: the significance of shifting taste’, American Quarterly, 20:1 (1968), pp. 67-85; James T. Carey, ‘Changing courtship paterns in the popular song’, American Journal of Sociology, 74:6 (1969), pp. 720-31; Alen Forte, ‘Secret of melody: line and design in the songs of Cole Porter’, Musical Quarterly, 77:4 (1993), pp. 607-47; S. I. Hayakawa, ‘Popular songs v.s. the facts of life’, ETC: A General Review of Semantics, 12 (1995), pp. 83-95. 61 The tonal rules in songwriting were also neglected in ‘art songs’, which were composed by academy-trained musicians and set to poems writen by intelectuals. In Chapter Five The Products 281 most Chinese art songs created in the 1930s and 1940s, tones of syllables are not observed by the composer in seting a syllable to more than one music note; in an opposite fashion, melodic directions opposing the pitch movement of syllable tones appear more frequently than those following them. Se Chang-Yang Kuo, Chinese Art Song: A Melodic Analysis (Taipei: Hwa Kang Pres, College of Chinese Culture, 1972), p. 198. 62 Zhengxie Hunansheng Xiangtanshi weiyuanhui wenshi ziliao yanjiu weiyuanhui, Li Jinhui (Li Jinhui) (Hunan, China, 1994), pp. 100-1. 63 Se Marjorie K. M. Chan, ‘Tone and melody in Cantonese’, in Jon Aske (ed.) Procedings of the Thirtenth Annual Meting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley, California, 14-16 February 1987, pp. 26-37. 64 For a brief history of Cantopop and its role as a cultural form to delineate a local Hong Kong identity, se Bryce T. McIntyre, Christine Cheng Wai Sum and Zhang Weiyu, ‘Cantopop: the voice of Hong Kong’, Journal of Asian and Pacific Communication, 12:2 (2002), pp. 217-243; for its current development refer to Wai- Chung Ho, ‘Betwen globalisation and localisation: a study of Hong Kong popular music’, Popular Music, 22:2 (2003), pp. 143-57. 65 Se Kelina Kwan, ‘Textual and melodic contour in Cantonese popular song’, in M. Baroni and R. Dalmonte (eds), Secondo Convegno Europeo di Analisi Musicale, Vol. I (Trento: Università di Trento, 1992), pp. 179-87. Kwan’s observation is also supported by an earlier study which indicates that the relative pitch level would be more critical than the exact tone contour for Cantonese speakers in tone perception studies. Se Chan, ‘Tone and melody in Cantonese’. Chapter Five The Products 282 6 Patrick C. M. Wong and Randy L. Diehl, ‘How can the lyrics of a song in a tone language be understood?’, Psychology of Music, 30 (2002), pp. 202-209. 283 Chapter Six Conclusion The preliminary analysis in the introductory chapter showed some musical features of Shanghai popular song, the audience’s perception of musical works and fragmented facts of the Shanghai popular music industry. Furthering the findings from the analysis to understand this bygone industry and its products, a two-level research plan was proposed based on the simple model of popular music industry. At the first level, following the hypothetical flowchart, details of the producing, seling and consuming proceses were retrieved from various historical sources to reconstruct the industry platform. The first level of work has not only revealed most of the operating mechanism of the industry but also identified several key events which profoundly influenced the development of Shanghai popular song. At the second level, preceded by a discussion on Chinese features in music, a collection of historical recordings were used to examine musical and lyrical components of Shanghai popular song. While the product analysis did not cover al aspects suggested in the composition-performance view of song creation, the second level of this study has ilustrated how both Chinese and Western musical elements had been both employed. Based on the result of the two-level work, the concluding chapter discusses the significant findings in this study and questions for future study. I. The rediscovered past Taking into consideration the social and political changes in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai and the important events in the music industry that have been discovered in Chapter Six Conclusion 284 the work of reconstructing the platform, the development of the Shanghai popular song can now be divided into four stages. 1. Laying the foundation Covering a time span of approximate ten years, from the late 1920s to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, this initial stage saw several important ‘firsts’ in the history of Chinese popular music. Li Jinhui started writing love songs in 1927, adapting folk tunes and traditional operatic works and using Western instrumental acompaniment. Film companies began the production of sound film and the first song exclusively composed for the scren was produced and released by local record companies in 1930. While an amateur singing group who first performed regularly on radio was organised in 1932, the first commercial singing club was founded six months later and sponsored by local shops to give performances on the air. The first and only ‘top thre radio singers contest’, in which the audience were invited to vote for their favourite radio singers, was held in 1934. The first dance band consisting entirely of Chinese members who delivered a great number of Chinese popular songs at a dancehal was organised in 1934. Moreover, at this stage the two major foreign record companies began to formaly employ Chinese staf to conduct the music production. The organisational change of foreign record companies, together with the development of the expanding broadcasting, film and recording industry and the abundance of nightlife in Shanghai, offered great opportunities for songwriters to compose more works. At this stage, songwriters from various backgrounds, members of song-and-dance troupes, self-taught or conservatory-trained musicians, explored the possibilities of using various combinations of Western and Chinese musical elements in popular songs. Their Chapter Six Conclusion 285 works, either love songs full of sentimental afairs or songs writen for specific scenes in films, alowed the Chinese audience to hear new sound efects as wel as to learn to appreciate Western music in a Chinese musical context. 2. Carpe diem in the enclave The second stage was a preparatory stage in which Shanghai popular song was on its way to becoming the mainstream. In addition to the prevailing American music, Chinese popular songs were gradualy acepted in many entertainment establishments and moreover, Chinese composers started working full-time in foreign record companies. After the Japanese military took over the Chinese Municipality in Shanghai in 1937, the International Setlement and the French Concesion became an enclave and continued to thrive. Commercial activities during the day and flashy and fleshy excitement at night never ceased until late 1941 when the Japanese military entered the two foreign concesions following the outbreak of the Pacific War. Before then, numerous Chinese people fled the Japanese occupied areas and flocked into the two concesions where foreign record companies and most entertainment venues such as cinemas, dancehals and nightclubs, were located and where people enjoyed the present without thought for the nation’s plight and future. Under Japanese military control, patriotic or mas songs with subject