Description
Book Synopsis
Yellow Music is the first history of the emergence of Chinese popular music and the larger urban media culture with which it was closely associated in early twentieth-century China. This book revises understandings of race, politics, popular culture, and technology in the making of modern Chinese culture.
Trade Review
“
Yellow Music pushes commonsense presumptions forward by complicating theory with solid empirical study. Jones weaves rich information and intriguing conclusions throughout this historically grounded book.”—Miriam Silverberg, author of
Changing Song: The Marxist Manifestos of Nakano Shigeharu“
Yellow Music is a fantastic, one-of-a-kind read: a beautifully written, theoretically rich, and empirically grounded story about the relationship between American jazz music and the politics of colonialism and modernity in China during the interwar years. Andrew F. Jones puts the question of music at the center of debates about the role of the popular in the making of modern China.”—Ralph Litzinger, author of
Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging“Jones illuminates Chinese cultural and political history from an unknown angle—that of popular music and an emergent transnational mass culture. In doing so, he not only enriches our understanding of this history but also makes an original contribution.”—Prasenjit Duara, author of
Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern ChinaTable of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Listening to Jazz Age China 1
1. The Orchestration of Chinese Musical Life 21
2. The Gramophone in China 53
3. The Yellow Music of Li Jinhui 73
4. Mass Music and the Politics of Phonographic Realism 105
Glossary 137
Notes 147
Bibliography 183
Index 207
