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CRIES OF JOY, SONGS OF SORROW: Chinese Pop Music and Its Cultural Connotations. By Marc L. Moskowitz. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press 2010. xii, 165 pp. (B&W photos.) US$40.00, cloth. ISBN 978- 0-8248-3369-5.
With its focus on Mandarin language Chinese popular music (Mandopop), "Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow" is a much-needed and highly recommendable contribution to the existing English-language literature on popular music in Greater China. Its relevance derives from the two broader questions that set the frame for Marc L. Moskowitz's study: How can the Republic of Taiwan produce a musical genre that makes up for 80 percent of popular music consumption in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and thus dictate its musical taste? And why, on the other hand, do Americans condemn this enormously popular genre of Mandopop as "vapid, uninspired, and somewhat painful to listen to" (1)? Western critique and ignorance, we learn, derives from a lack of linguistic skills and uncritical acceptance of Western Enlightment individualism. Moskowitz writes and argues against this ignorance, sometimes with an interfering undertone of praise, and unveils Mandopop as a culturally bound hybrid musical genre with complex cultural implications.
Based on Chinese and English-language sources as well as interviews inside and...