mater of the national salvation or anti-Japanese connotations were strictly forbidden in the occupied area. However, in order to avoid any diplomatic problems with Japan and to maintain stability, the authorities of the two concesions would not let anti-Japanese songs spread out within their boundaries either. Hence, the Chinese popular music gained increasing popularity and continued to oil the wheel of the social mery-go-round. Chapter Six Conclusion 286 3. Moving to upmarket venues During the years from 1942 to 1945 when the Japanese puppet regime controlled the whole of Shanghai, thanks to a ban on American music and films imposed by the Japanese authorities, Chinese popular song rose up to an unprecedented status. At this stage, particularly in the last two years, in comparison to other regions of China and Southeast Asia where the Japanese military were fighting desperately, an ilusion of peace and prosperity was created in Shanghai. On the one hand, as Japan was eager to establish the ‘co-operative body of great East Asia’, the flourishing Shanghai city would be an advertisement for this wild fantasy. Multifarious urban entertainments and cultural events, which helped to develop an image of the city’s thriving social life, were undoubtedly encouraged. On the other hand, because news about the war or political situations was strictly selected and only approved information was offered by the government-controlled mas media, most citizens could hardly se the whole picture of the reality. This city was virtualy isolated from the rest of the world. It was under these tricky circumstances that Shanghai popular songs supplanted American popular music and took pride of place in the entertainment industry. 4. The height of Shanghai popular song At this stage, from the end of the war in 1945 to the advent of the communist regime in 1949, the production of Shanghai popular song reached the height. Following the victory over Japan came the conflict betwen the National Party and the Chinese Communist Party. Nevertheles, the production of popular music in Shanghai semed not to be hampered by the social and political chaos, nor was the rehabilitation of American jaz and films in this city impeded by the turmoil. While Chapter Six Conclusion 287 RCA-Victor’s production was discontinued in 1945 because manufacturing facilities were seriously damaged during the war, EMI caried on producing Chinese popular music and became the only record company in China capable of manufacturing gramophone records. Chinese songwriters, who had acumulated considerable experience of utilising various musical elements in the production of popular music over the past few years, now gathered in EMI and were headed by Musical Director Li Jinguang. Likewise, in collaboration with these producers, singers and instrumentalists, either talented newcomers or those who had been established in the industry for a long time, al came to the studio in EMI to record new works. Moreover, as the Chinese audience had literaly been trained at the previous thre stages to take pleasure in listening to the combination of traditional and Western music, they could now enjoy whatever was provided by the industry. Looking back on the start of modern Shanghai and the four stages of the development of Shanghai popular song, it can be found that in addition to the developing new media and the flourishing entertainment industry, social and political changes in Shanghai also contributed to the popularity and commercial succes of Shanghai popular song. Chaos caused by the Smal Swords and Taiping Rebelion unexpectedly drove Chinese people back to the areas originaly designated for foreigners and alowed them to live side by side with foreigners of al stripes. The abolishment of residential segregation opened up an opportunity for Shanghai to develop into an international metropolis where diferent cultures and material civilisation encountered and coexisted in harmony. While maintaining their centuries-old traditions, Chinese residents in the foreign concesions also embraced Western civilisation and lifestyles and were wiling to integrate Western ideas into Chapter Six Conclusion 28 traditional maters. It was Shanghainese people’s open-minded personalities and the uninhibited exchange betwen Chinese and Western cultures that made possible the creation of a type of music which consisted of both indigenous and imported materials. Shanghai popular song had its origin in Li Jinhui’s musical dramas for children, which he created as a supplementary approach for teaching Mandarin Chinese when engaged by the Shanghai National Language Institute, which was actualy founded in response to the Chinese government’s atempt to promote the use of Mandarin Chinese as an official language. Apparently, it was the financial dificulty in Singapore that made Li turn to the creation of ‘love song’ and it was the overwhelming popularity of his works encouraged more composers to come on board the popular music industry. Nevertheles, if he had not been involved in the ‘national language’ education, there might have been no children’s musical drama, no song- and-dance performance, no love song, and thus no Shanghai popular song. The special status of the foreign concesions ofered political and economic stability for the continuous and expanded production of popular songs from 1937 to late 1941. While Chinese factories and commercial establishments in other areas of Shanghai and its vicinity were heavily damaged in countles Japanese air raids, undisturbed by the war, record companies operated as usual in this secure enclave. Had the foreign concesions been ceded back to China before the outbreak of Sino- Japanese War, the production facilities of these record companies would have probably been destroyed in the flames of the war and the development of Shanghai popular song might have ceased at the beginning of the second stage. Although the Japanese military eventualy entered and occupied the concesions, the ban on American music and films not only induced more production of Shanghai popular Chapter Six Conclusion 289 song but also lifted it to an unprecedented position, to be performed with European clasical music on the same stage. Apart from social and political changes, the changes in busines practices and the organisational structure of foreign record companies were another factor which induced the vast production of Shanghai popular song. In fact, foreign record companies had never devised any scheme to create a new product line for the Chinese audience since they started busines in China, but simply recorded anything that might interest consumers and make profits. Nevertheles, it was EMI and RCA- Victor that provided esential technologies and manufacturing facilities and gave songwriters and artists space to produce what they could. Foreign managers employed Chinese personnel to lead musical production and recording activities so that decisions of what to record or to produce could be made within the organisation rather than being dependent on the outsiders, middlemen. However, this move also alowed Chinese songwriters and singers wider opportunities for their musical works to be brought into the recording studio. On paper, a Chinese musical director signed up singers, acepted new compositions and organised