Zhou Xuan, the most notable singing star of the early Shanghai period. Sound films in Shanghai which started in the early 1930s were made in Mandarin because of a ban on the use of dialects in films by the then Nanjing government, consequently popular songs from films were also performed in Mandarin. The drive to impose linguistic uniformity in China started in the early 20th century when the Qing Ministry of Education proclaimed Mandarin as the official speech to be taught in modern schools, a policy the new leaders of the Chinese Republic formed in 1912 were also committed to. Those involved in this movement included songwriters such as Li Jinhui working in Shanghai.
Mandarin was then considered as the language of the modern, educated class in China, and there was a movement to popularize the use of Mandarin as a national language in the pursuit of national unity.
Although most people in Shanghai then spoke Shanghainese, the recordings of the pop music from Shanghai from the 1920s onwards were done in Standard Mandarin, which is based on the Beijing dialect. Later other foreign as well as Chinese-own recording companies were also established in China.Įarly in the 20th century, people in China generally spoke in their own regional dialect. It originally recorded mainly Peking opera, but later expanded to Mandarin popular music. The company established a recording studio, and the first record-pressing plant in the Shanghai French Concession in 1914, and became the principal record company to serve as the backbone for the young industry in China. Pathé was founded in 1908 by a Frenchman named Labansat who had previously started a novelty entertainment business using phonograph in Shanghai around the beginning of the 20th century. The Moudeli Company dominated the market before the 1910s until the Pathé Records ( Chinese: 百代 pinyin: Bǎidài) took over the leading role. The recordings were then manufactured outside China and re-imported by the Gramophone Company's sales agent in China, the Moutrie (Moudeli) Foreign Firm. The Chinese-language music industry began with the arrival of gramophone, and the earliest gramophone recording in China was made in Shanghai in March 1903 by Fred Gaisberg who was sent by the Victor Talking Machine Company (VTMC) in the U.S. History Beginning of recording industry in China
1.2 1920s: Birth of Shidaiqu in Shanghai.1.1 Beginning of recording industry in China.Among the countries where Mandopop is most popular are mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. It originated in Shanghai, and later Hong Kong, Taipei and Beijing also emerged as important centers of the Mandopop music industry. Popular music sung in Mandarin was the first variety of popular music in Chinese to establish itself as a viable industry. Mandopop is categorized as a subgenre of commercial Chinese-language music within C-pop. "Mandopop" was used to describe Mandarin-language popular songs of that time, some of which were versions of Cantopop songs sung by the same singers with different lyrics to suit the different rhyme and tonal patterns of Mandarin. Though Mandopop predates Cantopop, the English term was coined around 1980 after " Cantopop" became a popular term for describing popular songs in Cantonese. 'Mandopop' may be used as a general term to describe popular songs performed in Mandarin. The genre has its origin in the jazz-influenced popular music of 1930s Shanghai known as Shidaiqu with later influences coming from Japanese enka, Hong Kong's Cantopop, Taiwan's Hokkien pop, and in particular the Campus Song folk movement of the 1970s. Mandopop or Mandapop refers to Mandarin popular music.