MUSIC OF CHINA

Pop Music

Chinese popular music originally began with the shidaiqu genre founded by Li Jinhui in the mainland, with Western jazz influences from the likes of Buck Clayton. After the Communist Party establishment, the Baak Doi record company ended up leaving Shanghai in 1952. The 1970s saw the rise of cantopop in Hong Kong, and later mandopop in Taiwan. The mainland remained on the sideline for decades with minimal degree of participation. Only in recent years did the youth in mainland resume as a consumer for the Taiwan mandopop market. Still, China is not yet considered a major production hub despite having the largest population. When Hong Kong's icon Anita Mui performed the song "Bad Girl" during the 1990s in China, she was banned from returning to the concert for showing a rebellious attitude. By Western standards, the performance was no more rebellious than, for example, Madonna since Mui based a lot of her dance moves on Madonna's style. Many mainland artists often try to start their commercial success in Hong Kong or Taiwan first, and then re-import into the mainland as part of the gangtai culture.

Since the end of the 20th century, pop music in mainland China started to become more popular. Especially at the start of the 21st century, Mainland Chinese artists have started producing a wide range of mandarin pop songs along with many new albums.

Many mainland Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong artists performed for the promotion of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

C-Pop

C-pop is an abbreviation for "Chinese popular music". Most of today's C-pop artists originate from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Others come from countries where the Chinese language is used by a large number of the population, such as Singapore and Malaysia. C-pop is somtimes 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 branched off as a separate genre during the early 1990s. Chinese hip hop has started to come to its own in the 2000s. Chinese R&B was pioneered by Alex To in the 90s, but has since been used as the major composition style for artists such as Jay Chou, David Tao, Khalil Fong and Lee-Hom Wang.

C-Pop originated out of shidaiqu. There are two subgenres within C-pop: cantopop and mandopop. The gap between cantopop and mandopop has been narrowing in the new millennium. Taiwanese pop is similar in music style but is counted as a separate genre due to its roots in Japanese enka.

Rock and heavy metal

The widely-acknowledged forefather of Chinese rock is Cui Jian. In the late 1980s he played the first Chinese rock song called: "Nothing To My Name" ("Yi wu suo you"). It was the first time an electric guitar was used in China.[citation needed] He became the most famous performer of the time, and by 1988 he performed at a concert broadcasted worldwide in conjunction with the Seoul Summer Olympic Games. His socially critical lyrics earned him the anger of the government and many of his concerts were banned or cancelled. After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he played with a red blindfold around his head as an action against the government.

Chinese Rock

Chinese Rock (中国摇滚, pinyin: Zhōngguó yáogǔn; also 中国摇滚音乐, Zhōngguó yáogǔn yīnyuè, lit. "Chinese shaking and rolling music" or "Chinese rock and roll music") is a genre of music and lifestyle. Its instrumentation is typically modern and may be with or without traditional Chinese musical instruments.

Punk rock

Punk rock became famous in China around 1994–1996 with the first Chinese artist of the post punk genre being He Yong and his debut record Garbage Dump. The first real wave of band formations erupted in 1995 concentrating in Beijing, and the second generation of punk bands followed around 1997.

MUSIC OF JAPAN

Rock music

Group Sounds (G.S.) is a genre of Japanese rock music that was popular in the mid to late 1960s. The Tigers was the most popular G.S. band in the era. Later, some of the members of The Tigers, The Tempters and The Spiders formed the first Japanese supergroup Pyg. Homegrown Japanese country rock had developed by the late 1960s. Artists like Happy End are considered to have virtually developed the genre. During the 1970s, it grew more popular. The Okinawan band Champloose, along with Carol, RC Succession and Shinji Harada were especially famous and helped define the genre's sound.

Punk rock / alternative

Early examples of punk rock / no wave in Japan include The SS, The Star Club, The Stalin, INU, Gaseneta, Lizard (who were produced by the Stranglers) and Friction (whose guitarist Reck had previously played with Teenage Jesus and the Jerks before returning to Tokyo) and The Blue Hearts. The early punk scene was immortalised on film by Sogo Ishii, who directed the 1982 film Burst City featuring a cast of punk bands/musicians and also filmed videos for The Stalin.

Heavy metal

Japan is known for being a successful area for metal bands touring around the world and as a result, many live albums are recorded in Japan. Notable examples are Judas Priest's Unleashed in the East and Deep Purple's Made in Japan.

Hip-Hop

Hip-hop is a newer form of music on the Japanese music scene. Many felt it was a trend that would immediately pass. However, the genre has lasted for many years and is still thriving. In fact, rappers in Japan did not achieve the success of hip-hop artists in other countries until the late 1980s. This was mainly due to the music world's belief that "Japanese sentences were not capable of forming the rhyming effect that was contained in American rappers' songs."

Noise music

Another recognized music form, from Japan is the Noise Music, called in this country as Japanoise, the most successful band in this genre is Masami Akita (a.k.a Merzbow), considered the greatest artist of this genre and with a discography of more than 200 studio albums under his alias.

Game music

When the first electronic games were sold, they only had rudimentary sound chips with which to produce music. As the technology advanced. the quality of sound and music these game machines could produce increased dramatically. The first game to take credit for its music was Xevious, also noteworthy for its deeply (at that time) constructed stories. Though many games have had beautiful music to accompany their gameplay, one of the most important games in the history of the video game music is Dragon Quest.

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