Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Listening to Jazz Age China 1
1. The Orchestration of Chinese Musical Life 21
2. The Gramophone in China 53
3. The Yellow Music of Li Jinhui 73
4. Mass Music and the Politics of Phonographic Realism 105
Glossary 137
Notes 147
Bibliography 183
Index 207

Promotional Information

The distribution of the gramophone and the birth of popular music, including jazz, as a part of nation-building and modernity in China

About the Author

Andrew F. Jones is Assistant Professor of Chinese in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Like a Knife: Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music.

Reviews

"Yellow Music is a fantastic, one-of-a-kind read: a beautifully written, theoretically rich, and empirically grounded story about the relationship between American jazz music and the politics of colonialism and modernity in China during the interwar years. Andrew F. Jones puts the question of music at the center of debates about the role of the popular in the making of modern China."- Ralph Litzinger, author of Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging "Yellow Music pushes common sense presumptions forward by complicating theory with solid empirical study. Jones weaves rich information and intriguing conclusions throughout this historically grounded book."- Miram Silverberg, author of Changing Song: The Marxist Manifestos of Nakano Shigeharu "Jones illuminates Chinese cultural and political history from an unknown angle-that of popular music and an emergent transnational mass culture. In doing so, he not only enriches our understanding of this history but also makes an original contribution."- Prasenjit Duara, author of Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China "Andrew F. Jones's essential and exciting study follows the importation of Western technology and music into urban China, the creation of indigenous popular forms and the Chinese government's attempt to regulate the 'types' of sounds circulating at this critical juncture in the nation's history ... it is truly refreshing to read a history of individuals and record players that reveals so much about the political climate and local culture of China."--The Wire, January 2002