New book by USF School of Music Associate Professor Ya-Hui Cheng

Congratulations to Ya-Hui Cheng, Associate Professor of Music Theory, on the release of her new book, The Evolution of Chinese Popular Music: Modernization and Globalization, 1927 to the Present.

Ya-Hui Cheng examines the emergence of popular music genres – jazz, rock, and hip-hop – in Chinese society, covering the social underpinnings that shaped the development of popular music in China and Taiwan, from imperialism to westernization and from modernization to globalization. The political sensitivities across the strait have long eclipsed the discussion of these shared sonic intimacies. It was not until the rise of the digital age, when entertainment programs from China and Taiwan reached social media on a global scale, that audiences realized the existence of this sonic reciprocation.

Analyzing Chinese pentatonicism and popular songs published from 1927 to the present, the book discusses structural elements in Chinese popular music to show how they aligned closely with Chinese folk traditions. While the influences from Western genres are inevitable under the phenomenon of globalization, Chinese songwriters utilized these Western inspirations to modernize their musical traditions. It is a sensitivity for exhibiting cultural identities that enabled popular music to present a unique Chinese global image while transcending political discord and unifying mass cultures across the strait.

The Evolution of Chinese Popular Music: Modernization and Globalization, 1927 to the Present was published by Routledge, the world's leading academic publisher in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Routledge’s publishing program encompasses groundbreaking textbooks and premier, peer-reviewed research in the Social Sciences, Humanities, Built Environment, Education and Behavioral Sciences.