Typhoon music made the purchase for an estimated HK$100 million. In August 2008 Norman Cheung, father of HK singer Ronald Cheng, acquired the remaining portion of EMI Music Asia when EMI, which had entered China in the early 20th century, withdrew from the Chinese market. It primarily targets consumers in Hong Kong and Macau: some songs require Hong Kong Identity Cards to purchase. The company survived the dot-com bubble and offered online legal music downloads in February 2005, backed by EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG. In 2000 was founded as the first online C-pop music portal in Hong Kong. As a result, mandopop became the dominant musical genre in Taiwan. The Kuomintang, relocated to Taiwan, discouraged the use of native Taiwanese Hokkien dialect from the 1950s to the late 1980s. The Shanghai pop music industry then took pop music to Hong Kong and in the 1970s developed cantopop. One of its first actions was to label the genre " Yellow Music" (the color is associated with pornography). The Communist Party of China established the People's Republic of China in 1949. After the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II C-pop has been marketed, produced and branded regionally. Īround the time of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and the Chinese Civil War, pop music was seen as a leftist undisturbed distraction. It fuses jazz and Chinese folk music – the tune is in the style of a traditional pentatonic folk melody, but the instrumentation is similar to that of an American jazz orchestra. Around 1927, Li Jinhui composed "The Drizzle" (" 毛毛雨") sung by his daughter Li Minghui ( 黎明暉), and this song is generally regarded as the first Chinese pop song. A number of privately run radio stations from the late 1920s to the 1950s played C-pop. Buck Clayton is credited with bringing American jazz influence to China and the music gained popularity in hangout quarters of nightclubs and dancehalls of major cities in the 1920s. Shanghai was the main hub of the Chinese popular music recording industry, and an important name of the period is composer Li Jinhui. The term shidaiqu (meaning "music of the era" or "popular music") is used to describe all different types of music sung in Mandarin and other Chinese dialects recorded in China from 1920 to 1952, then in Hong Kong until the 1960s. įor individual popstars and music era coverage, see Hokkien pop, Cantopop, and Mandopop. Ĭhinese popular music was initially a vehicle for the Cultural Revolution and Maoist ideologies however, during the country's extensive political and cultural changes of the past 50 years, it has lost much political significance and now closely resembles the styles of K-pop and J-pop, from South Korea and Japan, respectively. Hokkien pop, initially strongly influenced by Japanese enka, has been re-integrating into C-pop and narrowing its trend of development towards Mandopop. The gap between Cantopop and Mandopop has been narrowing in the new millennium. There are currently three main subgenres within C-pop: Cantopop, Mandopop and Hokkien pop. C-pop is used as an umbrella term covering not only Chinese pop but also R&B, ballads, Chinese rock, Chinese hip hop and Chinese ambient music, although Chinese rock diverged during the early 1990s. This includes countries where Chinese languages are used by parts of the population, such as Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. There are heaps more, but we do have limited space here.Li Jinhui, known as the father of Chinese popĬ-pop is an abbreviation for Chinese popular music ( traditional Chinese: 漢語 流行 音樂 simplified Chinese: 汉语 流行 音乐 pinyin: hànyǔ liúxíng yīnyuè Jyutping: hon3jyu5 lau4hang4 jam1ngok6), a loosely defined musical genre by artists originating from the Greater China region. thanks again to Annie for providing this information =)īack to music-related stuff, here are some great songs Alan wrote (apart from "未唱的歌"). Personal life wise, like most musicians he likes to keep a very low profile, but it is known that he had been involved in relationships with: Dorothy Yu (余綺霞) and Fennie Yuen (袁潔瑩). His father was also a renowned jazz pianist who was friends with Joseph Koo. While Dominic specialised in techno-music, and Andrew in R&B and jazz, Alan focused himself more on general pop, mainly heart-warming (at times heart-breaking) ballads.Īlan was best known for his perfect collaboration with Danny Chan (陳百強), but with other artists he produced many many great songs too. He was an excellent composer, arranger, conductor, and producer who played a very significant role in the 80-90's HK music scene. (Special Thanks to Annie Jin for providing this photo)Īlan, along with Dominic Chow (introduced earlier) and Andrew Tuason (杜自持), were three most outstanding students of Cantopop godfather Joseph Koo.