recording sesions on behalf of a foreign record company, yet in practice he was using the resources in the company to enable numerous Chinese songs to be made into records and reach a wide audience through the company’s distribution channels. It was particularly true of the situation in EMI. Chinese songwriters gained full control over the music production after composers were employed full-time in the late 1930s, especialy after Li Jinguang succeded Fu Xiangxun as Musical Director. While foreign record companies brought to China their busines practices as wel as the recording and record manufacturing technology for economic benefits, in the event, against the unique social and political backdrop in Shanghai, it was Chinese Chapter Six Conclusion 290 songwriters who dominated in the production proces and determined what sound would reach the audience. The impresion of ethnicity or nationality a piece of music may convey is subject to a listener’s knowledge of formal, stylistic features of music as wel as musicality to recognise those features. Westerners in the ninetenth and early twentieth centuries made negative comments on Chinese music from the perspective of their understandings of music and would consider a work authentic Chinese only when stereotypical characters such as pentatonicism, the use of grace notes and noise created by certain instruments were present. These remarks, though semingly culturaly biased, actualy reflect two important features in Chinese music, the heterophonic musical texture and the pentatonic melodic framework. Taking Westerners’ comments as a point of departure for exploring the features of the musical works produced under the direction of those Chinese songwriters, there are some interesting findings in the product analysis. The reason Westerners found the Chinese-style singing voice dificult to appreciate is because Chinese vocalists sang principaly in the head voice and thus develops brighter, lighter tones resonating mostly in the anterior part of the head in contrast to the melow, round and open-throated sounds produced by the Western bel canto method. Although to audiences today Shanghai popular singers’ voices in most historical recordings also tend to sound nasal and high-pitched, through careful listening, there are stil subtle diferences among their vocal qualities. The distinctive tone quality produced by Chinese traditional and bel canto vocal techniques can be identified in many recordings and sometimes both Chinese and Western singing voices are even heard within one song. Moreover, the imature ‘litle sister’ voice Chapter Six Conclusion 291 whose quality does not met the requirements of either Chinese or Western singing traditions is also found in some recordings. While traditional Chinese music is usualy perceived as pentatonic, it is not always strictly pentatonic because altered tones are also employed as pasing, auxiliary or arbitrary ornamental notes or as a result of modulation. In a similar manner, altered tones can also be heard in many Shanghai popular songs which are writen on the Chinese pentatonic scale. What is worthy of special notice is their use in ABA- or ABA-form songs. In some cases, the frequent use of altered tones in the melodic line in section B provides a clear and striking contrast in character compared to that of section A, yet the pentatonic framework remains intact. In others, the occurrence of those non-pentatonic tones in section B drasticaly changes the pentatonicism established in section A into a new system which features the Western diatonic scale and major-minor tonality. From the melodic point of view, while al types of songs can be performed to the acompaniment of Western instruments, Chinese instruments are only employed to acompany Chinese-style songs. Among various combinations of instruments and melodic styles, the most interesting cases are songs which contained both Chinese and Western musical elements, i.e., tunes in the Chinese or mixed style acompanied by Western instruments. It is found in selected recording examples, when ignoring the distinctive nature of pentatonicism but treating Chinese melodies as those on major or minor Western scales, Chinese-styled songs can be easily acompanied only by the primary I, IV and V chords. In order to add richnes and variety to harmony acompaniment, other chords can also be used along with primary chords under common chord progresion paterns. When a phrase contains altered tones, there are more possibilities to incorporate secondary chords, secondary dominants and Chapter Six Conclusion 292 sophisticated chord progresions to enrich the harmonic language and the dynamic of tension and release in the acompaniment. Songs acompanied by various types of chords are certainly no longer heterophonic in texture. In these songs, a touch of the Chinese heterophonic acompaniment can only be found when there is a duplicated vocal line delivered by an acompanying instrument or when ‘big packing of tune’ is aranged on purpose. Perhaps due to a lack of knowledge of the Chinese language and reluctance to approach Chinese singing, most Western observers in the ninetenth and early twentieth centuries failed to notice that in traditional Chinese vocal works, a melodic line was usualy neatly designed and grace notes were added to reflect the pitch movement of lexical tones in lyrics. However, the age-old tonal rules in songwriting were dismised in Shanghai popular song. Songwriters no longer employed these musical devices and simply ignored lexical tones to alow more melodic fredom, which reduced the inteligibility of lyrics. Therefore, the more the lyrics of a song were in writen or literary language, the more likely the audience would need printed lyrics so that the meaning of the lyrics would not be misinterpreted. In a sense, Shanghai popular song is a westernised Chinese musical product because a great number of works are bodies consisting of Chinese skeletons (lyrics and melodies) and Western flesh (acompaniment) and some Chinese musical features no longer exist in these works. However, from a diferent perspective, Shanghai popular song can be regarded as a Western product characterised by distinct Chinesenes just like foreign concesions in Shanghai, built on the Western system but enlivened with Chinese culture. In an esay on Chinese cinema and popular song, Paul Leung points out seven factors determining the popularity and commercial succes of a song: a good Chapter Six Conclusion 293 composer, a good lyricist, a good singer, a good aranger, a good record company, good publicity through the media and a large number of fans. 1 Through the work of rediscovering Shanghai popular song, this study shows besides these contributing factors, unexpected social and political changes also contributed to the thriving pop scene and moreover, the features of musical products reflected the characteristics of the society in which the industry platform was located. In a metropolis ful of opportunities in a chaotic era, open-minded songwriters, singers and instrumentalists did not restrict themselves to any specific style but made the most of available musical materials to create numerous works for their omnivorous audience who would appreciate whatever was offered by the industry. Although ranks of scholars, moralists