Popular Song Afterlives
Oral Transmission and Mundane Creativity in Street Performances of Chinese Pop Classics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jwpm.34195Keywords:
Chinese pop, street music, oral transmission, WuhanAbstract
Amateur live performances on the city streets of Wuhan give afterlives to songs in the Chinese pop canon; they are sites for this repertory to be adapted and assimilated into musical worlds beyond those of the artists and industries responsible for its original production and dissemination. Singers here learn the songs by following commercial recordings, a process related to oral transmission as it enables and constrains creativity in ways that are reflective of the social and technological circumstances of performers' lives. Recordings feed into the spread of change among Wuhan's amateur singers, with certain limitations and new possibilities also resulting from the technologies and skills available on the streets. Examining popular song afterlives exposes mundane layers of creativity, and comments more broadly on prosaic drivers of new meaning in current popular music practices.
References
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Berliner, Paul. 1994. Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bohlman, Philip. 1988. The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Booth, Gregory, and Terry Lee Kuhn. 1990. “Economic and Transmission Factors as Essential Elements in the Definition of Folk, Art, and Pop Music”. The Musical Quarterly 74/3: 411–38. https://doi.org/10.1093/mq/74.3.411
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—1981. “The ‘Discovery’ of Popular Culture”. In People’s History and Socialist Theory, edited by Raphael Samuel, 216–26. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Chang, Vanessa. 2009. “Records that Play: The Present Past in Sampling Practice”. Popular Music 28/2: 143–59. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261143009001755
Clarke, Eric F., and Mark Doffman. 2017. “Introduction and Overview”. In Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music, edited by Eric F. Clarke and Mark Doffman, 1–18. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199355914.001.0001
Fung, Anthony Y. H. 2008. “Western Style, Chinese Pop: Jay Chou’s Rap and Hip-Hop in China”. Asian Music 39/1: 69–80. https://doi.org/10.1353/amu.2007.0047
—2013. “Deliberating Fandom and the New Wave of Chinese Pop: A Case Study of Chris Li”. Popular Music 32/1: 79–89. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261143012000566
Goehr, Lydia. 1992. Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Goli, Shabnam. 2018. “Dancing to the ‘Hotline Bling’ in Old Bazaars of Tehran: Persian Hip-Hop, Glocalization, and Postmodern Theory”. Musicology Research 4: 27–56.
Hamilton, Andy. 2000. “The Art of Improvisation and the Aesthetics of Imperfection”. British Journal of Aesthetics 40/1: 168–85. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/40.1.168
Horlor, Samuel. 2019a. “Permeable Frames: Intersections of the Performance, the Everyday, and the Ethical in Chinese Street Singing”. Ethnomusicology Forum 28/1. https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2019.1590725
—2019b. “Neutralizing Temporary Inequities in Moral Status: Chinese Street Singers and the Gift Economy”. Asian Music 50/2.
—forthcoming. “Chinese Street Pop and Performing with the Urban Environment”. Draft research article (under review).
Horn, David. 2000. “Some Thoughts on the Work in Popular Music”. In The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?, edited by Michael Talbot, 14–34. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. https://doi.org/10.5949/liverpool/9780853238256.003.0002
Huang, Yu. 2014. “From ‘Talent Show’ to ‘Circusee’: Chinese Youth Resistant Acts and Strategies in the Super Girl Voice Phenomenon”. Critical Arts 28/1: 140–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2014.883700
Jeffreys, Elaine, and Sophie Wang. 2012. “Migrant Beggars and Buskers: China’s Have-Less Celebrities”. Critical Asian Studies 44/4: 571–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2012.738542
Jones, Andrew. 1991. Like a Knife: Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261143000006929
Keegan-Phipps, Simon. 2013. “An Aural Tradition with a Pause Button? The Role of Recording Technology in a North East English Folk Session”. Ethnomusicology 57/1: 34–56. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.57.1.0034
Lacasse, Serge. 2000. “Intertextuality and Hypertextuality in Recorded Popular Music”. In The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?, edited by Michael Talbot, 35–58. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. https://doi.org/10.5949/liverpool/9780853238256.003.0003
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Liu, Chen. 2014. “Noise in Guangzhou: The Cultural Politics of Underground Popular Music in Contemporary Guangzhou”. Area 46/3: 228–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12102
Lu Zhenglan. 2013. Gequ yu xingbie: Zhongguo dangdai liuxing yinyue yanjiu [Song and Gender: A Study of Popular Music in China Today]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. https://doi.org/10.1080/0090599032000086568
Lum, Casey Man Kong. 1996. In Search of a Voice: Karaoke and the Construction of Identity in Chinese America. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Maalsen, Sophia. 2019. The Social Life of Sound. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.
