Anyone Listen to Chinese Music?

[Barbs]

okay fine i'm a fob at heart! just wondering if it's just me or do chinese cd's just grow on u after like 3 listenings no matter how awful they are. just got the new jay cd and it sounds horrible...all mumbly and whatnot (as is his wont) but upon the third listening this morning, whaddya know! it's beginning to grow on me.

as an aside, i noticed that true abc's don't listen to chinese music hardly at all? whereas korean-americans do. what's up with that??

[wylin]

barbs i agree w/ that it takes time to comprehend the goodness or badness of chinese CDs, because u gotta sort thru the legions of mediocre songs and finally find the one or two chinese songs u like alot.

Except for LA boys CD they just truely sucked and i think they made a mockery of being taiwanese and also being in hip-hop but also started asian hip hop in a way.

[SunWuKong]

seems like that's almost all that i listen to nowadays. chinese music. that and some trip-hop type of stuff and some j-pop.

ok the thing about chinese music is that you know what, there's a huge chinese market in asia. they don't concentrate so much on the global market because there's plenty of money to be made just in the chinese market. they concentrate on making their music sound pleasing to the chinese people in asia. that is why many ABCs will not get used to chinese music because they are more used to american music.

and like many other music industries, you will no doubt find that many of the most popular music is the shittiest. it's the same in the US too. but if you look hard enough to find the less popular selections, you'll find music that is of better quality. ok maybe this strictly has to do with personal taste.

[artsfartsyjanet]

I haven't caught on to the chinese music business. :) I used to like the same old singers... Jackie Cheung, Leon Lai, Andy Lau, Priscilla Chan...


I guess I'm just very "white-washed" in St. Louis, MO.. go figure.

;)

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by artsfartsyjanet@Aug 16 2002, 01:35 PM
I haven't caught on to the chinese music business. :) I used to like the same old singers... Jackie Cheung, Leon Lai, Andy Lau, Priscilla Chan...


I guess I'm just very "white-washed" in St. Louis, MO.. go figure.

;)
here's a good website for ABCs to get to know the current music in Asia:

http://www.grooveasia.com/

[artsfartsyjanet]

Originally posted by SunWuKung@Aug 16 2002, 01:51 PM
Originally posted by artsfartsyjanet@Aug 16 2002, 01:35 PM
I haven't caught on to the chinese music business. :)  I used to like the same old singers... Jackie Cheung, Leon Lai, Andy Lau, Priscilla Chan...


I guess I'm just very "white-washed" in St. Louis, MO.. go figure.

;)
here's a good website for ABCs to get to know the current music in Asia:

http://www.grooveasia.com/
Thanks. :)

[kasia]

i think chinese lyrics are just prettier...or more meaningful--because we don't use the same words that we use in everyday conversation, it seems more poetic.

i have a hard time getting into any other music that isn't chinese.

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by kasia@Aug 16 2002, 02:36 PM
i think chinese lyrics are just prettier...or more meaningful--because we don't use the same words that we use in everyday conversation, it seems more poetic.

i have a hard time getting into any other music that isn't chinese.
well personally i want to hear more canto-pop musicians use conversational cantonese instead of singing in written chinese form. check out some of that old sam hui stuff from the 70s and definitely check out LMF (http://www.lazymf.com/).

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Originally posted by Barbs@Aug 16 2002, 02:57 PM
okay fine i'm a fob at heart! just wondering if it's just me or do chinese cd's just grow on u after like 3 listenings no matter how awful they are. just got the new jay cd and it sounds horrible...all mumbly and whatnot (as is his wont) but upon the third listening this morning, whaddya know! it's beginning to grow on me.

as an aside, i noticed that true abc's don't listen to chinese music hardly at all? whereas korean-americans do. what's up with that??
All my life up until high school I've been in a time lag with regards to Chinese pop culture, cuz without the internet stuff took a lot longer to make the jump over to M'sia. sometimes I feel like I'm still kinda behind the curve. the only stuff I've been listening to lately are beyond (as always), andy hui, and jay. for some reason there aren't that many female chinese pop stars I like, I'd much rather listen to j-pop girls. oh well I guess once I get to HK I'll figure out what's popular.

as for KAs listening to korean music while ABCs don't listen to Chinese music ... i'm still trying to figure that one out. in general KAs seem to have a lot better relations with Korean FOBs than ABCs have with Chinese FOBs, starting in childhood. maybe it's cuz of the church. many young Koreans who come over to the US with their parents will attend a church with KAs, some of whom they'll go to the same school with, and since they have that environment of all Korean people, thus they'll all get to know each other, swap Korean music, etc, which you might not do at school where there's few other Korean people and everyone is judging you on your musical tastes.

whereas, at least from what I've seen, most young Chinese who come over to the US with their parents don't attend any church at all. so the membership of teenagers in Chinese churches is overwhelmingly ABCs, and there's no social space which is all Chinese people and in which ABC kids and FOB kids mix freely. At least until you get to university and have Chinese Student Associations and the like, but by then most people's musical tastes are too settled to branch out to something as different as Chinese music is from American music.