and nationalists derided Shanghai popular song, tried to ban it as decadent and pornographic, and even denounced it as opium for the mases, is was through Li Jinhui’s love songs and other ensuing ‘decadent sounds’ that more ordinary people came to know diferent forms of Western music. I. After the rediscovery The reconstruction of the industry platform and product analysis in this study is just the beginning of understanding Shanghai pop and more work has yet to be done. Apart from the many historical details revealed in this study, there are stil facts and figures on some participants and activities in which they were involved that need to be explored. It remains to be sen who facilitated distribution of records and the cooperation betwen record and film companies, as wel as who promoted live performances in radio stations and many other entertainment establishments. It requires further study to understand how censorship was performed on popular music Chapter Six Conclusion 294 and record publishing. There are also more facets of musical products to be investigated. The literary qualities of lyrics and social changes that they might have reflected deserve further discussion. In addition, as some singers studied Western singing skils primarily from Russian vocalists, it is worth exploring the diference betwen the Russian vocal technique and the beter known Italian bel canto and whether such a diference existed in Shanghai popular song. Although details of White Russian and Filipino instrumentalists’ participation in arangements for recordings remains unclear, a comparative study of their musical works from other countries produced during the same period may reveal a clearer picture of their musicality and contributions. Despite the incompletenes of the reconstruction of the platform and the product features remaining to be investigated, the hypothetical flowchart in this study proved to be a useful tool in understanding the music industry of the past. The findings of this study have filed in the underepresented part of the modern history of Chinese music and added to the literature on this under-explored musical area in Shanghai studies. They ilustrated that the popular music industry and its products in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai are not merely a result of transplanted Western innovation in China, but an outcome of the transnational exchange betwen two cultures. Apart from the historical findings and musical analysis, this study also demonstrated a practicable strategy for understanding an underepresented repertoire of music in history. Franco Fabbri’s five groups of genre rules were useful for the preliminary analysis which systematicaly examined the general features of Shanghai popular songs. Although the concept of music genre can be elusive, this kind of initial survey helped to build up a picture of not only the musical characteristics of the subject in question but also the context in which the music was produced, sold and Chapter Six Conclusion 295 consumed. This picture benefited the work of reconstruction and detailed musical analysis at a later stage of the study. Moreover, the proposed model and the hypothetical flowchart proved to be constructive, even though they initialy drew on historical facts and developments of the Anglo-American music industry and it was dificult to tel at the early stage of the study whether they could be applicable to the pop industry in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai. It was with the aid of the flowchart developed from the model of the music industry in Chapter Two that details of the participants involved in the producing, seling and consuming proceses and the events taking place around these proceses were tracked down acordingly. As has been argued, Chiese popular music has long been unduly neglected by cultural historians, not least because of the problems of sources and materials. This study has shown that with a flowchart mapping how musical products moved from record companies to consumers along with the juxtaposition of al involved participants, the history of popular music can be rediscovered. This has been done systematicaly in this thesis by using songs as evidence, treating media material carefully, and tracking down archives and surviving participants. Finaly, the approach employed in this study might also be applied to research into other cultural and historical examples, such as 1930s and 1940s Taiwanese pop. This is another under-explored repertoire of musical works which integrated both Chinese and Western musical elements, produced in a Japanese colony but against a diferent social and political background. However, the flowchart proposed in this thesis may need to be expanded or contracted in these diferent cases with further participants added, removed or linked by diferent collaborative or competitive relationships. Chapter Six Conclusion 296 Endnote 1 Leung is a songwriter, manager of a record company and columnist for Hong Kong Economic Journal. The esay was writen for the programe of the 17th Hong Kong International Film Festival which featured a special retrospective topic of Chinese cinema from the 1940s through the 1960s. Se Paul Leung, ‘Mandarin movies & Mandarin pop songs’, in Law Kar (ed.), Mandarin Films and Popular Songs, 40s-60s: Programme of the 17th Hong Kong International Film Festival (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1993), p.48. 2 9 7 A p p e n d i x I M ap o f S h an gh a i , 193 5 2 9 8 A p p e n d i x I I C h r on ol o gy of S h an gh a i P op Y e ar S oc i al an d p ol i t i c al e ve n t s i n S h a n gh ai E ve n t s i n t h e S h an g h ai p o p i n d u s t r y S t ar t o f m o d e r n S h a n gh ai 1839 T he out br e a k o f O pi um W a r be t w e e n C hi na a nd G r e a t B r i t a i n 1842 T he T r e at y of N anj i ng s i gne d s t a t i ng t ha t f i ve ‘ t r e a t y por t s ’ , i nc l udi ng S ha ngha i t o be ope ne d t o f or e i gn t r a de 1853 S m a l l S w or d r e be l l i on N a nj i ng oc c upi e d by T a i pi ng i ns ur ge nt s 1854 R e vi s e d L and R e gul at i on s i gne d by t he B r i t i s h, A m e r i c a n a nd F r e nc h C ons ul s , of f i c i a l l y a bol i s hi ng t he r e s i de nt i a l s e gr e ga t i on 1908 T he f i r s t r e c or d c om pa ny i n C hi na , P a t hé P hono C i ne m a C hi ne , e s t a bl i s he d 1916 G r e a t C hi na R e c or ds f ounde d 1921 P a t hé P hono C i ne m a C hi ne r e or ga ni s e d i nt o P a t hé O r i e nt , bui l di ng t he f i r s t r e c o r di ng s t udi o i n C hi na 1922 F i r s t w i r e l e s s br oa dc a s t s t a t i on s e t up i n C hi na 1923 L i J i nhui ’ s f i r s t c hi l d r e n’ s m us i c a l dr a m a T he G r ape F ai r y publ i s he d A p p en d i x I I Ch ro n o l o g y o f Sh an g h ai Po p 2 9 9 S t age O n e : L ayi n g t h e f ou n d at i on 1927 T he f i r s t C hi ne s e popul a r s ong i n m ode r n t i m e s ‘ D r i z z l e s ’ 1 930 R C A - V i c t or C om pa ny ( C hi na ) f or m e d F r e nc h P a t hé O r i e nt a c qui r e d by t he B r i t i s h - ba s e d C ol um bi a G r a m ophone C om pa ny r e s t r uc t ur e d a s B r i t i s h P a t h é O r i e nt F i r s t s ound f i l m Si ng - s ong G i r l R e d P e ony F i r s t f i l m s ong ‘ W o r ds on