Word: cantopop
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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Imagine that Rhode Island produced music that everyone in the U.S. listened to. That would be kind of surprising. Well, the triumph of Cantopop is quite a bit more astonishing. From a region of some 7 million people--smaller in population than North Carolina, smaller in size than Rhode Island--comes pop music, in Hong Kong's Cantonese language, that dominates the Chinese-speaking world. Cantopop stars are mobbed in Beijing and Taipei, in London and Las Vegas. Last Christmas, veteran mesmerizer Leslie Cheung gave a sold-out concert at Caesars Palace, where tickets went...
...most places, pop music may be an anthem of anarchy. But Cantopop is an island of musical serenity in the Kingdom of Nice. Here's how Edison Chen, one of the young rebels challenging the autocracy of amiability, describes it: "No sex. No drugs. Maybe a little rock 'n' roll." The ballads rise with a decorous lilt; even most of Cantopop's uptempo numbers could be sung (with English lyrics) in a Presbyterian church in Iowa. Most of the singers have good manners too. Perky, dreamy, neatly dressed, well behaved, they are the rock stars any mom would want...
...Concubine. In Hong Kong virtually every star does double duty as singer and actor, from suave baritone Jacky Cheung to Beijing beauty Faye Wong. Last year's box-office sensation was the romantic comedy Needing You, whose two stars, Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng, are at the top of Cantopop royalty. Lau, 40, has been acting (often in tough-guy roles) or singing (here he's Mellow Man) for 20 years. Cheng, 29, is the new princess of Cantopop--last year she sold more than a million albums--whose fame has translated into a burgeoning movie career...
There's a sweet dizziness to Cantopop fandom that's reminiscent of the innocent bobby-sox frenzy of the Sinatra years. At Lau concerts, his fans hold up flash cards that spell out his name in English; a group of votaries rented a minibus and trailed him from one Taiwan concert to the next. (In return, each year around his birthday, Lau attends parties thrown by his fan clubs.) If fans don't stalk the stars, the insatiable paparazzi do. "They follow me everywhere," says Leslie Cheung. "I don't even put my litter outside the house anymore. People...
Amid the hype and hard work, Cantopop is maturing. "We Chinese have changed so much over the years," says crooner Leon Lai. "Our position in the world changed. So our music has changed too." But no one wants it to change too much. Any music that has so many millions of fans around the world has to be doing something right...