andrew f. jones <HOORZ0XVLF Tseng 2001.4.10 12:22 DST:103 6192 Jones / YELLOW MUSIC / sheet 1 of 224 Tseng 2001.4.10 12:22 DST:103 6192 Jones / YELLOW MUSIC / sheet 2 of 224 This pageintentionallyleft blank . Yellow Music 6192 Jones / YELLOW MUSIC / sheet 3 of 224 Duke University Press Durham and London Tseng 2001.4.10 12:22 DST:103 © All rights reserved 6192 Jones / YELLOW MUSIC / sheet 4 of 224 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Designed by C. H. Westmoreland Typeset in Palatino with Quadraat display by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Tseng 2001.4.10 12:22 DST:103 vii Listening to the Chinese Jazz Age 6192 Jones / YELLOW MUSIC / sheet 5 of 224 The Orchestration of Chinese Musical Life The Gramophone in China The Yellow Music of Li Jinhui Mass Music and the Politics of Phonographic Realism Tseng 2001.4.10 12:22 DST:103 Tseng 2001.4.10 12:22 DST:103 6192 Jones / YELLOW MUSIC / sheet 6 of 224 This pageintentionallyleft blank This book is the product of the collective efforts of colleagues and friends both near and far-flung, and could not have been written without their help. Lydia H. Liu, my doctoral adviser and colleague at the University of 6192 Jones / YELLOW MUSIC / sheet 7 of 224 California, was instrumental to the formation of this project, which began its life as a doctoral thesis in Berkeley’s Department of East Asian Lan- guages and Cultures.Theodore Huters and David Lloyd also played essen- tial roles in seeing the dissertation through to the end, both as members of the dissertation committee, and as sympathetic interlocutors and careful and critical readers of my written work. Leo Ou-fan Lee, whom I like to think of as an unofficial member of the committee, steered me toward the study of the cultural history of the Republican era during my sojourn as exchange scholar at Harvard University in the spring of . The bulk of the research for this project was undertaken in and with the financial assistance of Mellon Fellowships in the Humani- ties, and it was facilitated by research institutions, colleagues, and friends in three Chinese cities. I am especially grateful to Liang Maochun, Wang Yun, and the staff of the Music Research Library of the Institute of Culture and Arts in Beijing for the pleasant and productive days I spent working in their archives. I am obliged to Zhu Tianwei and Yang Yuanying of the Beijing Film Archive and Professor Chen Shan of the Beijing Film Insti- tute for providing valuable advice and access to archival materials and movies.Thanks also are due to Guo Yiqing, who arranged for the delivery of several packages of research material from Beijing after I had already left. I benefited enormously from the professionalism and expertise of the staff at the Shanghai Municipal Library, both in Xujiahui in and in the library’s palatial new surroundings on Huaihai Road on a subsequent research trip in December . Wang Zhigang and his students at the Shanghai Institute of Drama hosted a researcher from afar with generosity and style. In Hong Kong, I am deeply indebted to Paul Fonoroff for allowing me to make use of his unique collection of prewar film journals and popular cul- tural ephemera. Without his help, my efforts to trace the cultural history Tseng 2001.4.10 12:22 DST:103 viii Acknowledgments of this period would have been greatly impoverished. I also have bene- fited immensely from Wong Kee-chee’s expertise and guidance. For those interested in the history of Chinese popular culture, his heroic efforts to preserve the legacy of Chinese popular music on compact disc will be much appreciated for years to come. It was also Mr. Wong who kindly arranged for me to interview the legendary and extraordinarily lively Pathé recording artist, Yao Li. Mr. Law Kar, film critic, historian of Chi- nese cinema, and one of the principal organizers of the Hong Kong Inter- 6192 Jones / YELLOW MUSIC / sheet 8 of 224 national Film Festival, has been unstintingly generous with his time, his vast fund of knowledge, and his collection of books, magazines, and video- tapes. A supplementary research trip undertaken in December to col- lect documents and photographs at the Shanghai Municipal Library was funded by a Fritz Faculty Research Grant from the China Studies Program at the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies. In the United States, I am grateful to the staffs of East Asian collec- tions at Berkeley, the University of Washington, Stanford University, and Harvard’s Yenching Library. On a number of occasions Wen-Hsin Yeh has given me the opportunity to present my work-in-progress to the