S e e ki ng B r ot he r ’ i n t he s ound f i l m L oos e W om e n P i c k e d U p by M e n 1932 Z ha be i di s t r i c t bom be d by t he J a pa ne s e m i l i t a r y F i r s t a m a t e ur s i ngi ng gr oup A r t T r a ns f or m a t i on C l ub pe r f or m i ng on r a di o F i r s t c om m e r c i a l r a di o s i ngi ng c l ub W onde r f ul S o und G r oup f or m e d P os t of M us i c a l D i r e c t or c r e a t e d i n P a t hé O r i e nt , t a ke n by R e n G ua ng 1934 T he E l e c t r i c a nd M us i c a l I ndus t r i e s ( C hi ne ) e s t a bl i s he d, t a ki ng ove r B r i t i s h P a t hé O r i e nt ‘ T op t h r e e r a di o s i nge r s c ont e s t ’ F i r s t C hi ne s e da nc e ba nd W i nd D a nc e B a nd or ga n i s e d by L i J i uhui 1935 P os i t i on of A & R t a ke n by t he C hi ne s e s t a f f i n R C A - V i c t or E M I r e qui r i ng r a di o s t a t i on t o pa y l i c e ns i ng f e e s t o no a va i l S t age T w o: C ar p e d i e m i n t h e O r p h a n I s l an d 1937 C hi ne s e t e r r i t or i e s oc c upi e d by t he J a pa ne s e m i l i t a r y, f or e i gn c onc e s s i on s be c om i ng a n e nc l a ve F u X i a ngxun s uc c e e di ng R e n G ua ng i n E M I , e m pl oye d a s D r a m a t i c D i r e c t or C hi ne s e s ongw r i t e r s w or ki ng f ul l - t i m e i n f or e i gn r e c or d c om pa ni e s A p p en d i x I I Ch ro n o l o g y o f Sh an g h ai Po p 3 0 0 1939 C hi ne s e popul a r s ongs i nc l ude d i n pr og r a m m e s of f i r s t - c l a s s da nc e ha l l s 1941 O ut br e a k of t he P a c i f i c W a r S t age T h r e e : R i s i n g t o u p m ar k e t ve n u e s 1942 A m e r i c a n m us i c a nd f i l m s ba nne d S how s f e a t ur i ng f e m a l e s i nge r s a nd m us i c a l ba nds de l i ve r i ng t he l a t e s t C hi ne s e s ongs pr om ot e d i n a l l e nt e r t a i nm e nt e s t a bl i s hm e nt s 1943 A bol i s hm e nt of t he F r e nc h C onc e s s i on a nd t he I nt e r na t i ona l S e t t l e m e nt 1944 S ha nghi popul a r s ong f i r s t pe r f or m e d w i t h W e s t e r n c l a s s i c a l m us i c on t he s a m e s t a ge S t age F o u r : T h e ac m e of S h an g h ai p o p u l ar s on g 1945 T he e nd of S i no - J a pna e s e w a r L i J i ngua ng pr o m ot e d a s M ui c a l D i r e c t i n E M I E M I be c om i ng t he onl y r e c o r d c om pa ny c a pa bl e o f m a nuf a c t ur i ng gr a m ophone r e c or ds B us i ne s s of R C A - V i c t or c e a s e d 1949 S ha ngha i ‘ l i be r a t e d’ by t he C hi ne s e C om m uni s t s O pe r a t i on of E M I c e a s e d 301 Apendix II List of Informants Name Gender Year of birth Date and place of interview Fans Zhao Shihui �{.- M 1934 11/12/2003 Shanghai Shen Fugen � ,� M 1933 11/02/2004 Shanghai Ding Yongxu U q� M 1937 19/02/2004 Shanghai Ms Li �~{ F 1939 21/02/2004 Shanghai Li Yiqian �1: F 1939 21/02/2004 Shanghai Ms Shao �~{ F 1936 21/02/2004 Shanghai Ms Shen �~{ F 1930 21/02/2004 Shanghai Wang Jinghua �� 6 F 1933 21/02/2004 Shanghai ang Yixian ��, M 1927 01/03/2004 Shanghai Cao Henglong �)� M 1940 13/03/2004 Shanghai Jing Yingti �� � F 1934 13/03/2004 Shanghai Wang Weishan � �� M 1930 13/03/2004 Shanghai Zhou Baode tC M 1932 13/03/2004 Shanghai Peng Guokuan A 71 M 1929 15/03/2004 Shanghai Wang Tingfu �� , M 1930 15/03/2004 Shanghai Zhang Yunsong u � M 1921 15/03/2004 Shanghai Instrumentalist Zhao Jiying ��� M 1920 29/12/2003 Shanghai Zheng Deren MC� M 1924 29/12/2003 Shanghai Wei Jun ( � M 1917 20/02/2004 Shanghai Employee of EMI Zhu Zhonghua �R 6 F 1924 10/02/2004 Shanghai Singer Wu Yingyin N�* F 1921 31/12/2003 Shanghai Jin Yi � P F 1931 07/01/2004 Shangahi Zhang Fan u � F 1922 31/01/2004 Beijing Yan Fei  u F 1917 05/02/2004 Tianjin 3 0 2 A p p e n d i x I V Li s t of S on g Exa mp l e s C i te d i n th e Te x t V o c al / t i t l e L yr i c s M u s i c C at al ogu e n u m b e r B ai G u an g c � D e ngz he ni hui l ai  9+�8 ( W a i t i ng f or you) Y a n Z he xi  � C he n R ui z he n �A P a t hé 35739B * J i nx i he x i �|| ( W ha t s or t o f ni ght i s t oni ght ) X u S ul i ng �=3 C he n R ui z he n �A P a t hé 35803A N i buy ao z ou +� ( D on’ t go ) C he n G e xi n � C he n G e xi n � P a t hé 35592A Q i uy e �� ( A ut um n ni ght ) X i a o Z hu � . L i H ouxi a ng ��s P a t hé 35786A R uguo m e i y ou ni ���+ ( I f l i vi ng w i t hout yo u) Y a n Z he xi  � Y a n Z he xi  � P a t hé 35773A X i anj i an bu he n w an ��' � ( N e ve r t oo l a t e t o c om e t o know you) Y a ng X i a oz hong @�� L i J i ngua ng ��� P a t hé 35739A B ai H on g c  B i e z ou de nam o k uai 9 {�� ( D on’ t G o S o F a s t ) W e n C ha o � t Y a n Z he xi  � P a t hé 35740A C hunt i an de j i angl i n F�Y%W ( T he c om i ng of s pr i ng) H ong F e i s ? C he n G e xi n � P a t hé 3 5505B C hun z hi w uqu F��� ( D a nc e o f s pr i ng) W u C un N� W u C un N� P a t hé 35511A L ang s hi c hunr i f e ng JF�, ( H e i s t he s pr i ng w i nd) L i H ouxi a ng ��s L i H ouxi a ng ��s P a t hé 35511B M ai y u }W ( B ur yi ng j a de ) U nknow n U nknow n P a t hé 35510A A p p en d i x I V So n g L i s t 3 0 3 Shas ha z ai hui ba v v�6K ( G o odbye S ha s ha ) W u C un N� W u C un N� P a t hé 35510B Y u bus a hua hua buhong ������� ( N o r a i n, no r e d f l ow e r s ) L i J i ngua ng ��� ( a da pt e d f r om f ol k ) L i J i ngua ng ��� U nknow n Z ui r e n de k ouhong Q[Yy� ( E nc ha nt i ng l i ps t i c k) Y a n Z he xi  � L i u R uz e ng � � P a t hé 35793 A G on g Q i u xi a � � � C hun F ( S p r i ng) L i J i ngua ng ��� L i J i ngua ng ��� P a t hé 35473A D i ngx i angs hu x i a U0�h ( U nde r t he c l ove t r e e ) L i H ouxi a ng ��s L i H ouxi a ng ��s P a t hé 35506A H e n di e ni ang ' #� ( G r um bl i ng a bout pa r e nt s ) L i J i ngua ng ��� L i J i ngua ng ��� P a t hé 35491A H uany i ng x i nni an ��-� ( W e l c om e ne w ye a r ) C he n G e xi n � C he n G e xi n � P a t hé 35473A Q i angw e i c huc hu k ai _b � � � ( R os e s bl oom i ng e ve r yw he r e ) C he n G e xi n � C he n G e xi n � P a t hé 35507B Q i us hui y i r e n ��z[ ( B e yond t he f r os t y w a t e r ) H e L üt i ng m`S H e L üt i ng m`S P a t hé 35357A H u an g F e i r an � - � R e qi ng de y anj i ng � �Y ;� ( P a s s i ona t e e ye s ) Y a n Z he xi  � L i u R uz e ng � � P a t hé 35784B H u D i e �  Y e l ai x i ang �80 ( E ve ni ng f r a gr a nc e ) W a ng Q i a nba i � �c Y a n G ongs ha ng  �j P a t hé 34773A L an g Y u xi u  N � B e i j i u gaoge  � � ( T oa s t a nd S i ng ) A n E �� E . A . F e ns t a d U nknow n P i aol i ng de l uohua WgY�� ( W a nde r i ng f a l l e n pe t a l s ) L i u X ue a n  � s L i u X ue a n  � s P a t hé 35108B L i L i h u a �  6 T i ans hang r e nj i an �j[ � ( H e a ve n on e a r t h) Y e F a ng � � Y a n G e f a n  Hm P a t hé 35512A A p p en d i x I V So n g L i s t 3 0 4 L i L i l i � � � X i n f e ngy ang ge -� � ( N e w s ong of F e ngya ng) A n E �� R e n G ua ng �� ( a da pt e d f r om f ol k ) P a t hé 34668A L i L i l i � � � & C h e n Y an ya n � � � X i n nüx i ng ge -~� ( T he s ong of ne w w om e n) S hi Y i D N i e E r  P a t hé 35051A / B L i M i n gh u i � � / K e l i an de Q i ux i ang PY�0 ( T he poor Q i uxi a ng) L i J i nhui ��/ L i J i nhui ��/ U nknow n M aom aoy u ��� ( D r i z z l e s ) L i J i nhui ��/ L i J i nhui ��/ P a t hé 34278 A / B T aol