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Listening to New China: The Art-Tune Records Company, Cultural Propaganda, and Music Transplantation in Early Cold War Hong Kong (1950s-1960s)

Sabrina Y. Tao
p. 39-48

Abstract

This paper explores how the Art-Tune Records Company (Yisheng changpian gongsi 藝聲唱片公司), a Hong Kong-based private corporation and a shadow agent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s China Records Factory, fostered the circulation of Chinese music to Hong Kong and Overseas Chinese audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. Against the colonial government’s political censorship and US-imposed sanctions on the PRC, Art-Tune sought to remaster and reproduce the recordings of China Records Factory by deploying tactics of depoliticisation and underscoring Chineseness. It also delivered gramophone music with multiregional and multilingual versions to foster listeners’ emotional sympathy with cultural China and the new PRC regime. The successful migration of PRC music abroad contributed to dynamic intermedia practice with the reformulation of socialist Chinese music into Hong Kong martial arts movies. The paper discusses how socialist music was transformed from a propaganda medium to Chinese symbols that appealed to diasporic Chinese across Cold War geopolitical divides.

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Editor’s notes

Manuscript received on 29 July 2021. Accepted on 4 March 2022.

Excerpt

Full text document will be published online on December 2023.

Outline

Introduction
Cultural Cold War in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia
From Shanghai to Hong Kong: The Art-Tune Records Company
Depoliticisation/de-mainlandisation
Simplification of words and regional flavour
Audience reception and copyright issues
Transplantation of socialist music into Hong Kong martial arts movies
Conclusion

First lines

Introduction

In the early 1950s and 1960s, there was fierce ideological combat between the Socialist and the Capitalist Bloc. Referring itself as the leader of the “free world,” the United States of America (USA) built its worldwide propaganda network and exported cultural products aimed at glorifying capitalism and bourgeois cosmopolitanism. Meanwhile, socialist countries such as the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) also exported cultural products to fight back. How did cultural goods from the PRC go global, and how did the PRC government conduct cultural Cold War across different geopolitical spaces in East and Southeast Asia?

In the China field, the study of the Mao era (1949-1976) has long been confined within the national framework of the PRC. In recent years, scholars have begun to position PRC history in the global context of the Cold War and have noticed the transnational flow of cultural products within the Socialist Bloc (Volland 2017), or between socia...

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References

Bibliographical reference

Sabrina Y. Tao, Listening to New China: The Art-Tune Records Company, Cultural Propaganda, and Music Transplantation in Early Cold War Hong Kong (1950s-1960s)China Perspectives, 2022/04 | 2022, 39-48.

Electronic reference

Sabrina Y. Tao, Listening to New China: The Art-Tune Records Company, Cultural Propaganda, and Music Transplantation in Early Cold War Hong Kong (1950s-1960s)China Perspectives [Online], 2022/04 | 2022, Online since 01 December 2023, connection on 01 April 2023. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/14380; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.14380

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About the author

Sabrina Y. Tao

Sabrina Y. Tao is a PhD candidate in modern Chinese and Sinophone literature, film, music, and popular culture at the University of Oregon, 27 Friendly Hall Eugene, OR 97403-1248, United States (ytao@uoregon.edu).

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Copyright

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