Snapshots of multilingualism in Hong Kong popular music

Discourses of “cultural imperialism” emphasizing the role of local languages in resistance to the domination of English-language popular culture have largely given way to discourses of “cultural flow,” which attach greater value to multilingual practices in local contexts. Language choice has become particularly important in East Asian popular music, which is now dominated by genres such as J-pop, K-pop, Mandapop, and Cantopop that are defined as much by language as they are by musical style. Two main approaches to the analysis of language choice in East Asian popular music can be identified, based on the notions of “cultural imperialism” and “cultural flow.” During the 1930s, a rather different form of popular music emerged in Shanghai, which would later have a considerable impact on language choices in Hong Kong popular music. The 1980s and early 1990s represent both the heyday of Cantopop and a brief period during which Hong Kong popular music was largely monolingual.