i z he ng c hun ��FF ( P e a c h a nd p l um bl oo m i ng i n s pr i ng ) L i J i nhui ��/ L i J i nhui ��/ U nknow n L i X i an gl an � 0 � Y e l ai x i ang �80 ( E ve ni ng f r a gr a nc e ) L i J i ngua ng ��� L i J i ngua ng ��� P a t hé 35866A L i n g P i n g � 1 C hun l ai r e n bul ai F8[�8 ( S pr i ng a r r i ve s but he doe s n’ t ) S ha ng C hua n �� L i u R uz e ng � � P a t hé 35733A Shaoni an de w o ��Y� ( Y oung a s I a m ) P a t hé 35688A L i J i ngua ng ��� L i J i ngua ng ��� L i n g P i n g � 1 & Y ao M i n � � D i ng ge l i nggu dang UHU|� ( D i ng - dong be l l a nd dr um ) L i J i ngua ng ��� L i J i ngua ng ��� P a t hé 35864A M a T i n gt i n g � # # Y u da y uany ang �B�� ( R a i n f a l l s on m a nda r i n duc ks ) U nknow I r vi ng B e r l i n U nknow n O u yan g F e i y i n g � � - � X i an gge l i l a 0�"� ( S ha ngr i - L a ) C he n D i e yi � L i J i ngua ng ��� P a t hé 35637A A p p en d i x I V So n g L i s t 3 0 5 Y u m e ngm e ng ��� ( M i s t y R a i n) K e C hun 4 q H ua ng Y i j un � j � P a t hé 35637B P e i N i = � L i agy e bune ng l i u �� � 5 ( G ood ni ght doe s n’ t l a s t ) C he n D ongs un � �� Y a o M i n � � P a t hé 35720B Q u Y u n yu n  � � Sanl unc he s hang de x i aoj i e gCjY�� ( Y oung l a dy on a pe di c a b) Q i u Z i ye � � C he n G e xi n � P a t hé 35691A S h e n g Ji al u n 8 � P Y e ban ge s he ng �J ( S i ng i ng a t m i dni ght ) T i a n H a n ^ X i a n X i ngha i yK  P a t hé 35206A / B S i Y i gu i v � � J i ao w o r uhe bux i ang t a ��� � � ( H ow c oul d I f or ge t he r ) L i u B a nnong 5 C ha o Y ue n - r e n ��� P a t hé 35494A Wan g R e n m e i � [ � & L i l i l i � � � T aohua j i ang ��� ( T he r i ve r o f pe a c h bl os s om ) L i J i nhui ��/ L i J i nhui ��/ U nknow n Wu Y i n gyi n N � * D adi hui c hun }��F ( S pr i ng c om e s ba c k on e a r t h) C he n D ongs un � �� Y a o M i n � � P a t hé 35763A D uanc hang hong ��� ( S pr i ng s a dne s s ) Z ha ng S he ng u[ Y a n Z he xi  � P a t hé 35776A H ao c hunx i ao �F� ( P l e a s a nt ni ght t i m e ) C he n D ongs un � �� X u L a ng �� P a t hé 35675B N ong be n c hi qi ng I� � ( I n f a t ua t i on) C he n D ongs un � � � L i H ouxi a ng ��s P a t hé 35652B A p p en d i x I V So n g L i s t 3 0 6 P i ng s hui x i angf e ng 1�� � ( M e e t by c ha nc e ) Y a n Z he xi  � Y a n Z he xi  � P a t hé 35856B Q ui hua y ue m an � 6� ( F ul l m oon i n de e p a ut u m n) M a n Y i ng B L i H ouxi a ng ��s P a t hé 35732A Y ue l uo w ut i �� " � ( S e t t i ng m oon a nd c r ow i ng r a ve n) L a o Y a n �� D a S hi }{ P a t hé 35820B W o x i ang w angl e n i � �Y+ ( I w a nna f or ge t y ou) X u L a ng �� X u L a ng �� P a t hé 35652A Y ao L i � � B ai l an x i ang c�0 ( W hi t e or c hi d ) L i J i ngua ng ��� L i J i ngua ng ��� P a t hé 35640A B uy ao ni �+ ( Y ou a r e unw a nt e d) C he n G e xi n �  C he n G e xi n � ( a da pt e d f r om f ol k ) P a t hé 35659B C hongf e ng  � ( R e e nc ount e r ) Y a n Z he xi  � Y a n Z he xi  � P a t hé 35702B C hun de m e ng FY� ( D r e a m of S pr i ng) U nknow n T a ke oka N obuyuki ���� P a t hé 35894A D e budao de ai qi n {�QY � ( U nr e qui t e d l ove ) Y a n Z he xi  �  Y a o M i n � � P a t hé 35779A M ai x i angs i -� ( L ove s i c kne s s f or s a l e ) B a o Y i  T Y a n H ua  6 R e ga l 41638A M e i gui m e i gui w o ai ni S/S/� + ( R os e , r o s e , I l ove you) W u C un N� C he n G e xi n � P a t hé 35500B N age bu duo qi ng H�� � ( N o one i s no t a m o r ous ) L i J i ngua ng ��� Y a o M i n � � P a t hé 35635A Q i nhuai he pan b & 1 ( O n t he r i ve r ba nk of Q i nhua i ) C he n D ongs un � �� Y a o M i n � � P a t hé 35666B Q i u de huai ni an �Y� ( T he c he r i s he d m e m o r y of a ut um n ) W u C un N� C he n G e xi n � P a t hé 35500B Y i k e pox i n S� N� ( A b r oke n he a r t ) Y a n Z he xi  � Y a n Z he xi  � unknow n Y ao L i � � & Y ao M i n � � G ongx i gongx i � �  ( C ongr a t ul a t i ons ) C he n G e xi n � C he n G e xi n � P a t hé 35648B A p p en d i x I V So n g L i s t 3 0 7 M al ai f e nggur ang �8,� ( M a l a ya n s c e ne r y) Y a n Z he xi  � M B e r na r d ( a da pt e d f r om I ndone s i a n s ong) P a t hé 35936A Y ao M i n � � R uc i Shanghai ��j  ( S uc h S ha ngha i ) Y a o M i n � � Y a o M i n � � unknow n Y i M i n � � K an z he w o � 9� ( L ook a t m e ) Y a n Z he xi  � Y a n Z he xi  � P a t hé 35750A Y i n g Y i n � � Q i uqi an j i a s hang U5Vj ( O n T he S w i ng) U nknow n G a s t on L yl e P a t hé 35355A Z h an g F an u � C houc hong ge �% ( B ug s ong) G a ng M i ng {� C he n G e xi n � P a t hé 35728A M anc hang f e i  - ( P a r t y t i m e ) B a o Y i  T L i J i ngua ng ��� R e ga l 41629B T aohua duoduo hong ����� ( R e d pe a c h bl o s s om s ) S hui xi C un �� L i H ouxi a ng ��s P a t hé 35728B Z h ou X i aoyan t � � H ong dou c i � Z ( A dz uki be a ns ) C a o X ue qi n � � L i u X ue a n  � s P a t hé 35770B Z h ou X u an t )s A i s he n de j i an  ZY� ( C upi d ’ s a r r ow ) C he n D i e yi � L i J i ngua ng ��� P a t hé 35725A B ubi an de x i n � Y� ( S t e a df a s t a f f e c t i on ) L i J ua nqi ng �a� C he n G e xi n � P a t hé 35857A C ai bi ngl ang ��7 ( B e t e l nut pi c ki ng) Y i n Y i qi u �� L i J i ngua ng ��� ( A da pt e d f r om f ol k ) P a t hé 35504A C hang x i angs i �� ( E ve r l a s t i ng l ove s i c kne s s ) W u C un N� W u C un N� P a t hé 35462B F e nghuang y uf e i � r- ( P a i r e d phoe ni x) C he n D i e yi � C he n G e xi n � P a t hé 35 858 A A p p en d i x I V So n g L i s t 3 0 8 H e r i j un z ai l ai �Q�8 ( W he n w i l l you c om e ba c k a ga i n) H ua ng J i a m o ��* L i u X ue a n  � s P a t hé 35333A / B L i ang t i ao l u s hang G �)j ( O n t w o r oa ds ) Y a n Z he xi  � Y a n Z he xi  � P a t hé 35678A M ai z ahuo -O � ( S e l l i ng gr oc e r i e s ) L i J i ngua ng ��� ( A da pt e d f r om f ol k ) L i J i ngua ng ��� ( A da pt e d f r om f ol k ) P a t hé 35415B M e i f e i w u ��� ( D a nc e of m e i f e i ) C he ng X i a oqi ng ��� L i J i ngua ng ��� P a t hé 35509B Si j i ge ,� ( T he s ong of f our s e a s ons ) T i a n H a n ^ H e L üt i ng m`S ( A da pt e d f r om f ol k ) P a t hé 35335B Song dage �}i ( S e e i ng of f e l de r br ot he r ) H e L üt i ng m`S ( A da pt e d f r om f ol k ) H e L üt i ng m`S ( A da pt e d f r om f ol k ) P a t hé 35677A T e bi e k uai c he $9� ( T he e xpr e s s t r a i n) L i J i nhui ��/ L i J i nhui ��/ V i c t or 5490A T i any a ge nü � �~ ( T he w a nde r i ng s ongs t r e s s ) T i a n H a n ^ H e L üt i ng m `S ( A da pt e d f r om f ol k ) P a t hé 35335A W an’ an qu ��� ( G ood ni ght ) L i u R uz e ng � � L i u R uz e ng � � P a t hé 35772B W uy ue de f e ng ��Y, M a y w i nd) C he n G e xi n � L i J i ngua ng ��� P a t hé 35577A X i ao de z anm e i iYT� ( P r a i s e f or l a ught e r ) C he n D i e yi � L i a ng Y ue yi n � �* V i c t or 42248B X i aox i ao dongf ang ��x� ( T he l i t t l e nupt i a l c h a m be r ) W u G ua ngz u N� Y C he n G e xi n � P a t hé 35724B X i n dui hua -�� ( N e w f l ow e r qui z ) Y a n H ua  6 Y a n H ua  6 ( a da pt e d f r om f ol k ) P a t hé 35414A / B Y ue y uan huahao � ��� ( F ul l m oon a nd bl oom i ng f l ow e r s ) F a n Y a nqi a o �g� Y a n H ua  6 P a t hé 35497A Y i l i angr e n �[ ( R e c a l l i ng m y hus ba nd) L