Table Of Contenti
Made in Hong Kong
Made in Hong Kong: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive and thorough intro-
duction to the history, sociology, and musicology of twentieth- and twenty- first- century popular
music in Hong Kong. The volume consists of essays by leading scholars in the field, and it covers
the major figures, styles, and social contexts of popular music in Hong Kong. Each essay provides
adequate context to allow readers to understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of
lasting significance. The book is organized into four thematic sections: Cantopop, History, and
Legacy; Genres, Format, and Identity; Significant Artists; and Contemporary Cantopop.
Anthony Fung is Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication, and Co-D irector
of the Institute of Asia- Pacific Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He also holds
an appointment as Professor in the School of Arts and Communication at Beijing Normal
University, China.
Alice Chik is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies and a core member of the
Faculty of Human Sciences Multilingualism Research Centre at Macquarie University in Sydney,
Australia.
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Routledge Global Popular Music Series
Series Editors: Franco Fabbri, Conservatorio di Musica Arrigo Boito di Parma, Italy, and
Goffredo Plastino, Newcastle University, UK
The Routledge Global Popular Music Series provides popular music scholars, teachers, students, and
musicologists with a well- informed and up- to- date introduction to different world popular music
scenes. The series of volumes can be used for academic teaching in popular music studies, or as a
collection of reference works. Written by those living and working in the countries about which they
write, this series is devoted to popular music largely unknown to Anglo-A merican readers.
Made in Japan: Studies in Popular Music
Edited by Tōru Mitsui
Made in Brazil: Studies in Popular Music
Edited by Martha Tupinambá de Ulhôa, Cláudia Azevedo and Felipe Trotta
Made in Latin America: Studies in Popular Music
Edited by Julio Mendívil and Christian Spencer Espinosa
Made in Korea: Studies in Popular Music
Edited by Hyunjoon Shin and Seung-Ah Lee
Made in Sweden: Studies in Popular Music
Edited by Alf Björnberg and Thomas Bossius
Made in Hungary: Studies in Popular Music
Edited by Emília Barna and Tamás Tófalvy
Made in France: Studies in Popular Music
Edited by Gérôme Guibert and Catherine Rudent
Made in the Low Countries: Studies in Popular Music
Edited by Lutgard Mutsaers and Gert Keunen
Made in Turkey: Studies in Popular Music
Edited by Ali C. Gedik
Made in Australia and Aotearoa/ New Zealand: Studies in Popular Music
Edited by Shelley Brunt and Geoff Stahl
Made in Greece: Studies in Popular Music
Edited by Dafni Tragaki
Made in Taiwan: Studies in Popular Music
Edited by Eva Tsai, Tung- Hung Ho, and Miaoju Jian
Made in Poland: Studies in Popular Music
Edited by Patryk Galuszka
Made in Hong Kong: Studies in Popular Music
Edited by Anthony Fung and Alice Chik
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Made in Hong Kong
Studies in Popular Music
Edited by
Anthony Fung
and Alice Chik
iv
First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of Anthony Fung and Alice Chik to be identified as the authors of
the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Fung, Anthony Y. H. editor. | Chik, Alice, editor.
Title: Made in Hong Kong : studies in popular music /
edited by Anthony Fung and Alice Chik.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2020. |
Series: Routledge global popular music series |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019057013 (print) | LCCN 2019057014 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367226978 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367226985 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780429276439 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Popular music–China–Hong Kong–History and criticism.
Classification: LCC ML3502.H85 M3 2020 (print) |
LCC ML3502.H85 (ebook) | DDC 781.63095125–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057013
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057014
ISBN: 978- 0- 367- 22697- 8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 0- 367- 22698- 5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978- 0- 429- 27643- 9 (ebk)
Typeset in Minion Pro
by Newgen Publishing UK
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Contents
List of figures vii
Series Foreword viii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Mainstreaming Hong Kong Popular Music 1
ANTHONY FUNG AND ALICE CHIK
Part I: Cantopop, History, and Legacy 5
1 Mapping Sociopolitical and Cultural Changes through “The Daughters of
Hong Kong”: From Anita Mui to Denise Ho 10
VICKY HO AND MIRANDA MA
2 Once upon a Time in Hong Kong Cantopop: 1984 21
YIU- WAI CHU
3 Pax Musica and Mnets: Cantopop– Kpop Convergences and Inter- Asia
Cultural Mobilities 33
KAI KHIUN LIEW AND MEICHENG SUN
4 Voices Shaped by the People and for the People: Cantopop and Political Crisis
from the Colonial to Postcolonial Era 44
STELLA LAU AND IVY MAN
Part II: Genres, Format, and Identity 53
5 The Symbolic Sound of Cantopop: Relistening to “The Fatal Irony” (1974) 59
TING YIU WONG
6 Rethinking Chineseness in the Cantopop of Sam Hui 66
