Cantopop: Depoliticization after handover?

Bobby

“Cantopop never dies!” said Cantopop fans. It has been a very long time since Hong Kong people showed their enthusiasm about the local music and the success could attribute to the 12-piece boy band, Mirror. The emergence of new Cantopop singers and idols has ignited the media attention and public discussion of Cantopop. And the dream of Cantopop is still pursuing that we can create another great success of Cantopop, as influential as in the 1980s. Nevertheless, today’s mainstream is not going to talk about the revival of local popular music and how Mirror captures girls’ hearts. Behind the spotlight of popular music, music with political messages seems not attractive to local people and is neglected under the public’s eyebrows. Hong Kong people are always being depicted as political apathy whilst could we observe a similar phenomenon in local music scenes? Let’s find out!

Before the handover of Hong Kong, political issues and messages embedded in popular music were not difficult to observe, especially for the period of negotiation of the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Tiananmen Incident. On that occasion, the future of Hong Kong stayed gloomy which possibly led to a crisis of confidence among the public. To respond to that, the ordeal and apprehensive situation faced by Hong Kong people were expressed by popular songs lyrics, especially for the band, such as Beyond, Tat Ming Pair, Tai Chi Band. My favorite one is sung by Tat Ming Pair: Tonight’s stars in shining (今夜星光燦爛), which primarily mentioned the worries of local people just before the handover. Moreover, a remarkable event: The concert for Democracy in China was held in 1989 to support the students involved in the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. Nearly all local singers were mobilized to participate in this event which indicated that political elements were implicated in the local music scenes.

Does Cantopop depoliticalize after the handover? Not entirely correct, whilst there was another interpretation of Cantopop in carrying political messages: a tool for the government to praise themselves and the China government. A lot of songs blossomed to celebrate the anniversary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region or served as propaganda that in concert with the political orientation of the government. We can see that no more complaints about the societies, on the contrary, compliments to the community, society, government become the main theme of songs with political affiliations. For instance, “Love the Basic Law” by Hacken Lee, Gigi Leung, and Kelly Chen. The Cantonese lyric on the left photo is talking about Hong Kong having a great reputation for a high degree of autonomy. Only a sprinkling of songs affiliated with political messages, LMF (Lazy Mother F***a) is my choice of all time and they insisted to release songs to depict and accuse the current political situation of Hong Kong within these 20 years, “moderately” inserted foul language into the lyrics.

As a Cantopop fan, it is glad and long-awaited to witness a rebound that heated attention is given by local people towards local music. Yet, apart from being immersed in the resurgence of local music, the overflew of commercial popular music also alarmed us that there is a presence of homogeneity of music genres and themes. I am not that radical and ask for copying the fairy tales in the old days; instead, it is way more important for us to constitute the local culture of popular songs that genuinely represent this place – Hong Kong. An impressive insight is highlighted that music is always influential and the music itself also carries history and reflects social phenomenon at the time.