i J ua nqi ng �a� L i H ouxi a ng ��s P a t hé 35515A Z hi y i n he c hu x un ]* � 0 ( W he r e i s m y t r ue a udi e nc e ) C he n D i e yi � Y a n Z he xi  � P a t hé 35708A A p p en d i x I V So n g L i s t 3 0 9 Z h ou X u an t )s & Y a n H u a  6 D i ngni ng � ( R e pe a t e d a dvi c e ) L i J i ngua ng ��� L i J i ngua ng ��� P a t hé 35552A O t h e r s ** B i y e ge -8 ( G r a dua t i on s ong) T i a n H a n ^ N i e E r  C ai l i an ge �� ( S ong o f pi c ki ng l ot us ) A n E �� N i e E r  C ai l i ng ge � 7 ( S ong of pi c ki ng w a t e r c he s t nut ) T i a n H a n ^ N i e E r  C ungu l e ��� ( H a ppy vi l l a ge gi r l ) X u R uhui ��> X u R uhui ��> D a hui l aoj i a qu B��� ( F i ght i ng t he w a y ba c k hom e ) A n E �� R e n G ua ng �� L aohu j i aom e n ��#� ( T i ge r c a l l i ng a t t he doo r ) L i J i nghui ��/ L i J i nghui ��/ M ai bao ge -  ( ‘ S ong o f ne w s pa pe r boys ) A n E �� N i e E r  M at ou gongr e n ge ���[ ( S ong of doc ke r s ) T i a n H a n ^ N i e E r  Sai be i c unnü ��~ ( G i r l f r o m t he v i l l a ge i n t h e nor t h) T a ng N a e v N i e E r  Shanghai k ôs hi nk y ok u j  �� ( S ha ngha i m a r c h) Y a m a da H i r os hi �^ � M a t s uda i r a N obuhi r o ;� � Shi na no y or u �5�� ( C hi na ni ght ) S a i j ô Y a s o 条d^ T a ke oka N obuyuki �d�� T aow ang qu �s� ( S ong o f E xi l e ) T a ng N a e v N i e E r  X i a qi ongl ou h�} ( D ow ns t a i r s t he j a de t ow e r ) X u R uhui ��> X u R uhui ��> X i n nüx i ng ge -~� ( S ong o f ne w w om e n ) S h i Y i D N i e E r  X unx i ong c i 0 Z ( W or ds on s e e ki ng br ot he r ) S un Y u �� S un C he ngbi ��� A p p en d i x I V So n g L i s t 3 1 0 Y i ng f e i r e nj i an z hut i qu �-[ ��Z� ( T he t he m e s ong of o r i ol e s f l yi ng on e a r t h ) U nknow n U nknow n Y i y ongj un j i nx i ngqu �� �� ( M a r c h o f t he vol unt e e r s ) T i a n H a n ^ N i e E r  Z ongl i j i ni an ge < #�� ( I n m e m or y of t he pr i m e m i ni s t e r ) D a i C hua nxi a n � �, L i J i nhui ��/ Z hongguo guom i ndang dangge � 7 7Occ ( S ong of t he C hi ne s e N a t i ona l P a r t y) S un W e n �� C he ng M a oyun ��� * C a t a l ogue num be r s r e f e r t o t hos e of gr a m ophone r e c or d s r e l e a s e d i n t he S ha ngha i e r a not o f t he r e - r e l e a s e d r e c or di ngs l i s t e d i n di s c ogr a phy. ** S ongs m e nt i one d i n t h i s s t udy but h i s t or i c a l r e c or d i ngs not a va i l a bl e or not us e d f or p r oduc t a na l ys i s . 31 Glossary An Er �� Anding bieshu guangbo diantai ��9 �?ge( Bai Guang c� Bai Hong c Baidai changpian gongsi �� (��! Baige � Bailemen wuting ����B baixiangren saosao c�[ � � bangzi � Baofang gongsi y�! Baoyu tangbing W � 7 Beihai   Beikai � � Beixin shudian -�� biangong  � bianzhi  D biaozi wuqing xizi wuyi P � �� �� Cai Chusheng �9[ chaguan �� Changcheng �� Chen Dieyi � Chen Gexin � Chen He �� Chen Yumei �W � ci Z Chongqing  E chuanju � Chunqiu F� Da shijie }�� dabaoqiang } " Dafang shuju }��� Daguangming xiyuan }��� � Dahua xin yinyuedui } 6-*� � Glosary 312 dajie xiaoxiang } Q� Dalu }) daotai 8( Dasheng wuxiandian changji hang }J ��e (� Datong she }�_ Datong yuehui }��6 Daxin }- Dazhonghua changpian }� 6 (� Dazhongyuan pixie }�adh di J Dianshizhai huabao �i� �  Diantong gongsi e ��! Dianying zhuankan eB Y dihuo �� Dipi zhangcheng �d � � Dongbei dagu }| donghai longwang  �� Du Jie � Du Yuesheng �� M Emei �� erhu Z� fanshi ren jiudei tingxi mJ[ 1 {�� Fan Yanqiao �g� Feicui ma po � Feihuacun -�� fengmi quanguo ,�� 7 Fenghuang yufei � r- Fujian E Fuzhou E� Fu Xiangxun � B 6 fumuguan �N� Gaoshiman wuting �{�B Gaoting �� Gechang chunse  F geyongshe  X_ genü ~ Genü hongmudan ~��� Genü zhi ge ~� Gesheng leihen J  1 gexing K gezaixi �� Glosary 313 gong � Gong Qiuxia ��� Gong Mujiu �In Guangdong ? Guangxi ? Guangzhou ?� guoli 7� guohuo 7 � Guotai 7  guoyu 7� guoyu laoge 7�� guoyue 7� guoyue jiaoxianghua 7�t�� gushi  Haipai | Hakuran no ka c�5� Han  Hanjian � Hankou y hao � Hebei & Hesheng qJ hirajoshi ; Hong Xiuquan s�� Hongkou y Honglou chunshen �}F hongpian dajie xiaoxiang �A} Q� Hu Die � Hu Xinling ��3 huagu xi �|� Huang Fang �� Huang Feiran �- � Huang Yijun � j � Huangpu � Huangpu jiang � � huangse yinyue � *� huaren jingli 6[� # huechia �; �; � huju  Humen �� Hunan �� huqin � � Glosary 314 Huxi  Jiangnan �� Jiangsu �= Jindu da xiyuan � �}� � Jingpai /| Jinmen da jiudian ��} �� Jinsheng changji gongsi �J (��! jintishi � jue  kunqu d� Kaerdeng da xiyuan ' �}� � Kaiming �� Kunlun d g Kuomintang 7Oc Lang Yuxiu N� Lanxin xiyuan ��� � Laodahua wuting �} 6�B Li Houxiang ��s Li Jinguang ��� Li Jinhui ��/ Li Juanqing �a� Li Lihua � 6 Li Lili � � � Li Minghui ��/ Li Shutong �`� Li Xianglan �0� Liang Ping � 1 Liang Yueying ��* Liangxin � Lianhua yingye gongsi L 6eB�! Lianxing LK Libailiu �0� Liji � � Lijiachang ��  Lin Gui � Liulang wenying c r� Liu Tianhua � 6 Lü Ji PX Lu Xun �� Ma Loufen �#� Ma Tingting � # # maichang - ( Glosary 315 Malu gongchengju �)� �� Malu tianshi �)�4 Maque yu xiaohai � �~� Meiguo wuxiandian shengli changji hezu gongsi � 7 ��e �; (��� ! Meihua gewu tuan ���� Meimei nüxiao ��~� Miaoyin tuan v*� mii zhi yin ���* Mingxing she �K_ Mingxing yingpian gongsi �KB�� ! Mingyue gewujushe ��� _ Mingyue gewutuan ���� Mingyue yinyuehui ��*�6 Miura Tamaki g  nangyang �q Nanjing �/ Nanshi �9 Nanjing da xiyuan �/}� � Nie Er  niesi mao ��_ Ningbo �* Ouyang Feiying � �-� pianyin * pibao gongsi d �! ping ; pipa � � Pudong  putonghua w � Qi  Qianfa �, qiangdi i J Qin Pengzhang b � Qing � Qingfeng wuyuedui �,�� � qingjue � qingyin �* qipao � � qu ; � qupai � � Glosary 316 Qu Yunyun  � � Ren Guang �� Remin changpian chang [O (�@ ru ] ruan $ run � Sakura v sanxian g� Sanxiao g i Sanyou gongsi g��! Sanyu yueyueshe gq��_ se ~ Sensen guoyuedui � � 7� � shang ; j Shanghai guoyu zhuanxiu xuexiao j  7� YL�� Shen Xingong ��� sheng M Sheng Jialun 8�P Shengli changpian gongsi �; (�� ! Shenglong huohu [�z� shidai �� shidai qu ��� Shimonoseki �� shuangqing P � Shun - Sichuan ,� Si jiemei ,�� Si jiemei kafei yinyueting ,��d %* �B sizhu � Song � Songjiang � Sulian zhi you she =L��_ Sun Yun �� Sun Chengbi ��� suona #�Y Suzhou =� Taiping �; Takeoka Nobuyuki ���� tanci A Z Glosary 317 Tang e tangshi e Taowang �s Tian Han ^ Tianjin �u Tianyun she ��_ Tianyi yingpian gongsi �SB��! tingzijian � � Tongsheng shudian �J�� waidiren .�[ Wang Jingwei �Z Wang Manjie �  � Wang Renmei �[� Wei  Wei Linggong  3� Wenming shuju ���� Wojia yiu ge xiaojiumei ���H�X � Wu Cun N� Wu Yingyin N�� Xiamen � Xianlesi � v Xianshi gongsi �D�! xiangxiaren �h[ Xianyue piaopiao chuchu wen �WW � �r xiao  xiao meimei ��� xiao shi iJ; 0 xiao shimin �9O Xiaodaohui �`6 Xin nüxing -~� Xin shijie -�� Xin wutai -�( Xingguang gewu yanjiushe K��� �_ Xingjie  Q Xingshi tx Xinjiang -� xinju - Xinhua wuting - 6�B Xinhua yingye gongsi - 6B8�! Glosary 318 Xinsheng changji gongsi �J (��! xinshi - ; �4; �+ Xinyue liushengji changpian gongsi - � 5J� (��! Xinxin -- xiqin � � xiyuan � � Xu Ruhui ��> Xu Zhenya �- xuetang yuege � @� Yan Gongshang  �j Yan Gefan  Hm Yan Hua  6 Yan Zhexi  � yang � Yang Huo � � Yang Lin @ � Yangjingbang q � yangli �� yangping �; yangqu � yangru �] yangshang �j Yangzi fandian n �� Yangzi wuting n�B Yao Li � � Yao Min � � yaogun yinyue (*� yayue �� Yazhou -r Ye shanghai �j  Yeban gesheng �J Yecao xianhua � � �� Yihai �  Yihua she ��_ Yihua yingye gongsi � 6B8�! yin �;  yin yang hebi � ��� Ying fei renjian �-[ � Ying Yin � � yingxing BK Yinhai sanbuqu � g �� Glosary 319 Yinhan shuangxing �PK yinli �� yinping �; yinqu � yinru �] yinshang �j Yinyue jiangxihui *�z f6 yineyueshe *�_ Yiyuan wuting � ��B Yongan Q� yu � Yulihun W �� Yu Yuezhang /� � Yuan � yuanyang hudie pai ��| yuefenpai guanggao hua �� �?S � Yuegong wuting ���B Yueji � � yueju s yueqin � � ze � Zeng Zhimin #�O Zhabei \ Zhang Changfu u�E Zhang Fan u� Zhang Huang u Zhang Shu u� Zhang Xian u� Zhang Yinwu u� � Zhejiang � Zheng M zhengyin M* zhi D zhixian ]$ Zhiyin dayuedu ]*}� � Zhongguo changpian gongsi � 7 (� �! 