Cantonese Popular Music Analysis

Introduction Cantonese popular music (Cantopop) was once the proud of Hong Kong because of its significant popularity in local area, as well as in the regional neighbors such as Taiwan, Singapore and China. However, we have to admit that the Cantopop is now struggling in the dawn and being replaced by Mandarin popular music. The impacts of globalization towards the Cantopop will be discussed in this paper. Also, this paper will be argued that the loss of hybridity and the rising status of Chinese music industry in the worldwide stage will be the fatal causes of the downturn of Cantopop , instead of bad economy and the development of technology.

An analysis in globalization There is no particular definition or sculpture of globalization

The "diversity" that mentioned by Chu, was not only local elements, but also with global music trend, which formed into a new hybrids style and sculpt the formation of Cantopop. For the local elements, Cantopop is well-known in using its own dialect, Cantonese to compose music. As one of the most influential Chinese language, Cantonese was used for Chinese in the regional areas of China and throughout the South-East Asian courtiers, and even the western countries like Canada, England, the United States and elsewhere. Globalization transmitted the sufficient demand from worldwide to local industry, and hence, singing in Cantonese becomes one of the features of Cantopop. Nevertheless, the lyrics in Cantopop could be mainly divided into two main groups: literature form and colloquial style. These two identical types of lyric survived simultaneously in the blooming market of Cantopop. Cantonese and lyrics had helped to diversify the composition of Cantopop. Sam Hui, who is considered to be the most important person to promote Cantopop, started his career in performing popular English songs. Later, he changed to sing Cantonese songs with street and contemporary lyrics. The theme songs of The Private Eyes which sang by Sam is a song in reflecting the difficult livings for the working class in Hong Kong at that time. This song also marked the being of

A mixture of green tea(Janpan) and latte(America) can be treated as hybridity. A South-American women wears Changsam is either an example of hybridization. With the process of globalization, more and more American and British culture had been transmitted into Hong Kong. The first reason was that the Colonial Hong Kong had stayed a lot of British officers and American businessmen. They brought along their particular cultural practices to Hong Kong. Moreover, a lot of overseas-study students had been influenced by the innovative practices on the foreign countries. Most For example, George Lam, a well-known Cantopop singer in 1980s. He established several English albums and sang many famous cover version music. The foreign culture influence and is influenced by the local culture at the same time. Cantopop showed its high level of hybritidy in its music products. Since1970s, abundant of Cantopop music was composed of Western songs or even Japanese pop songs with local Cantonese lyrics. Coincidentally, the two identical types of Cantonese lyrics could also be merge perfectly in the foreign