BRENDA CHAN
7 Alternative Music, Language, and “Hong Kong” Identity: The Use of Metaphor in
the English Lyrics of Hong Kong Independent Music 78
LOK MING ERIC CHEUNG
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vi
vi • Contents
8 Covers and “One Melody, Two Lyrics” Songs 91
JOHNSON LEOW
Part III: Significant Artists 101
9 Love Songs from an Island with Blurred Boundaries: Teresa Teng’s
Anchoring and Wandering in Hong Kong 107
CHEN- CHING CHENG
10 Remembering Hong Kong as a Queer Metaphor: Leslie Cheung’s Queer
Performativity and Posthumous Networked Fandom 115
HONG- CHI SHIAU
11 Hong Kong is (No Longer) My Home: From Sam Hui to My Little Airport 124
MILAN ISMANGIL
12 MC Yan and his Cantonese Conscious Rap 132
ANGEL M. Y. LIN
Part IV: Contemporary Cantopop 143
13 Snapshots of Multilingualism in Hong Kong Popular Music 147
PHIL BENSON AND ALICE CHIK
14 Our Little Twins Stars: Conglomerate- Catalyzed Cross- Media Stardom
in the New Millennium 157
KLAVIER J. WANG AND STEPHANIE NG
15 Performing the Political: Reflections on Tatming Meeting George Orwell in 2017 168
YIU FAI CHOW, JEROEN DE KLOET, AND LEONIE SCHMIDT
16 The Politicization of Music through Nostalgic Mediation: The Memory in
“Boundless Oceans, Vast Skies” 181
JESSICA KONG AND ANTHONY FUNG
Coda 191
17 The Globo- Regional and the Local in Hong Kong Popular Music 193
C. J. W.- L. WEE
Afterword 203
Cantopop Is Always Hybrid: A Conversation with Serina Ha 205
Notes on Contributors 214
Index 217
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Figures
14.1 A YES! card with the stars’ faces on the front and the lyrics of a song on the back 162
14.2 Bundled gifts and coupons included in Twins album boxes 163
15.1 The 2017 Tatming concert 170
15.2 The 1Q84 moon 174
15.3 Video image of Tobias Gremmler during the show 175
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viii
Series Foreword
Popular music studies have progressed from the initial focus on methodologies to exploring a
variety of genres, scenes, works, and performers. British and North American music have been
privileged and studied first, not only for their geographic and generational proximity to scholars,
but also for their tremendous impact. Everything else has been often relegated to the dubious
“world music” category, with a “folk” (or “roots” or “authentic”) label attached.
However, world popular music is no less popular than rock ’n’ roll, R&B, disco, rap, singer-
songwriters, punk, grunge, Britpop, or nu- gaze. It is no less full of history and passion, no less
danceable, socially relevant, and commercialized. Argentinian tango, Brazilian bossa nova,
Mexican reggaeton, Cuban son and timba, Spanish and Latin American cantautores, French auteurs-
compositeurs- interprètes, Italian cantautori and electronic dance music, J- pop, German cosmic
music and Schlager, Neapolitan song, Greek entechno, Algerian raï, Ghanaian highlife, Portuguese
fado, Nigerian jùjú, Egyptian and Lebanese Arabic pop, Israeli mizrahit, and Indian filmi are just a
few examples of locally and transnationally successful genres that, with millions of records sold, are
an immensely precious key to understanding different cultures, societies, and economies.
More than in the past, there is now a widespread awareness of the “other” popular music;
however, we still lack access to the original sources, or to texts to rely on. The Routledge Global
Popular Music Series has been devised to offer scholars, teachers, students, and general readers
worldwide a direct access to scenes, works, and performers that have not been much, if at all,
considered in the current literature, and at the same time to provide a better understanding of
the different approaches in the field of non- Anglophone scholarship. Uncovering the wealth of
studies flourishing in so many countries, inaccessible to those who do not speak the local lan-
guage, is now no less urgent than considering the music itself.
The series website (www.globalpopularmusic.net) includes hundreds of audiovisual examples
which complement the volumes. The interaction with the website is intended to give a well-
informed introduction to the world’s popular music from entirely new perspectives and at the
same time to provide updated resources for academic teaching.
The Routledge Global Popular Music Series aims ultimately to establish a truly international
arena for a democratic musicology through authoritative and accessible books. We hope that our
work will help the creation of a different polyphony of critical approaches and that you will enjoy
listening to and being part of it.
Franco Fabbri
Conservatorio di Musica Arrigo Boito di Parma, Italy
Goffredo Plastino
Newcastle University, UK
Series Editors
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Acknowledgments
We are thankful to all local and overseas scholars who have contributed to this volume, the series
editors, Franco Fabbri and Goffredo Plastino, and our research assistant and PhD graduate from
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Yiyi Yin, who has made the publication of Made in Hong
Kong possible. We also would like to express our sincere gratitude to all musicians, artists, produ-
cers, and audiences who have supported and valued our Hong Kong popular music or Cantopop
in all these years.
Anthony Fung & Alice Chik
November 2019
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