Cantonese Chinese New Year Songs

[Terpsícore Deckelman]

Iapologise for not blogging for a while ? I was juggling school work with my extra-curricular commitments really precariously, and it was nigh on impossible for me to find time for an article before this. But I am back in action, and ready to bring more content to my readers! Woo! ?

This is a timeless piece in Chinese music. Most, if not all, Chinese speakers from my generation (haha, which is not very young actually) should know this song from Teresa Teng. The Japanese version, Toki no Nagare ni Mi wo Makase, is actually also sung by her. Although Ms. Teng has left us for many years, I continue to be amazed by how musically gifted she is. Click to listen to the Japanese and Chinese version.

I shall introduce my favourite Japanese 1990s song to round up my list for this post! Sung by Southern All Stars, Manatsu no Kajitsu was just flawless from the first time I heard it. The melody is so comfortable that it is something you can have around in all occasions, and it is accompanied by such awesome lyrics ?

That is great knowleged of songs from your sharing and i am looking for song foe my daughter actually pei wo gan re chu that i find your blog.

would like to know your opinion which one os better mandarin or japanese for this song.

where can i have the minus one for this song.

thanks and wait for your reply

jennie

Combining music, theatre, acrobatics and the martial arts, Cantonese opera has been a popular form of entertainment in China for over 400 years. Originating during the seventeenth-century Ming Dynasty, Cantonese opera has now become one of China's best-known cultural exports.

In the 1930s, the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC) acquired a collection of more than 200 discs featuring songs from well-known Cantonese operas. This web module introduces many of these rare recordings, and provides background information on the music, storylines and history of one of China's most vibrant theatrical forms.

Vancouver and Toronto, the two Canadian cities with the highest concentration of Chinese Canadians, are important centres for Cantonese opera, although amateur associations are also active in many other cities across the country, including Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Montreal.

The Chinese are one of Canada's largest cultural groups, and have been established in Canada for more than 150 years. Early immigrants came as labourers, initially working in mining communities along the Fraser River Valley, and later taking part in construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia. In just four short years, between 1881 and 1885, at least 17,000 Chinese workers, mostly men, immigrated to this country. By 1921, nearly 40,000 Chinese immigrants were living in communities across Canada.

Cantonese opera has long been an important cultural touchstone for Chinese Canadians. During the 1880s in Victoria, British Columbia, three theatres were built for Cantonese opera performances. Opera troupes toured regularly from China and Hong Kong, reaffirming and nourishing the cultural heritage of these communities. In the 1920s, many amateur societies were established in Canada to rehearse and study Chinese operatic traditions.

As populations grew and the workforce became more diverse, Cantonese opera also became an important way of raising funds for various social and political causes in both Canada and China. Today, these musical societies continue to provide opportunities for teaching and supporting Cantonese opera, encouraging higher artistic standards and introducing this form of theatre to all of Canadian society.

The Chinese American community is the largest ethnic group of Asian Americans in the United States. At the time of the 2010 census, the population stood at around 3.8 million. The largest Chinese American communities live in California and New York.

The Chinese were among the earliest of the Asian peoples to arrive in America; the first record of Chinese migrants in the United States dates back to 1785. However, the first major wave of Chinese immigration occurred in the mid-nineteenth century, following the discovery of gold in California in 1849. During the mid-1800s, Chinese immigrants were encouraged to come to the United States to work in service professions that supported the boom towns of the Gold Rush, and to help build railroads in the West.

Between the mid nineteenth and mid twentieth centuries, most of the Chinese immigrants were young men from rural backgrounds who only spoke local dialects. The majority came from the southern Guangdong region. They brought with them their indigenous musical styles. These included Cantonese opera and Taishan muyu song, a sub-genre of an important South Chinese narrative song type from the Taishan region where many of the first immigrants originated, which often included lyrics about the early Chinese migrant experience. These forms went on to dominate the Chinese American music scene for more than a century.