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Chinese-language Periodicals Baidai yuekan ��� (Pathé seminonthly) Beiyang huabao q �  (North China pictorial) Boyin tiandi g*�� (Broadcast world) Boyinjie g*� (Broadcast circle) Dafengbao },  (The wind daily news) Dawanbao } �  (The China evening news) Bibliography 353 Dazhong yingxun } :B � (Popular cinema news) Diansheng eJ (Movietone) Diantong banyue huabao e � �  (Denton pictorial) Diantong zazhi e �O� (Denton gazete) Dianying gushi eBB+ (Film story) Dianying huabao eB �  (The scren pictorial) Dianying huaju eB (Cinema and stage play) Dianying ribao eB�  (Movie daily news) Dianying wenhua eB�� (Advocate of culture in cinema) Dianying zhoubao eB �  (Cinema wekly news) Gexing huabao K �  (Pop star pictorial) Guangbo yuekan ?g� (Broadcast monthly) Guangbo wuxiandian ?g ��e (Broadcast and radio) Jingbao z  (The crystal daily) Kaiming �� (Enlightenment) Liangyou huabao � �  (The young companion) Lianhebao L�  (United daily news) Lianhua huabao L 6 �  (United China pictorial) Mingxing banyuekan �K� (Movie star semionthly) Qingqing dianying ��eB (Evergren film agazine) Shanghai huabao j  �  (Shanghai pictorial) Shanghai wuxiandian j  ��e (Shanghai radio wekly) Bibliography 354 Shenpao a  (Shanghai daily news, or originaly titled The Shun Pao Daily) Tiaowu ribao *��  (Daily dance review) Xianle huabao � �  (Ciro’s pictorial) Xin yingxing -�K (Silverland) Xinhua huabao - 6 �  (New China pictorial, or originaly titled Hsinhua in Pictures) Xinsheng zhoukan -[ � (New life wekly) Xinwenbao -r  (The news) Xinyinyue yuekan -*�� (New music monthly) Xinyiyue yuekan (Huananban) -*�� (New music monthly (South China edition)) Yinhai huabao �  �  (Silver sea pictorial) Yingmi julebu B �F� � (Film fan club) Yingmi zhoubao B � �  (Film fan wekly news) Yingwu ribao B��  (Film and dance daily news) Yingxi zazhi B�O� (Film agazine) Yinyue jiaoyu *� � (Music education) Yinyue shijie *��� (Music world) Yisheng �J (Art sound) Yule Zhoubao �� �  (Variety wekly) Zhongguo dianying huabao � 7eB �  (China film pictorial) Zhongguo wuxiandian � 7 ��e (China wireles) 35 Discography 30-50 niandai baidai qianxi shiji jingxuan xilie 30-50���w$��Zo�� (Highlights of the 30s and 50s of Pathé milennium edition), 2000, EMI (Hong Kong), 2 Audio CDs, 7243 5 29043 27. Bai Guang c�, Lian zhi huo, Baidai bainian xilie 12 ���—������12 (Fire of love, a hundred years of Pathé, vol.12), 2005, EMI (Hong Kong), Audio CD, 0094633129221. —, Ruguo meiyou ni, Baidai Zhongguo shidai qu mingdian 20 ���+—��� 7����J20 (If living without you, The legendary Chinese hits, vol.20), 1992, EMI (Hong Kong), Audio CD, FH 81020 2. Bai Hong c Lang shi chunri feng, Baidai Zhongguo shidai qu mingdian 18 JF �,—��� 7����J20 (He is the spring wind, The legendary Chinese hits, vol.18), 1992, EMI (Hong Kong), Audio CD, FH 81018 2. Bai Hong and Zhou Xuan cet)s Zuiren de kouhong, Baidai bainian xilie 4 Q [Yy�—������4 (Enchanting lipstick, a hundred years of Pathé, vol.4), 2005, EMI (Hong Kong), Audio CD, 009433145122. Gong Qiuxia, Zhang Fan, Chen Qi and Chen Juanjuan ���e ume � �e �� �, Si jiemei, Baidai bainian xilie 17 ,��—������17 (Four sisters, a hundred years of Pathé, vol.17), 2005, EMI (Hong Kong), Audio CD, 0094633159327. Lin, Jenny, Chinoiserie, 2000, BIS, Audio CD, 1046189. Discography 356 Qu Yunyun � � �, Zhongguo Shanghai huaqiang nügaoyin Qu Yunyun jingdian mingqu � 7j � "~ �*� � ��J�� (The clasics of coloratura soprano Qu Yunyun of Shanghai China), private release, 2 Audio CDs, no isue number. Shanghai dianying ji, Baidai bainian xilie 26j eB � ������26 (A selection of Songs from Shanghai films, a hundred years of Pathé, vol.26), 2005 EMI (Hong Kong), Audio CD, 0094634468428. Wen Chin-Lung ]��, Erhu chuanshuo Z� �� (The legend of erhu fiddle), 2002, BMG (Taiwan), Audio CD, 74321373922. Yao Li � �, Dongfang jingdian shuang CD xianliang zhencang ban – san ��J PCD" ��H—  (Clasic of the Orient double CD collector’s limited edition vol.1), 2001, EMI (Malaysia), 2 Audio CDs, 7243 5 37391 26. Ye shanghai jingxuan �j Zo (Highlights of Shanghai night), 1992, EMI (Hong Kong), Audio CD, 0777 7 78235 21. Ye shanghai jingxuan er �j Zo(Z) (Highlights of Shanghai night, vol.2), 1993, EMI (Hong Kong), Audio CD, 0777 7 78392 25. Ye shanghai jingxuan san �j Zo(g) (Highlights of Shanghai night, vol.3), 1993, EMI (Hong Kong), Audio CD, 7243 8 27459 21. Ye shanghai jingxuan si �j Zo(,) (Highlights of Shanghai night, vol.4), 1994, EMI (Hong Kong), Audio CD, 7243 8 28926 25. Zhongguo Shanghai sansishi niandai jueban mingqu yi � 7j g,d���� (S) (Deleted 30-40s hits of Shanghai China, vol.1), Various artists, 2000, Le Discography 357 Leng Kok, Audio CD, LK-15062000. Zhongguo Shanghai sansishi niandai jueban mingqu er � 7j g,d���� (Z) (Deleted 30-40s hits of Shanghai China, vol.2), Various artists, 2000, Le Leng Kok, Audio CD, LK-11112000. Zhongguo Shanghai sansishi niandai jueban mingqu san � 7j g,d���� (g) (Deleted 30-40s hits of Shanghai China, vol.3), Various artists, 2001, Le Leng Kok, Audio CD, LK-11042001. Zhongguo Shanghai sansishi niandai jueban mingqu si � 7j g,d����(,) (Deleted 30-40s hits of Shanghai China, vol.4), 2002, Le Leng Kok, Audio CD, LK-11042002. Zhongguo Shanghai sansishi niandai jueban mingqu wu � 7j g,d���� (�) (Deleted 30-40s hits of Shanghai China, vol.5), 2003, Ancient Sound Restore, Audio CD, ASR-28122003. Zhongguo Shanghai sansishi niandai jueban mingqu liu � 7j g,d���� (�) (Deleted 30-40s hits of Shanghai China, vol.6), 2004, Ancient Sound Restore, Audio CD, ASR-01102004. Zhongguo shidai qu qingge duichang � 7��� �� ( (The love duets of Chinese songs of the times), 2000, EMI (Malaysia), Audio CD, 7243 5 24277 27. Zhongguo shidai qu qingge duichang vol.2 � 7��� �� ( vol.2 (The love duets of Chinese songs of the times, vol.2), 2000, EMI (Malaysia), Audio CD, 7243 5 24278 26. Zhongguo shidai qu qingge duichang vol.3 � 7��� �� ( vol.3, (The love Discography 358 duets of Chinese songs of the times, vol.3), 2001, EMI (Malaysia), Audio CD, 7243 5 31660 21. Zhou Xuan t)s, Dongfang jingdian shuang CD xianliang zhencang ban – yi �� JPCD" ��H— (Clasic of the Orient double CD collector’s limited edition vol.1), 2001, EMI (Malaysia), 2 Audio CDs, 7243 5 37383 27. —, Dongfang jingdian shuang CD xianliang zhencang ban – er ��JPCD" � �H— i (Clasic of the Orient double CD collector’s limited edition vol.2), 2001, EMI (Malaysia), 2 Audio CDs, 7243 5 37386 24. —, Jinsangzi Zhou Xuan � �t)s (The Golden Voice Zhou Xuan), 1985, China Record Company (Shanghai), 2 casetes, L-36 and 70. —, Zhou Xuan t)s (Zhou Xuan), 1993, China Record Company (Shanghai), 4 casetes, CL-51-4.