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During the late 1960s and 1970s, Mandarin pop songs were getting more and more popular and became the mainstream of Hong Kong pop. [6] In the 1970s, Hong Kong audiences wanted popular music in their own dialect, Cantonese. Also, a Cantonese song Tai siu yan yun (啼笑姻緣) became the first theme song of a TV drama.
Guangdong music, also known as Cantonese music (廣東音樂 Jyutping: gwong2dung1 jam1ngok6, Yale: gwóng-dūng yām-ngohk, Pinyin: Guǎngdōng yīnyuè) is a style of traditional Chinese instrumental music from Guangzhou and surrounding areas in Pearl River Delta of Guangdong Province on the southern coast of China.
The term shídàiqǔ (時代曲) literally translates to 'songs of the era' in Mandarin Chinese.When sung in Cantonese, it is commonly referred to as jyut6 jyu5 si4 doi6 kuk1 (粵語時代曲); in Amoy Hokkien, it is known as hā-gú sî-tāi-khiok (廈語時代曲).
Western-influenced music first came to China in the 1920s, specifically through Shanghai. [7] Artists like Zhou Xuan (周璇) acted in films and recorded popular songs.. When the People's Republic of China was established by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, one of the first actions taken by the government was to denounce pop music (specifically Western pop) as decadent music. [7]
Bāngzi (梆子) is one of the main instruments used in Cantonese opera. Cantonese instrumental music was called ching yam before the People's Republic was established in 1949. Cantonese instrumental tunes have been used in Cantonese opera, either as incidental instrumental music or as fixed tunes to which new texts were composed, since the 1930s.
Although the songs were mostly soft contemporary arrangements, a popular style in Hong Kong, it also had a few dance songs and two versions of the title track: Wong's Mandarin song, and the other with Cantonese lyrics by Chen Shao Qi (the Mandarin version is by far the more popular one). [citation needed]
Scholars say it is closer to ancient Chinese than Mandarin is — a Tang Dynasty poem would sound more like the original if read in Cantonese. The two languages share a common writing system.
Because of its tradition of usage in music, cinema, literature and newspapers, this form of Cantonese is a cultural mark of identity that distinguishes Cantonese people from speakers of other varieties of Chinese, whose languages are prohibited to have strong influences under China's Standard Mandarin policy.