[tapestrybabe]

Originally posted by Barbs@Aug 16 2002, 09:57 AM
as an aside, i noticed that true abc's don't listen to chinese music hardly at all? whereas korean-americans do. what's up with that??
i didn't know that there was such a phenomenon like this. but it seems when it comes to Korean music vs. Chinese music... korean music just seems more popular on the internet than chinese music... and even when i do visit kpop forum websites.. its a variety of koreans that listen to it... like older ppl like me.. and than the younger genreration that listen to it as well... in whom may or may not understand the words... And wellz, from how i perceive things.... there's just seems like a big market when it comes to the kpop music industry...

but like than again... i may be more aware of how popular korean music is on the net.. cuz thats where my main interest lies in..

[karizma]

>> haha LMF sounds like a bunch of chinese Eminems =)....

>> im ABC and love chinese music? i have all three of jay's cd's. and have some songs from cecilia...wong lee hom...edison [even though he sucks]... alex to...blah blah blah. chinese music is cool!!!

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by karizma@Aug 16 2002, 10:30 PM
>> haha LMF sounds like a bunch of chinese Eminems =)....

hahhah i don't know if that's a compliment or insult. but LMF actually has very grassroots type of lyrics and some of their songs have very socially aware messages.

[karizma]

>> really? i just hear a lotta cussing...i sense anger =).

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by karizma@Aug 16 2002, 11:34 PM
>> really? i just hear a lotta cussing...i sense anger =).
hahha yes alot of cussing.
alot of people in HK cuss. :)

[karizma]

>> my parents are from HK...and i cuss like a sailor...musta rubbed off on me ^_^.

>> do you think an asian singer will ever make it big in the united states? i wouldnt consider coco lee big either. i want to see someone make it to MTV . i want to swell up with pride when some white girl tells me how much she idolizes some asian guy who released an album that went platinum. am i dreaming or what =/? 2 guys from linkin park are half asian? haha almost there!!

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by karizma@Aug 16 2002, 11:47 PM
>> do you think an asian singer will ever make it big in the united states? i wouldnt consider coco lee big either. i want to see someone make it to MTV . i want to swell up with pride when some white girl tells me how much she idolizes some asian guy who released an album that went platinum. am i dreaming or what =/? 2 guys from linkin park are half asian? haha almost there!!
well there's james iha.

but i think it'll take many years before an asian person can be front and center in mainstream music and also overtly identify with being asian in his/her music.

[kasia]

who's christine sa? i see posters of her all over san francisco chinatown and clement.

[kasia]

Originally posted by SunWuKung@Aug 16 2002, 08:19 PM

well personally i want to hear more canto-pop musicians use conversational cantonese instead of singing in written chinese form. check out some of that old sam hui stuff from the 70s and definitely check out.
i think sam hui stuff is funny. but not poetic. ;)

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by kasia@Aug 17 2002, 11:47 AM
who's christine sa? i see posters of her all over san francisco chinatown and clement.
was that how it was spelled on the posters? i don't know who christine sa is, but i know kristine sa is vietnamese from toronto and she's a singer.


http://www.kristinesa.com

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by kasia@Aug 17 2002, 11:49 AM
Originally posted by SunWuKung@Aug 16 2002, 08:19 PM

well personally i want to hear more canto-pop musicians use conversational cantonese instead of singing in written chinese form.  check out some of that old sam hui stuff from the 70s and definitely check out.
i think sam hui stuff is funny. but not poetic. ;)
hehheh yeah i don't know if anything can manage to sound poetic in conversational cantonese. but the whole selling point of sam hui was that it was more "common people" sounding. before he became popular, there were already conversational cantonese singers who sang for a living on the streets, but their lyrics were more crude. sam hui basically did the same thing on records except he softened his lyrics.

[tapestrybabe]

i know i listen to korean music more often... but like last night someone gave me a few Chinese mp3's to download... Anyone ever hear of a guy named Emil Chau?? I thought by the name... that he was a girl... cuz i was thinking...Emelia, Emily in my mind.. but whateverz... i think he was kinda cute looking ^^ and i really liked his song 'Friend' that i downloaded... he really has a nice voice... And yeah.. chinese language can sound really pretty thru music... And thru music.. I'm beginning to detect its langauge... just like i've learned to detect Korean language... Anyways, you chinese peeps should AT LEAST give korean music a TRY... none of that SES, Finkl type of stuff... i mean, they're all good.. but they're more like top 40 stuff like here in the United States kinda music... Someone like Jun Ram Hwe, LeeSoRa... now they have really nice jazzy, ballady type of voices... i think they are more for a 'maturer' audience...

But like anyways.. Chinese music is all good... It's starting to grow on me :)



<!--EDIT|tapestrybabe|Aug 18 2002, 09:12 AM-->

[SunWuKong]

hey Emil Chau has a white american wife. hahhah i just wanted to bring that up. and they married before he got famous so it wasn't the money.

[thaite]

I like Chinese music, but since I don't speak Chinese I tend to scrutinize the music a bit more for listenability. I guess that just means I'm picky.