sympa- thetic and Shanghai-savvy audiences at the Center for Chinese Studies at Berkeley. I also am grateful for the organizers and audiences of related conference presentations at the Department of History at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Cen- ter at the University of California, Santa Barbara. My students at Berkeley and the University of Washington also have read and commented on my work in the context of undergraduate lecture courses and graduate semi- nars. Their energy and intellectual curiosity have sustained my scholarly efforts over the course of the past few years. The following friends and colleagues at Berkeley, the University of Washington, and elsewhere also have expedited the project’s completion in a number of ways over the years, either by lending me materials and ref- erences, intellectual stimulation, or an ear: Tani Barlow, Eileen Chow, Dai Jinhua, Prasenjit Duara, Poshek Fu, Gail Hershhatter, Adam Kern, David Knechtges, Gregory Lee, Li Tuo, Kathryn Lowry, Nikhil P. Singh, John Treat, Frederic Wakeman, Steve West, and Yingjin Zhang. A revised version of chapter , ‘‘The Gramophone in China,’’ appears in Lydia H. Liu, ed., Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, ). An earlier for- Tseng 2001.4.10 12:22 DST:103 Acknowledgments ix mulation of aspects of the analysis presented in chapters and appears as ‘‘The Sing-Song Girl and the Nation: Music and Media Culture in Repub- lican China,’’ in Kai-wing Chow, Kevin Doak, and Po-shek Fu, eds., Con- structing Nationhood in Modern East Asia (Ann Arbor: University of Michi- gan Press, ). I deeply appreciate Ken Wissoker’s editorial insight and support of this project. He and his staff at Duke University Press have made the process of bringing this book to its readers a real pleasure. 6192 Jones / YELLOW MUSIC / sheet 9 of 224 Finally, numerous close friends and relatives were instrumental to the successful completion of this project and for ensuring that the process was a happy one. Cherry Chan and her family gave me a home in Hong Kong during the year in which I did the bulk of the research for the project, for which I will always be grateful. He Yong and David Smith hosted me on numerous occasions in their Beijing hutongs, and Lucan Way shared his dacha in Sonoma. Nicole Huang and Eric Allina have been constant sources of advice and encouragement. And, as ever, I am deeply grateful for the love and support of my parents, to whom this book is dedicated. Tseng 2001.4.10 12:22 DST:103 Tseng 2001.4.10 12:22 DST:103 6192 Jones / YELLOW MUSIC / sheet 10 of 224 This pageintentionallyleft blank Listening to the Chinese Jazz Age 6192 Jones / YELLOW MUSIC / sheet 11 of 224 In a young trumpet player named Buck Clayton arrived in Shanghai with his jazz orchestra for an extended engagement at the elegant Cani- drome Ballroom. For Clayton—who would go on to jazz fame as a mem- ber of the Count Basie Orchestra—the sojourn in Shanghai represented the ‘‘happiest two years’’ of his life, during which he felt he ‘‘finally’’ re- ceived the sort of respect and recognition that had been denied him in his 1 native country because of his color. Clayton’s journey to Shanghai had been precipitated by brisk trans-Pacific traffic in recorded music. Gramo- phone records of the music of Duke Ellington and other artists had already reached Chinese shores, spurring on a rage for black bands in the city’s 2 nightclubs and dance halls. Thus, Clayton’s orchestra, which hailed from Los Angeles, was billed as the ‘‘Harlem Gentlemen,’’ despite the fact that none of the band members had ever ventured east of Kansas City. The city in which Clayton found himself (according to an American composer and arranger named Claude Lapham who wrote about his jour- neys in Asia for the jazz trade journal Metronome) was a ‘‘seventh heaven for the jazz musician,’’ a ‘‘Paris of the East’’ that far outstripped the real 3 Paris in terms of ‘‘the appreciation of jazz.’’ Indeed, Shanghai’s repu- tation as the ‘‘jazz mecca’’ of Asia had already made it the destination of choice for aspiring Japanese jazz musicians, who worked the cabarets of the Hongkew district while studying the music firsthand with globe- 4 trotting American musicians like pianist Teddy Weatherford. And it was Weatherford, in his capacity as a booking agent for the owners of the Cani- drome, who was responsible for arranging Clayton’s journey in the first place. In his first few days in Shanghai, Clayton was struck by both the sheer density of the crowds that funneled through the streets of Shanghai’s International Settlement and their remarkable diversity.