Jazz and Popular Music in Shanghai's Dance Halls

Chapter 8 Jazz and Popular Music in Shanghai’s Dance Halls

This chapter continues with the Hollywood theme, looking at the important role that music from American films played in the formation of the repertoire performed by jazz orchestras in the dance halls of Shanghai, in and around the year 1934. Many of the fictional writings of the New-sensationists are set in these dance halls and ballrooms, and the music played in such venues often represents an important contextual element in their short stories. This is the repertoire performed by bands both domestic and foreign, playing to audi- ences comprised of members of Shanghai’s diverse expatriate society, as well as to Chinese customers engaged in what was effectively a Western phenom- enon transplanted to China. Some venues catered specifically to a Chinese clientele, others were aimed at foreigners only. In this chapter the main focus will be on the music played by foreign jazz orchestras that performed in both high- and medium-end venues. Dance music will be examined from much the same perspective as this study has approached the subject of American magazines and their importance to a certain sector of China’s publishing industry. Those who took inspiration from Hollywood and New York in the publication of magazines were also inspired by the nightlife of Shanghai, and as part of this, the music and dance performed in clubs and dance halls. The focus on these Western-style dance halls and their repertoire means that the study of ‘Chinese jazz’ takes rather a back seat in this study. This subject has been admi- rably researched by Andrew F. Jones. The results of this, as found in his book Yellow Music, are a major contribution to the field. There will be no in-depth analysis of the topic here, but, by way of a nod to it, a brief introduction to the work of composer and artist Yan Zhexi will appear in the conclusion to this book. This, and the brief introduction to Chinese nightclubs that follows imme- diately below, must suffice as this study’s meagre contribution to the field. As has been shown a number of times in this book, one nightclub in particu- lar, the Moon Palace Dance Hall, appears on a regular basis in the writings of the New-sensationists. It can be found, for instance, in Hei Ying’s ‘Bei Sichuan lu de ye’ 北四川路的夜 (Night on North Szechuan Road), and is mentioned prominently by Guo Jianying in his ‘Three Letters from a Modern Girl’ as intro- duced in Chapter 6.1 This club, together with a selection of other venues that

1 Hei Ying, ‘Bei Sichuan Lu de ye’ 北四川路的夜 (Night on North Szechuan Road) in The Shun Pao (11 July 1933), p. 17.

Figure 8.1 Yuegong tiaowuchang 月宮跳舞場 (The Moon Palace Dance Hall) (detail). Zhou Shixun 周世勳 (ed.), Zhu Shunlin 朱順麟 (photos.), Li Qiyu 李啟宇 (trans.), Shanghai shi da guan 上海市大觀 (‘The Greater Shanghai’) (Shanghai: Meishu tushu gongsi, 1933), n.p. were also inspirational to Chinese urban writers, can be seen presented on a dedicated page in the 1933 photographic illustrated gazetteer by Zhou Shixun – a goldmine of information concerning all visual aspects of the city at the time.2 Zhou Shixun, as well as being editor of this gazetteer and ‘entertainment editor’ of Linloon magazine, was heavily involved in the nightclub and entertainment industry, having established the Taohua gong 桃花宮 (Peach Blossom Palace) in 1928, some years before the publication of his gazetteer.3 For this reason, his views – as seen in the brief captions to the photographs in the gazetteer – may not be altogether impartial. However, as a visual record, his publication is both informative and wide-ranging. In this book the Moon Palace Dance Hall is said to have benefitted from its fine location in North Szechuan Road. In later reminiscences Hei Ying describes it as a second- or third-rate dance hall, neither large nor beautiful to look at, while remembering it as having employed a band of Filipino musicians.4 Together with the Da Hu tiaowuting 大滬跳舞廳 (Majestic Café) and the open-air Lafei huayuan wuchang 辣斐花園舞場 (Lafayette Garden Ballroom) (the latter mentioned in the story ‘Hai Alai’) they

2 Zhou Shixun (ed.), Zhu Shunlin (photos.), Li Qiyu (trans.), Shanghai shi da guan (‘The Greater Shanghai’), n.p. 3 Field, Shanghai’s Dancing World, pp. 69–70. 4 Hei Ying, ‘Wo jiandao de Mu Shiying’ (The Mu Shiying I Met), p. 143.