The Sinicized American R&B: from Faux-Pastiche, Authentic Representation, to Chinese Cultural Heritage Revival

Abstract

The development of Chinese popular music began with the 1920s Shanghai shidaiqu with folk-like pentatonic melody treated with Western Jazz and ballroom dance rhythm. Although the development of Chinese popular songs tends to become more Westernized, local preferences and efficacy of popular music as a tool in cultural articulation have led to a perpetual change of musical styles and identity. This article focuses on the impact of the American R&B musical style in the Chinese popular music industry from the early 1980s to 2000s: from a faux-pastiche Sinicized R&B in its initial adaptation to its departure from the stereotypical sentimental Mandopop ballad to becoming more identifiable with Black Music, that later led to a folk-revival in the wave of “China Wind” music. This article discusses the tensions in this phenomenon as a schism between musical homogeneity and heterogeneity in the adaptation of Black popular music culture, and resistance due to an underlying long tradition of Confucianism in the genealogy of Chinese music. It concludes with how a retro revival of Chinese traditional music elements, which echoed the early shidaiqu phenomenon, resulted in new artists at the vanguard of sustaining and rearticulating traditional musical heritage and identity. Thus, it poses a final question: whether a habitual cyclical return of national identity re-articulation persists at every adaptation of foreign musical trends.