In China Central Television’s Spring Festival Gala of 1987, Chinese-American singer Kris Phillips (Fei Xiang) danced when he sang the song Sexy Music. It was a new performance style to Chinese people, and its immodest surprised the audiences. Phillips and his dances became nationally famous in one night. He described in a talk show (Jin Xing Show) that the photographers of the gala were too astonished at his dance to photograph his dances, but focused on his face. Liu Huan is a famous singer and songwriter in China, and in his serious Chinese song, Asking Ten Thousand Times, inserts two English sentences: “Time and time again you ask me; Time and time again I ask myself.” This song was recorded in 1993. In the TV contest Super-Vocal 1, held in 2018, three young Chinese singers adapted the American song The Sound of Silence to a trio and they placed first in the contest. These three cases illuminate one truth: Chinese popular music has been influenced by American music styles.

In 1978, the Chinese government started a policy of economic reform and “opening-up”, under which foreigners were now welcomed and Chinese citizens were encouraged to travel abroad. Paul Friedlander points out in his essay “China’s ‘Newer Value’ Pop: Rock-and-Roll and Technology on the New Long March” that “[W]ith the end of the Cultural Revolution, economic reform, prompted increased international commerce; many students and business people travelled to the west, and soon after arrival began to send their friends and families back home a flood of packages of Western goods, including Western popular music.” Before the economic reform policy was carried out, popular music in China was less creative and less popular. During the performance, singers stood still on the stage without any gestures or dances. As time passed, Chinese popular music was more and more influenced by western music. As Hon-Lun Yang mentions in his essay “Music, China, and the West: A Musical-Theoretical,” he notes that “…Sino-Western musical interchanges within the West, especially interchanges pertaining to Chinese-American or Asian-American musical interactions within Canada and the United States.”

Three reasons have accelerated American music’s influence on Chinese popular music. First, the English language has been a required course for students beginning in middle school in China, which brought American culture into China, including music. Second, American television shows and films have been spread in China. The third and most importantly, American singers hold live performances in China frequently, and American tapes and CDs have occupied China’s markets. In the essay “The Expression of Chineseness and Americanness in Chinese popular Music: A Comparison of ABC Pop Stars Wang Leehom and Vanness Wu”, the author Boxi Chen reports that “in the early 1960s, American influenced on Taiwanese music, and it was decades later, around the early 1990s, Chinese popular music has been influenced by an increasing number of Chinee American musicians who decided to build their careers in China.” One important reason these Chinese-American musicians decided to come back to China is the economy of China has become “more prominent” (Chen) and the country offers good chances for people to pursue success in their careers.

American’s influences on Chinese popular music include the aspects below:

1. Lyrics and rhythm. In the beginning, as Friedlander points out, Chinese popular music followed “the formula which emphasized melody and lyrics rather than heavy distortion and a strong beat” and the lyrics usually focus on “romantic and historical topics.” 
2. Musical equipment. Electric guitars, trap drum sets, and pianos became popular in China. 
3. Live performance. Since the early 1990s, live performance thrived. Though most people couldn’t afford to buy a ticket to attend a live performance, many TV channels put on live performance recordings which included singers from America, like Michael Jackson, Madonna, and the Backstreet Boys.
4. Recordings. Friedlander points out that “Western-influenced popular music now pervades Chinese youth culture. Popular music cassettes are available in every part of the country from the shops of Beijing to the street vendor stalls in towns near the Tibetan border.”

In addition to the influence American music has had on both popular songwriting topics and performances styles, musical contests in China have also been impacted. In these contests, performing American songs become popular for the participants. In addition, these songs extend beyond a Chinese-only audience due to their use of English lyrics; the world is their audience. As Lijuan Qian writes in his essay “Which Identity Matters? Competing Ethnicities in Chinese TV Music Contests”, “A huge market for Anglo-American televised music and music-related talent contests has arisen, based in the world’s largest national network of around 4,000 TV stations, this serving a population of over 1.3 billion with over 731 million internet users. Such programs include The Voice of China (Zhongguo hao shengyin), Chinese Idol (Zhongguo meng zhi sheng), I am a Singer (Wo shi geshou), Sing My Song (Zhongguo hao gequ), and China Star (Zhongguo zhi xing), each of which sustains a high viewership.”

Since Kris Phillips brought the American style of pop song onstage performance to China, the Chinese pop song world started a new epoch. Based on the influence of America, Chinese popular music is connected not only with the western countries, but with the whole world, which is an unavoidable trend. I agree with Hon-Lun Yang’s notes that “A new generation of Chinese performers and composers is capturing world-wide attention, and Chinese composers’ compositions are foregrounding a complex synergy of Chinese and Western musical elements.”

Work Cited

Chen, Boxi. “The Expression of Chineseness and Americanness in Chinese Popular Music: A Comparison of ABC Pop Stars Wang Leehom and Vanness Wu.” Asian Music, vol. 43, no. 2, 2012, pp. 71–87., http://www.jstor.org/stable/23253610. Accessed 12 Apr. 2020.

Friedlander, Paul. “China’s ‘Newer Value’ Pop: Rock-and-Roll and Technology on the New Long March.” Asian Music, vol. 22, no. 2, 1991, pp. 67–81. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/834307. Accessed 12 Apr. 2020.

Liu, Huan. Asking Ten Thousand Times, YouTube, 5 Feb 2016, https://youtu.be/9eLSkZDbVts

Qian, Lijuan. “Which Identity Matters? Competing Ethnicities in Chinese TV Music Contests.” The World of Music, vol. 6, no. 2, 2017, pp. 57–82. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44841946. Accessed 12 Apr. 2020. 

Phillips, Kris. Sexy Music, YouTube, 3 Jan 2017,  https://youtu.be/fDF3tnN9RFA

Phillips, Kris, and Jin Xing. “Jin Xing Show: Spring Festival Special Version.” Jin Xing Show: Spring Festival Special Version, 2 Feb. 2017, https://youtu.be/mruaK187Zs0.

Simon & Garfunkel, “The Sound of Silence, Recomposed and Sang by Wang Xi, Ju Hongchuan, Liqi.” YouTube, 14 Dec. 2018, https://youtu.be/x6-2ER1IVzo.

Yang, Hon-Lun. “Music, China, and the West: A Musical-Theoretical Introduction.” China and the West: Music, Representation, and Reception, edited by Hon-Lun Yang and Michael Saffle, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2017, pp. 1–18. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1qv5n9n.4. Accessed 12 Apr. 2020.