Canto-Pop? Respect!!!

We all love to hate Canto-Pop! We all say lots of bad and hopefully funny things about it because we think this genre of music is dicky, twee, and too lovey-sweet to be endurable.

And yes, we all got a huge belly-laugh on hearing about the Canto-Pop stars' massive street fight last week. That was really, really was hilarious. True story: huge and serious street fight last week between all these Canto-Pop stars; had to be stopped by a huge number of police. It's so funny, I think, because they are all so pretty in such a girly way and their songs are always so dicky and twee, we could never have imagined they'd have the testosterone levels to get into something as butch as running street battles and massive punch-ups.

Still don't know what caused it, by the way, although we do know it all started in a recording studio and we think it was over songs.

And it's songs that I wanted to talk about here, so that's a nice segue.

It's all an industry, you know: Canto-Pop. Select very pretty boys and girls, give them an image, give them a song written by the industry writers, record it, put it on the charts, make lots of money. The Producers do, at any roads! I've just been reading interviews with Canto-Pop song writers and not only does it not pay very well, it is also hard, hard work.

Never realised before, yes, it would be.

As you know, Cantonese has only 700 words, but each of them has between seven and twelve tones, and each different-toned variation of the word makes it mean something completely different ... and, just to make things impossible for foreigners to use the language, there's always something rude in each set of one word. Like, you ask for 'a plate of chicken' and you get 'a very old prostitute'; those sorts of after-the-event hilarious mix-ups.

David has a very funny story about the first time he tried to speak Cantonese. All he said was "Leih Hou", meaning 'hello', and everyone just stared at him blankly until someone asked "What do you mean, 'Free Parking'?"

And the really annoying thing is that native-Chinese speakers don't hear the word without the attached tone and can't figure out what you mean. Like, what I now do - growing, with age, increasingly fearless in the face of abject humiliation - is stand there and repeat myself - say "Chi saw been gay bar?" - over and over again with different tones each time until I hit on something that makes the other person go "Ah!" and give me what I want. God only knows what I was saying all the other times! "Your hair makes me vomit!", "My hovercraft has blue seats.", "There's a worm on my shoelace." Whatever! It's no wonder people just stand there and stare blankly at you.

When I first came to Hong Kong, I planned to learn Cantonese ... but quickly gave that up as a bad joke. I couldn't even HEAR the different tones. My ear could distinguish maybe four of them, but the rest ...

This is a language you have to be born into, I think.

But we're talking about songs, right. So, do you get it now? Just imagine having a job where ... there you are, working on structure, rhythm and rhyme, crafting these words into all these perfect love lyrics ... and, because singing changes the tones, what you end up with could be anything at all! You write, say "Your eyes pierce through to my heart." and singing turns it into "Oxen farts are the centre of my life." and that's when the real work - the hard, hard work - has to start, fiddling around with the lines, trying to turn each one into something that still means something meaningful; or, at the very least, isn't downright stupid.

Hey, maybe this is what caused that street fight? Something happening within the lyrics!

But, anyway, hard, hard, hard work indeed! Kudos, Canto-Pop writers! Kudos!


Oh, and one more quick story while on this subject. Many years ago, I went to one of Keith's schools' graduation ceremonies - will never do THAT again! - and in some big-wig's long- winded, everlasting speech, he kept repeating the phrase "Ding dong. Blue duck farting! Ding dong. Blue duck farting!" I had to give myself a wedgie to stop myself from bursting out into gales of laughter.

Anyway, afterwards, was talking about this with a Canadian-Chinese friend and saying "What on earth could he have been talking about?" Because I couldn't recall the tones that accompanied the words, my friend took ages, over half an hour, trying to figure it out, trying out every single variation with every single tone imaginable ... until he hit on "Spend your life striving for great accomplishment." and both of us went "Eureka!" because that was the only one which sounded like something that would be said in a graduation speech!