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A Glimpse of Hong Kong “Chineseness”: Pre-existing Tunes as the Redemption of a Cultural Identity
LEUNG Tai-wai David
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2017.07.006
Independant Scholar, Hong Kong China
When the umbrellas were held up against the tear gas attack in the protest on September 28, 2014, the hot issue raised by the marathon-like Yellow Umbrella Movement was not only the matter of politics but also a coincidence created for the Hong Kong locals to face, or to be faced with an already moot cliché: How the Hongkongese can redefine and redeem their almost lost socio-cultural identity, particularly under the increasingly hegemonic influences and the socio-cultural invasion of the mainland after the 1997 Handover. My present paper is not intended to discuss the topic of identity on the platform of politics, or the postcolonial studies such as transculturation or cultural hybridty. But instead, I am far more interested in locating such issue on the aesthetic dimension of collective memory, which is revealed in two local contemporary Hong Kong compositions. In the process of shaping and reshaping a form of “HongKongeseness” in which the composers tend to create and the local listeners tend to experience, albeit transient, can appear in every nuance of the sonic metaphor embedded in the pre-existing indigenous tunes of a self-contained compositional work.
Aesthetics, Cantonese Folk Lullaby, Cantonese Language, Cantonese Opera, Cantopop, Cantonese Tones, Chineseness, Collective Memory, Cultural Identity, Hong Kong Chineseness, Melodic Fragment, Metaphorical Respresentation, Nostalgic Childhood, Operatic Vocality, Possession, Quotation, Tang-song poetry (唐宋詩詞), Voice, Yellow Umbrella Movement, Zi Hou (子喉)
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