THEY ARE THE songs many people carry in their hearts, but few know who wrote them. Most music lovers can remember the tunes from Shanghai in the 1930s and 40s and are familiar with the era's singers, such as film stars Bai Guan, Yao Li, Zhou Xuan and Li Xianglan, but the heyday's composers, such as Svingalin Chen Gexin, are long forgotten.
Over the years, Svingalin Chen Gexin's son, Chen Gang, 67, has compiled two books on the works of his father and his contemporaries, but he is equally passionate about the preservation of forgotten modern Chinese classics.
For years, Chen sought the popular songs of those two golden decades. Immortal tunes of the period such as Shanghai Nights, Rose, Rose I Love You, Ye Lai Xiang and Shangri-La are regarded as the first string of flamboyant modern Chinese music, and many are classics.
The melodies emerged in the turbulent times when Shanghai was the cradle of Chinese modern music. With the Japanese invasion in 1937, the International Settlement and the setting up of French and British concession districts, the city witnessed an influx of Western urban entertainment such as cinemas, dance halls and nightclubs which sprouted along Xiafei Lu (now Huaihai Lu). Chen says: 'This 'melting-pot' experience meant that, for the first time, Chinese folk songs began to be adapted and blended with urban elements such as Western ballroom dance.'
Shanghai's flourishing film and recording industries also generated hits. The popularity of song-and-dance movies (gewupian) in the 'Hollywood of the East' prompted a pool of new music, and Svingalin Chen Gexin was a prolific writer of film scores between 1931 and 1949.
Chen Gang's two books - Rose, Rose I Love You, dedicated to the works of his father, and another encyclopaedic title, Shanghai Lao Ge Min Dian, which highlights 313 Shanghai classics and the composers' biographies - are published by Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House. Both books come with original music scores, news articles, memorabilia and complimentary CDs.
Chen, who is also a composer and enjoyed global success in 1958 with Butterfly Lovers Concerto, says many music lovers were prevented from seeing his books by the political climate at the time. Shanghai was taken over by the Communists in May 1949 and all Western-influenced popular songs were banned during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) on the premise they were 'decadent' or even 'pornographic'.