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Mandopop

Mandopop
Traditional Chinese 華語流行音樂
Simplified Chinese 华语流行音乐

Mandopop refers to Mandarin popular music. The English term was coined around 1980 soon after "Cantopop" became a popular term for describing popular songs in Cantonese; "Mandopop" was used to describe Mandarin-language popular songs of that time, some of which were versions of Cantopop songs sung by the same singers with different lyrics to suit the different rhyme and tonal patterns of Mandarin. It is now used as a general term to describe popular songs performed in Mandarin.

Mandopop is categorized as a subgenre of commercial Chinese-language music within C-pop. Mandopop was the first variety of popular music in Chinese to establish itself as a viable industry. It originated in Shanghai, and later Hong Kong, Taipei and Beijing also emerged as important centers of the Mandopop music industry. Among the countries where Mandopop is most popular are mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore.

The Chinese-language music industry began with the arrival of gramophone, and the earliest gramophone recording in China was made in Shanghai in March 1903 by Fred Gaisberg who was sent by the Victor Talking Machine Company (VTMC) in the U.S. to record local music in Asia. The recordings were then manufactured outside China and re-imported by the Gramophone Company’s sales agent in China, the Moutrie (Moudeli) Foreign Firm. The Moudeli Company dominated the market before the 1910s until the Pathé Records (Chinese: 百代; pinyin: Bǎidài) took over the leading role. Pathé was founded in 1908 by a Frenchman named Labansat who had previously started a novelty entertainment business using phonograph in Shanghai around the beginning of the 20th century. The company established a recording studio, and the first record-pressing plant in the Shanghai French Concession in 1914, and became the principal record company to serve as the backbone for the young industry in China. It originally recorded mainly Peking opera, but later expanded to Mandarin popular music. Later other foreign as well as Chinese-own recording companies were also established in China.


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