C-pop

Li Jinhui, the father of Chinese popular music

C-pop (traditional Chinese: 中文流行音樂; simplified Chinese: 中文流行音乐; pinyin: zhōngwén liúxíng yīnyuè; Jyutping: zung1man4 lau4hang4 jam1ngok6) is an abbreviation for "Chinese popular music". Most of today's c-pop artists originate from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Others come from countries where the Chinese language is used by a large number of the population, such as Singapore and Malaysia.

Terminology

The name "Chinese Popular Music" comes from a musical origin that began in China as a shidaiqu base. There are two subgenres within c-pop: cantopop and mandopop.

Major production centres

Smaller, emerging hubs

* for artists who release albums primarily in the Taiwanese music industry e.g. Stefanie Sun, JJ Lin, Wilber Pan, Lee-Hom Wang.

Taiwanese pop may feature a similar music style, but is counted as a separate genre due to its roots in Japanese enka.

History

Buck Clayton, the American who helped bring Jazz influence to Shanghai.

From 1920 to 1949 in the Republic of China, "Chinese popular music" was used to describe all contemporary music sung in Chinese dialects in Shanghai. It was founded by Li Jinhui. Buck Clayton is credited with bringing American jazz influence to China. The music gained popularity in hangout quarters of nightclubs and dancehalls of major cities in the 1920s. A number of privately-run radio stations were spawned from the late 1920s to 1950s to play c-pop music.^[1]

Around the time of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Chinese Civil War, pop music was seen as a leftist distraction. After the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II, c-pop has been marketed, produced and branded regionally.

The Communist Party of China remained in mainland China after establishing the People's Republic of China in 1949. One of its first actions was to label the genre "Yellow Music", where the color is associated with pornography. Baak Doi would take pop music to Hong Kong, and develop cantopop.

The Kuomintang, relocated to Taiwan, discouraged the use of the native Taiwanese language (Min Nan) from the 1950s to the late 1980s. As a result, mandopop became the dominant musical genre in Taiwan.

The immortal legends award was honored to C-pop stars who died a legend.

At the end of 2007 RTHK began promoting a tribute called (不死傳奇) literally "Immortal Legends" in honor of the singers who died a legend in the industry. The honor was given to Roman Tam, Anita Mui, Teresa Teng, Leslie Cheung, Wong Ka Kui and Danny Chan.^[2] All six pop stars played a major role in developing the Hong Kong or Taiwan music industry.

In August 2008 Norman Cheng, father of HK singer Ronald Cheng, acquired the remaining portion of EMI Music Asia. This means the British EMI, which entered China in the early 20th century, officially withdrew from the Chinese market. The remaining portion is moved to Typhoon music with the purchase made for an estimated HK$100 million.^[3][4]

Market

In year 2000 EolAsia.com was founded as the first online C-pop music portal in Hong Kong. The company survived the dot.com bust and offered online legal music downloads in February 2005. It was backed by EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG.^[5] It primarily targets consumers in Hong Kong and Macau with some songs requiring HKID cards to purchase. It holds a large collection of artists, though still quite incomplete compared to traditional CD stores such as Yesasia.

In February 2008 mainland China's top search engine Baidu.com was sued by local industry groups for providing music listening, broadcasting and downloading without approval, while generating huge advertising revenues based on webpage hits.^[6] Piracy and significant barriers continue to exist in China.^[7]

Google have since announced a cooperation with Top100.cn to offer free listening and genuine music copies downloads to compete with Baidu. Top100.cn was founded by basketball star Yao Ming, agent Zhang Mingji and music insider Chen Ge via a 20 million yuan investment.^[8] Currently Top100.cn offers unlimited free listening at low quality 48kbit/s to 64kbit/s and purchasable high-quality downloads at 192kbit/s. The future of C-pop in mainland China however, is still a very controversial one. The Chinese government's banning of the highly popular show Super girl is an example.^[9]

Musical styles

The gap between cantopop and mandopop has been narrowing in the new millennium. C-pop covers many musical styles, including R&B, ballads, pop, light rock and some variation of hip hop. Chinese rock branched off as a separate genre during the early 1990s. Chinese hip hop has started to come to its own in the 2000s. Chinese R&B was pioneered by Alex To in the 90s, but has since been used as the major composition style for artists such as Jay Chou, David Tao, Khalil Fong and Lee-Hom Wang.

References

See also

• Music of Hong Kong
• Music of Taiwan
• Music of China
• Music of the Philippines
• Xcentre.net - Your eXtreme Entertainment Centre (English)