Canto-pop conformists
Being a cheap mood manipulator, music has become a near-constant accompaniment to city experience. Though generally considered trivial, it is interesting to look at a community's musical-creation and consumption patterns, which reveal much about how a culture identifies and expresses itself.
Canto-pop, as an example of Hong Kong's creative output, screams social conformity, while the amazing success in the special administrative region of The Mozart Effect CD series and its clones points to the appeal of music with a purpose - the antithesis of 'art for art's sake'. (The CDs promise to boost development in unborn babies.)
Many worried western parents would be thrilled if their adolescents preferred canto-pop to harder pop genres - the kind that led to parental advisory stickers on CDs. Canto-pop's message, in the terms of this scheme, is generally life-affirming, or socially benign. In contrast, 59 per cent of rap CDs and 13 per cent of heavy metal sold worldwide, according to a record shop survey, carry the US-devised sticker that denotes antisocial or deleterious content.
Canto-pop may be the height of uncool, as a Hong Kong magazine music critic recently suggested. But, it does appear to attract a better-adjusted fan base. On the other hand, there is copious research to show that a strong link exists between a preference for 'problem music' and problem behaviour. Youths who prefer rap and heavy metal to music like canto-pop or its western, bubblegum equivalent are significantly more prone to suicide, delinquency, sexism, sexual permissiveness and tolerance of violent behaviour.
Demonstrating a link does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship, of course. It could be that youngsters who are already troubled are the ones who choose to listen to 'problem' music because it addresses their troubles. Maybe any youth who does not pass through a troubled period is unhealthily repressed. Or it could be that such music actually helps young people work through a perfectly normal phase of questioning using a mode of expression that is meaningful to them and to others of their generation. The term 'well adjusted', after all, implies conformity and acceptance. A preference for sugary music may be positive and life affirming, but it may also signal uncreative passivity.
Canto-pop culture probably also springs from Hong Kong's relative lack of youth orientation and forums. In the US, youth culture represents a more salient alternative to family-centred models of personal identity and values. Rebelliousness and adolescent angst are virtually institutionalised. So it could be said that breaking taboos is just another commercial tool. Within each musical culture's own terms, in other words, conformity is the rule.
Many US states are so worried about the effects of problem music that they are considering using the parental advisory stickers - until now intended as a guide only - to outlaw the sale of the CDs to minors and to stop young people attending certain live performances. Musically speaking, Hong Kong is a relative haven of banal contentment.
A recent study in Britain found that 67 per cent of the music people listened to in any given day was pop and only 3 per cent classical. There is no way of knowing if the statistics hold true for Hong Kong. Except perhaps in the case of foetuses: if shelf space in record shops is anything to go by, they are on a steady diet of sonatas and fugues. Hong Kong parents appear to be in the grip of The Mozart Effect.
This boom may depend to some extent on the enduring prestige and authority imputed to western classical music forms in Asia. Also, in Hong Kong, anything that promises better grades is a winner.
But, inevitably for something that sounds just too good to be true, psychologists question the authenticity of the phenomenon. Harvard researcher Lois Hetland, for example, believes the effect is bogus. No amount of listening in the womb improves spatial reasoning, as is claimed. This ability (to read things like graphs and maps) can be increased by teaching young children to read music notation. But it makes no difference if they read Mozart, Eminem or canto-pop. The same skills can also be taught more directly by manipulating simple objects like blocks and paper.
In any case, some might argue, listening or playing music to get better scores in maths or any other subjects is missing the point. Music, like any other kind or art, is a unique way for children and adults to learn. It is a form of knowing and expressing by which cultures are judged and judge themselves. Hongkongers, these two fragments of musical anthropology seem to say, are a conservative, result-orientated lot.
Jean Nicol is a Hong Kong-based psychologist and writer