IT ALL BEGAN in swinging Shanghai of the 1930s, a metropolitan musical melting pot of old Mandarin folk songs, music hall and cabaret, peopled with Russian and Italian music-makers and set against a dancing backdrop of golden Hollywood movies.
At the epicentre of this swirl were shi dai qu, 'songs of the times'. These Shanghainese pop tunes would keep their appeal for the next 40 years, evolving from their Shanghai roots to take in post-1949 Hong Kong and spread as far as Singapore and Malaya.
In the same way as the Great Depression in the United States spawned a great jazz tradition, Shanghai in the 1930s and 40s, with first the Sino-Japanese war and then the Pacific war, was a fertile time for music and the heyday of live radio performances. While conflicts raged and the public suffered, they could take temporary sanctuary in the upbeat fantasy confections that were shi dai qu.
Hong Kong musicologist, author and artist Wong Kee-chee, 54, grew up with Shanghainese pop songs belting out from the radio. He was told you could like shi dai qu, but you should never love it. It wasn't Mozart, but then it was never intended to be. Its roots were in insubstantial, syrupy numbers that made its audience feel good in times of strife and hardship.
In Wong's comprehensive book, The Age Of Shanghainese Pops: 1930-1970, which encompasses the movement's sometimes schizophrenic nature, he describes how it adopted Western styles, cabaret and movie musicals, Chinese opera, and later 60s tempos and even a-go-go, while still harking back to the nostalgic folk songs of its roots.
Wong has compiled collections of the best-loved songs and other Mandarin hits for EMI, and his enthusiasm for songs of the times has never ebbed. 'They were popular songs in the Western style or jazz songs at the beginning. The term shi dai qu was only coined, I think, later by the Hong Kong cable radio station Rediffusion,' he says.