Taiwanese pop

Taiwanese Pop is a popular music genre sung in the . It is referred to as Tai-pop and sometimes pop. The genre is not the same as music from Taiwan. However many Mandarin pop singers from Taiwan also cross-over into Taiwanese pop genres as well, and there is increasingly more Mandarin pop influence in Taiwanese pop. Taiwanese music development took a set back during the years of Martial Law in Taiwan. Upon the lifting of Martial Law in Taiwan, multiple artists began to produce Taiwanese song tracts and entire albums in Taiwanese.

Terminology

While , and Taiwanese are all derived from the same Sino-Tibetan languages family, Taiwanese pop is not classified within c-pop. The historical origin of Taiwanese pop comes from a enka base instead of a shidaiqu base. Music of this category are sometimes called ''"Aboriginal Taiwanese pop"'' to distinguish it from Mandarin pop music in Taiwan.

History

Origin

While Taiwan music have existed before the , the "father of Taiwanese pop" or "New Music" is considered to be Chang Fu-hsing in the 1930s. Chang Yu-Sheng would also discover A-mei .

Present

2000s

Recently, native Taiwanese pop have been re-integrating into c-pop. A-mei would be labeled an Asian hero worldwide for promoting cross-trait pop music representing aboriginal Taiwanese pop with mandopop success. Her popularity however was criticized by the Communist Party of China for promoting any sort of Taiwan independence.

The most popular Taiwanese female singer to date is Jody Chiang from Chiayi, Taiwan, who has numerous Taiwanese albums dating from the early 1980's. She is the equivalent of Teresa Teng, except for Taiwanese music. Another famous singer in Taiwan also known for her ballads is Chen Ying-Git .

Current Taiwanese pop music is becoming more influenced by Mandarin pop. Artists such as Phil Chang, Jolin Tsai, Eric Moo and are known to have Taiwanese songs in their albums.

Artists

*Wu Bai
*Jay Chou
*Eric Moo
*Blacklist Studio
*Jimmy Lin
*Long-Hong Hong
*Jacky Wu
*Jolin Tsai
*Jody Chiang
*Chen Ying-Git
*Chen Ya-Lan
*Chang Hsiu-Ching
*Fei-Fei Feng
*Julia Peng
*Phil Chang
*Jeff Chang
*Stella Chang
*Mei-Feng Chen

Shidaiqu

Shidaiqu is a type of /European jazz fusion music that originated in Shanghai, China, in the 1920s.

Terminology

The term literally means "songs of the era" in Mandarin. When sung in , it is referred to as , when sung in Amoy Hokkien, it is referred to as .

Mainstream

In Shanghai shidaiqu was regarded as Chinese popular music beginning in the 1920s. Its heyday was in the 1940s, then died out in 1952 when the Communist banned nightclubs and pop music production. The tradition moved to Hong Kong and reached its height from the 1950s to the late 1960s, when it was replaced by the Taiwanese pops and later cantopop. While it is considered a prototype, music enthusiasts may see it as early version of mandopop. Li Jinhui is the founder of shidaiqu along with chinese popular music. The western jazz influence were shaped by jazz musician Buck Clayton. Nowadays, shidaiqu inspired Gary Lucas for his album "the Edge of Heaven". On the other hand, if cinema was at the origin of many songs, Wong Kar Wai used them again for illustrating his movie "In_the_Mood_for_Love"; Rebecca Pan, one of the actresses in this film, was also one of theses famous shi dai qu singers. Last but not least, as Mainland and Hong Kong were original areas, Japan shouldn't be neglected in the story of shi dai qu, due to one of the famous singers, Yoshiko Yamagushi .

Some singers

* Bai Hong
* Chou Hsuan
* Chen Juan-juan
* Bai Guang
* Wang Zeh-mei
* Kung Chiu-hsia
* Tung Pei-pei
* Woo Ing-ing
* Chang Loo
* Hsia Tan
* Tsin Ting
* Yao Lee
*
* Li Li-hwa
* Lin Dai
* Yeh Meng
* Li Xianglan
* Poon Sow-keng
* Rebecca Pan
* Mona Fong
* Tsai Chin
* Tsui Ping
* Grace Chang
* Ling Po

New Talent Singing Awards

New Talent Singing Awards or ''NTSA'' for short, later re-organized into New Talent Singing Awards International Finals or ''NTSA International Finals'' for short), and most currently re-named TVB8 International Chinese New Talent Singing Championship is an annual singing competition organized by TVB that searches out new singers to enter the Asian music industry.

History

Beginning

Held in Hong Kong only, contestants are required to compete through multiple rounds to display their vocal talent through different genres of songs and/or vocal challenges such as singing cappellas or in a different language etc. The winner is guaranteed a recording contract with Capital Artists Recording Company.

Overseas Addition

With increased emigrated to North America, TVB opened "Overseas Contestant" catagory to attract contestants and held the contest in cities such as Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

International Affair

With the emergence of several Australian, European and Asian cities like Melbourne, London, Amsterdam and Shanghai wanting to be included in the event, in 1997, TVB Hong Kong created the New Talent Singing Awards International Finals 全球華人新秀歌唱大賽. Instead of having one "overseas contestant" from North America competing in the NTSA Finals , now each participating country would send regional representatives to compete in the NTSA International Finals . Also, due to the downsizing of Capital Artist, Emperor Entertainment Group took over organizing the contest with TVB.

