Hong Kong music is not synonymous with "nostalgia"

Hunan Satellite TV's "Sound and Endless Hong Kong Music Season" is on fire with a strong thought. Remember Rowan's song in 1978's "Strongman": "Don't remember the gains and losses in this, don't remember the hatred and love entanglement, only remember that you were once acquainted!" This sentence is enough to explain all the reasons.

Origin, fate, depends on when the voice of Cantonese sounds. Hong Kong music, with the glory of the 1980s and 1990s, is always nostalgic.

Our Cantonese songs and indelible lives

July 1 this year marks the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to the motherland. The popularity of Cantonese songs in the mainland has far exceeded 25 years. The popularity of Hong Kong music spanned dialect areas, and the "waves, waves" of "Shanghai Beach" attracted countless mainlanders who were new to Cantonese songs to imitate, even if they still sang with different tones at that time. Because Hong Kong opera pioneered in the mainland, Cantonese songs have become a symbol of the times.

Along with "Shanghai Beach", tan Yonglin's "Love in late autumn", Zhang Guorong's "Monica", Xu Xiaofeng's "Down the Current", Jacky Cheung's "Love" and so on.

Who didn't have a few Cantonese song tapes during that period?

Why Hong Kong music, and why Cantonese songs?

When analyzing the phenomenon of Hong Kong music in the heyday of Yale University, Professor Xiao Fengxia pointed out three reasons: one is the concern of ordinary citizens (represented by Xu Guanjie's works), the second is the yearning and resonance of outstanding figures in China's heroic era (represented by Guan Zhengjie's works), and the third is the expression of personal freedom and the gentle feeling of love (represented by Lin Zixiang's works). These reasons are not only recognized by Hong Kong people, but also supported by mainland compatriots and Chinese people around the world.

At the beginning of reform and opening up, people's thinking about cultural identity was confused and questioned. Hence the birth of obscure poetry. For example, Gu Cheng's "The night gave me a pair of black eyes / I used it to find the light", Haizi's "The sky has nothing, why give me comfort?" Kitajima's "You didn't come back as scheduled, and that's the meaning of parting," the index finger's "Believe in the future, love life," Munch's "Freedom is nothing more than the distance between the hunter and the prey," and so on, shortly but forcefully shouted out a kind of "self-awareness."

The popularity of Cantonese songs has the same characteristics: such as Beyond's singing in "The Land" "On those open roads / How many ideals have been broken", Jacky Cheung softly moaning in "Distant Her" "Is there a deviation in the voice of the heart / It is to let this love test the true and false" and so on.

Some songs are not as passionate and high-pitched as poems, and some poems are not as direct to the heart as songs, but the identity of the same era has also set off a resonant trend of people.

Our Cantonese song "Who Resonates"? There may be few people at the moment, but the attitude of speaking in the spoken language of modern people, writing the voices and feelings of modern people, and being frank and straightforward, undisguised and uncompromising, makes Cantonese songs an indelible past and life for us.

The memory of Hong Kong Le also has new expectations

No matter how good it is, it can only be the past; no matter how good it is, it can only be the helplessness of "who resonates". But is that the case?

With the take-off of the mainland economy and the return of Hong Kong to the embrace of the motherland, more diverse cultures are colliding with each other, not only sparking sparks, but also seeking common ground while reserving differences. It may no longer be a personalized solo singing of Hong Kong people here, but a chorus of the times. Whether it is a solo or chorus, the unique pronunciation and culture of Cantonese have not deviated from people's taste for the aesthetic of Hong Kong music.

Some people say that the decline of Cantonese songs is inevitable, maybe it will not disappear completely, but it will also exist in more advanced cultural venues like Cantonese opera. I disagree. Perhaps the beginning of Hong Kong music was a fast-moving consumer culture, doing its best to express its wishes and attitudes, and also adapting a large number of foreign famous songs to seek market favor, but this is by no means a pessimistic reason for the "decline" of Hong Kong music or only for "nostalgia". Hong Kong Music also created a large number of classic works in the 70s and 90s of the last century, and it has not faded to this day, how can it be said to be "declining"?

In the 25 years since Hong Kong's return to the motherland, Hong Kong music still sings about the life of this era, why can it only be "nostalgic"?

In "Sound And Endless Hong Kong Music Season", Yan Mingxi's singing of "The Dragon" is a new voice of Cantonese songs. In a wave of nostalgia, how many people have heard of Newport music like "The Dragon"? We may no longer be as eager to hear poetry and songs as we were in ordinary times, but Newport music still sings about our lives, love and ideals.

Born in 1891, the work of Li Jinhui, the "father of modern Chinese song and dance", has been criticized as "the sound of elegance", but he believes that China's new music should be in line with the "new literary movement" of the time. He echoed Chen Duxiu's proposal for literary revolution before the May Fourth Movement, arguing that the new direction of music should oppose feudalism and re-create content that fits the times.

It is undeniable that the rise of Hong Kong Music in the tide of China's reform and opening up is also a "new literary movement" that cooperates with the times, and now it is maturing and entering a new era of creation. Maybe Hong Kong Music is no longer a unique existence, nor is it the mainstream of our daily life, but it will surely accompany us forward, and "down the current" will have its updated voice.

Hong Kong music can be your memory or a new expectation. Hong Kong music can always express unspeakable emotions, just like Zhang Ailing said, "Meet the people you want to meet among tens of millions of people, in the endless wilderness of time, there is no step earlier, there is no step later, just catch up" That way, we will sing because of nostalgia, and we will also listen to our "rumored love" in Hong Kong music because of new expectations.

Source | Crystal Newspaper APP

Reporter: Wu Ling

Editor: Ke Liu