Maloy, Liam Alan. 2010. “‘Stayin’ Alive in Da Club’: The Illegality and Hyperreality of Mashups”. IASPM@Journal 1/2: 1–20. https://doi.org/10.5429/2079-3871(2010)v1i2.8en
Middleton, Richard. 2000. “Work-in(g)-Practice: Configurations of the Popular Music Intertext”. In The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?, edited by Michael Talbot, 59–87. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. https://doi.org/10.5949/liverpool/9780853238256.003.0004
Moore, Allan. 2012. Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song. Farnham: Ashgate. https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.19.4.6
Morey, Justin, and Phillip McIntyre. 2014. “The Creative Studio Practice of Contemporary Dance Music Sampling Composers”. Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture 6/1: 41–60. https://doi.org/10.12801/1947-5403.2014.06.01.03
Ogawa, Hiroshi. 2001. “The Effects of Karaoke on Music in Japan”. In Karaoke around the World: Global Technology, Local Singing, edited by T?ru Mitsui and Sh?hei Hosokawa, 45–54. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261143002232250
Plasketes, George. 2005. “Re?flections on the Cover Age: A Collage of Continuous Coverage in Popular Music”. Popular Music and Society 28/2: 137–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007760500045204
Schimmelpenninck, Antoinet. 1997. Chinese Folk Songs and Folk Singers: Shan’ge Traditions in Southern Jiangsu. Leiden: CHIME. https://doi.org/10.2307/1178930
Small, Christopher. 1998. Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
Solis, Gabriel. 2010. “I Did It My Way: Rock and the Logic of Covers”. Popular Music and Society 33/3: 297–318.
Solomon, Thomas. 2005. “‘Living Underground is Tough’: Authenticity and Locality in the Hip-Hop Community in Istanbul, Turkey”. Popular Music 24/1: 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261143004000273
Stanyek, Jason, and Benjamin Piekut. 2010. “Deadness: Technologies of the Intermundane”. TDR: The Drama Review 54/1: 14–38. https://doi.org/10.1162/dram.2010.54.1.14
Street, John, and Tom Phillips. 2017. “What Do Musicians Talk about When They Talk about Copyright?” Popular Music and Society 40/4: 422–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2015.1126099
Tagg, Philip. 2000. “‘The Work’: An Evaluative Charge”. In The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?, edited by Michael Talbot, 153–67. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. https://doi.org/10.5949/liverpool/9780853238256.003.0008
Tjora, Aksel. 2009. “The Groove in the Box: A Technologically Mediated Inspiration in Electronic Dance Music”. Popular Music 28/2: 161–77. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261143009001767
Zheng, Su. 2010. Claiming Diaspora: Music Transnationalism, and Cultural Politics in Asian/Chinese America. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2011.01387_29.x
Zheng, Tiantian. 2013. “From Courtesans to Modern Hostesses: Music and Construction of Gender in the Entertainment Industry in China”. In Gender in Chinese Music, edited by Rachel Harris, Rowan Pease and Shzr Ee Tan, 61–81. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. https://doi.org/10.1086/679236
Published
2019-06-18
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Horlor, S. (2019). Popular Song Afterlives: Oral Transmission and Mundane Creativity in Street Performances of Chinese Pop Classics. Journal of World Popular Music, 6(1), 10-31. https://doi.org/10.1558/jwpm.34195