EEG & Mandarin Dominance

The international finals and the Hong Kong regional finals changed their names and logos once again in 2005. Because of the heavy influence of co-organizer Emperor Entertainment Group , the Hong Kong regional finals is now simply called EEG Singing Contest 英皇新秀歌唱大賽, completely disgarding the "New Talent" part of the English title . As for the International Finals, since TVB has decided to move the contest to its mandarin channel, TVB8, the international finals changed its name into TVB8 International Chinese New Talent Singing Championship TVB8全球華人新秀歌唱大賽. Because of the move, there has been many more contestants representing different regions of Mainland China since 2005. In 2006, spots for several "Internet Region Representatives" are devoted solely to Mainland Chinese contestants who does not live in an area where a NTSA Regional contest is held.

Cities hosted NTSA International Finals

*
*Auckland, New Zealand
*Brisbane, Australia
*Calgary, Canada
*Chicago, United States
*Guangzhou, China
*Hong Kong
*Houston, Texas USA
*Jiangsu, China
*Johor, Malaysia
*Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
*London, England
*Los Angeles, USA
*Melbourne, Australia
*
*Penang, Malaysia
*
*Rotterdam, The Netherlands
*Sabah, Malaysia
*San Francisco, USA
*Shanghai, China
*
*Sydney, Australia
*Toronto, Canada
*Tianjin, China
*Vancouver, Canada
*Winnipeg, Canada
*Zhejiang, China
*Internet Region

Past Winners and Notable Contestants

NTSA has been the start of many Asian celebrities today. Some have stayed in the music business and have become bonafide singing sensations, while some have become actors and even TV presenters. Below is a list of winners as well as past contestants who have made a contribution to the entertainment business after competing in NTSA.

Li Jinhui

Li Jinhui was a composer and songwriter born in Xiangtan, China in 1891. He is the "Father of ". He is most notable for creating a new musical form with shidaiqu after the fall of the Qing Dynasty-- moving away from established musical forms.

Early years

One of the earliest instrument he studied was the guqin plucked string instruments during his childhood. He mainly drew his earliest musical influences from his hunan province hometown. He was inspired by local Chinese opera and Huagu flower drums which are performed over a stage theatre monologue. Because of this, it can be said that the very first inspiration of Chinese popular music are derived from these forms.

From 1916 to 1926 he was participating in textbook publishing for children. He wrote his first musical, and allowed his daughter Li Minghui to perform. In total he has 8 brothers. Some of the operas include ''The Sparrow and the Child'' and ''The Little Painter''.

Career

In 1927 he organized the "Chinese Dance School" and then the "Chinese Song and Dance Troupe" . Clayton played a major role in shaping the musical scores written by Li.

In 1929 he organized the Bright Moonlight Song and Dance Troupe and toured around the country. She would later become one of the Seven great singing stars of the Republic of China.

In 1949 he was a composer for the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. Li would eventually pay dearly for his fame. Classified as a founder of Yellow Music by the Communist Party of China, he became a victim of political persecution during the Cultural Revolution.

Legacy

In his life time, critics derided his work as "Yellow Music" because of its sexual associations. His work was labeled and was accepted only by select groups. His music movement would later grow into the cantopop and mandopop phenomenon, which became the main genre of music in Hong Kong and Taiwan respectively in the 20th century.

Gangtai

Gangtai is a term derived from the shortened word of "Kong" and "Tai". It is generally used to describe C-pop songs, artists or music from Hong Kong or Taiwan.

Terminology

The term is synonymous with post-1960 cantopop or post-1970 mandopop. It is usually a term used to describe a sweet, love type melody found distinctly in C-pop and not any other genre of Chinese folk, rock or traditional music.

The term is also used to describe mainland China singers imitating the HK/Taiwan singing style.

3-Faced Elva

3-Faced Elva is Elva Hsiao's first album back with EMI, 3-Faced Elva was released on June 13. The new offering is said to portray three different facets of this dancing queen. The pre-release was released to the public since June 2. EMI has been described as "burning money" because they used about NT$ 5,000,000 for one of the Elva's MV "More More More" and about another NT$ 4,000,000 for a ballad song from the album. The album has also teamed with Puma, with the first single off the "I'll Be There". Huge billboards, print ads and TVCs are created for the partnership of Puma and EMI Virgin. Rumor has it that there will be a total of three versions of the albums which feature different styles and photos.

However, ex-EMI's and now-Warner's Taiwan President, Sam Chen, signed a new act Jam Hsiao from the talent show Super Million Stars. The debut album from Jam Hsiao is set to be in the original date which EMI originally planned to release Elva's album. Due to the popularity of Jam Hsiao, EMI therefore adopted the ideas from Elva's fans that is to give away any three of the previous Elva's albums if one pre-order the album in the period of June 2 - June 12. EMI has pulled Elva's album forward from June 16 to June 13 to prevent direct conflicts with Warner Music's Jam Hsiao.

Tracklisting

CD
# I'll Be There
# 衝動
# 兩個人的寂寞
# More More More
# 時光隧道
# 速配程度
# 之後
# Baby Girl
# Hey Girl
# 類似愛情
# 暫停戀愛
# 你看不見的地方