The Library of Congress collection includes a recording of a traditional Chinese song, entitled \"Drum Song of Fengyang.\" In this song, which was recorded in San Francisco, California, by Rulan Chao Pian and Margaret Speaks in August, 1943, a wife complains that her husband is lazy, while the husband complains that his wife has big feet. The song is well known in China and many versions exist of comical complaints about family life. But it seems that this is comedy in the face of adversity, as the song is thought to have originated in Guandong province as a song sung by refugees of floods in the north of China who found themselves singing on the street of cities in Guangdong province to get money to survive. This explains why the song is sung in Mandarin, while the language of Guandong is Cantonese.

In 1852, a year after San Francisco experienced its first full-length Italian opera performance (of Bellini's La Sonnambula) Hong Took Tong Chinese Dramatic Company from Guangdong Province, a 130-member Cantonese opera troupe, staged the first Chinese opera in the United States. The following year the same troupe performed in New York City.

Chinese opera, like lion dances, quickly became emblematic of Chinese American life and a powerful source of community. Not only did visiting troupes from China make regular visits to the United States, but theaters devoted to the art form also sprang up around the country. In the late 1870s and 1880s; the so-called \"golden era\" of Chinese theater in America -- San Francisco boasted no less than four Cantonese opera venues.

During the mid-to-late nineteenth century, Chinese Americans became the victims of racism. The anti-Chinese sentiment resulted in the passing by Congress in 1882 of The Chinese Exclusion Act. Signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur, the Act created a ten-year moratorium on most Chinese immigration. Although the law as written allowed for men to send for wives and children from China, the effect was to severely restrict even this type of immigration.

Widespread prejudice and cultural differences led to the ghettoization of Chinese communities within the United States. Cantonese opera aficionados continued to practice their art form isolated in \"Chinatowns\" with little contact with mainstream American life.

The collapse of the nationalist regime on the Chinese mainland after World War Two and the establishment of the People's Republic of China by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 prevented many Chinese people, including some five thousand well-educated, upwardly mobile Chinese citizens, from returning to their homeland. Stranded in the United States, the intellectual Chinese population propelled the growth of Peking opera (Jingju) in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Peking opera, which is considered to be the national opera of China and Taiwan, is sung in Mandarin and generally features fewer instruments than its Cantonese counterpart. The form was first brought to the United States by Mei Lan-fang, a celebrated Chinese opera diva, during her sensational tour in 1930, but it wasn't until 1951 that a group of Chinese students formed the first Peking opera club in New York.

Even with the reopening of Chinese immigration after 1943, professional performing groups declined after the mid-twentieth century and theaters devoted to Cantonese opera performances disappeared after the 1960s. However, amateur opera clubs continue the tradition to this day in the urban centers where there is a sizeable Chinese population such as San Francisco and New York.

The four commercial recordings below of songs in Cantonese made in the United States in 1902 and 1903, are thought to be examples of Cantonese Opera, although the titles and the names of the performers are not known. They were made for distribution among Cantonese-speaking Americans:

Western instruments (saxophone, electric keyboard, electric guitar, violin) have been incorporated into the performance of Cantonese opera both in China and the United States since the 1920s. These instruments are played alongside traditional Chinese instruments like the bangu (drum), erhu (low pitched two-string fiddle) yangqin (hammered dulcimer) and houguan (double-reed wind instrument).

Speaking English as well as Chinese, the educated Chinese population strove to break down the boundaries separating indigenous Chinese culture from the American mainstream. In addition to serving the Chinese community, the educated class of Chinese Americans gave Peking opera lectures, demonstrations and performances for non-Chinese American audiences in universities, museums and other public settings.

Peking opera performers also helped to popularize the older and highly influential Chinese operatic form of Kunqu in the United States. Kunqu opera dates back to the fourteenth century, features literary and archaic texts, mimetic dancing and the dizi (flute) as the main accompanying instrument.

During the twentieth century, Chinese culture began to make an impact on American music in the United States. For example, in 1922, the American composer Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881-1946) wrote The Willow Wind, a song cycle based on Chinese themes. And the American composer Samuel Barlow (1892-1982) wrote his Three Songs from the Chinese in 1924.

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