For this weeks lecture we prepared a presentation on an episode of Sounding History podcast. Episode 6 – Sound Sculpting in East Asia and the American South. Briefly it was about how sound travels and Global Jazz as a genre – the growing networks around the globe (people and labour)
Film: Wild Wild Rose (1960)
Starring Grace Chan (from China)
Directed by Wong Tin Lam (from Hong Kong)
Music arranged by Ryoichi Hattori (from Japan)
I will focus on their discussions about this film from Hong Kong – in particular a clip of a latin jazz style version of the Habanera from Carmen being sung in Mandarin, revealing the socio-political state of the place at that crucial time. This imaginary 50’s style Hong Kong club is more reminiscent of 30’s Shanghai. Chang also encapsulated the new female ideal in the Western side of Cold War East Asia.
The multinational crew reflect the layers of cultural context such as 20’s Japan, Shanghai under Japanese occupation and 50’s Hong Kong. At that time Hong Kong was much less built up as we know it today – at the beginning of its transformation from British colony, with the huge influx of Chinese refugees coming from the revolution, many lived in ‘shanty towns’.
‘Jazz is what the people making it say it is’
At the time Mambo was a global craze coming from globalization in this case of afro caribbean cultures. However the way it is presented here is like a ‘cubist painting’, fractured, refracted and intersectional – combining influences. The growling voice – like Chinese theatre stands out but can perhaps be heard as reminiscent of Louis Armstrong too.
Jazz emerged in Japan without players coming over (developed separate from African American culture).
But like how it was an american export, japan’s imperial power spreads their jazz through east asia – democratic egalitarianism? (Ellington and Armstrong were employed to tout jazz as great and american when ironically Jim Crow laws still existed)
Hawaiian looking steel body aluminium sub woofer like cones self amplify the acoustic guitar. Objects travel – commodities even if people don’t. Another marker of global cultures.