| Circuit Listening : Chinese Popular Music in the Global 1960s How the Chinese pop of the 1960s participated in a global musical revolution Focusing on the introduction of the transistor in revolutionary China and its Cold War counterpart in Taiwan, Circuit Listening reveals the hidden parallels between music as seemingly disparate as rock and roll and Maoist anthems. It offers groundbreaking studies of Mandarin diva Grace Chang and the Taiwanese folk troubadour Chen Da, examines how revolutionary aphorisms from the Little Red Book parallel the Beatles' "Revolution," uncovers how U.S. military installations came to serve as a conduit for the dissemination of Anglophone pop music into East Asia, and shows how consumer electronics helped the pop idol Teresa Teng bring the Maoist era to a close, remaking the contemporary Chinese soundscape forever. Circuit Listening provides a multifaceted history of Chinese-language popular music and media at midcentury. It profiles a number of the most famous and best loved Chinese singers and cinematic icons, and places those figures in a larger geopolitical and technological context. Circuit Listening's original research and far-reaching ideas make for an unprecedented look at the role Chinese music played in the '60s pop musical revolution. Andrew F. Jones, professor and Louis B. Agassiz Chair in Chinese at the University of California, Berkeley, teaches modern Chinese literature and media culture. He is author of Like a Knife: Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music , Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age , and Developmental Fairy Tales: Evolutionary Thinking and Modern Chinese Culture . He has also translated two books of fiction by Yu Hua, and a volume of literary essays by Eileen Chang. |