Please select 8 of these questions to answer in a few sentences and generate two additional questions of your own.
“The Transformation of Local Identity in Hong Kong Cantopop”
- We listened to “Eiffel Tower Above the Clouds” last week. Why does Chu think it was a landmark recording? What does the song indicate about local Hong Kong identity?
- What are the 1967 riots the other is speaking of? What effects did they have on Hong Kong society?
- Try and locate one or several of the songs the author mentions online. Where are the limits of his lyrical analyses of these songs? How would discussing musical sound strengthen or weaken his argument?
- What does the author mean by “social parodies”?
- According to Chu, how did political events shape the development of Cantonese popular music in the 1980s?
- How are Hong Kong people’s feelings towards the coming reunification articulated through Cantopop during that period?
- What was the “June Fourth Wave”?
- Why did labels like Taiwan’s Rock Records eventually pull out of the Hong Kong Cantopop market?
- Listen to and watch the video for Andy Lau’s song “Chinese” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZUVGtSouCc). How is it similar to or different from the look and sound of the tongsu music we listened to earlier in the semester?
“Cantopop and Mandapop in Pre-Postcolonial Hong Kong”
- What are some of the definitions of “Cantopop” that Witzleben provides?
- How does he describe the sound of Cantopop on p. 245? What are the genre’s most salient qualities?
- What is “tian ci”? How is it consistent with traditional ideas of musical performance?
- How does Anita Mui both exemplify and transcend the “stereotype of the Hong Kong popular singer as packaged and manipulated by record companies and managers”?
- What is the relationship of Mui’s song “Bad Girl” to Sheena Easton’s “Strut”?
- How does Witzleben describe the interaction of Mandarin, Cantonese, and English in Cantopop?
