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 are from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China; others come from countries 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.

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, Taiwanese pop was phased out, making mandopop the main musical genre in Taiwan.

Market

Mandopop has a sizeable market in mainland China. Although the prosperity of mandopop over cantopop will come down to which genre utilizes online stores and other new sales methods, the entire market of "Chinese Music" is at the mercy of piracy. In particular, significant barriers exist in mainland China.^[2]

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. In particular, Chinese rock has only began to separate from c-pop in the early 1990s. Chinese hip hop has started to come to its own in the 2000s.

References

See also

• Music of Hong Kong
• Music of Taiwan
• Music of China
• Music of the Philippines

Donate to Wikimedia