Unisonance in kung fu film music, or the Wong Fei-hung theme song as a Cantonese transnational anthem

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dc.contributor.authorMcGuire, Colin P.
dc.contributor.funderIrish Research Councilen
dc.date.accessioned2019-10-02T04:38:14Z
dc.date.available2019-10-02T04:38:14Z
dc.date.issued2018-05-04
dc.description.abstractWong Fei-hung was a Cantonese martial arts master from southern China who became associated with a melody called ‘General’s Ode’. Since the 1950s, over 100 Hong Kong movies and television shows have forged the link by using this melody as Master Wong’s theme. During fieldwork in a Chinese Canadian kung fu club, I observed several consultants claiming this piece as a Cantonese national anthem—a hymn for a nation without a sovereign state. Virtual ethnography conducted online showed that this opinion is held more widely, but that the piece also inspires broader Chinese nationalist sentiment. My analysis of speech-tone relationships to melodic contour in Cantonese and Mandarin versions of the song, however, has revealed a tight integration with the former that the latter lacked. By sharpening Anderson’s concept of unisonance, I explore how this song has become an unofficial transnational anthem for Cantonese people, arguing that Master Wong’s theme auralises an abstract sense of imagined community.en
dc.description.sponsorshipGOIPD/2016/145en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionPublished Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationMcGuire, C.P., 2018, January. Unisonance in kung fu film music, or the Wong Fei-hung theme song as a Cantonese transnational anthem. In Ethnomusicology Forum. Vol. 27(1), (19pp). DOI:10.1080/17411912.2018.1463549en
dc.identifier.doi10.1080/17411912.2018.1463549en
dc.identifier.eissn1741-1920
dc.identifier.endpage67en
dc.identifier.issn1741-1912
dc.identifier.issued1en
dc.identifier.journaltitleEthnomusicology Forumen
dc.identifier.startpage48en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/8663
dc.identifier.volume27en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherRoutledgeen
dc.relation.urihttps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17411912.2018.1463549
dc.rights© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Groupen
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/en
dc.subjectAnthemsen
dc.subjectUnisonanceen
dc.subjectTransnationsen
dc.subjectDiasporasen
dc.subjectNationalismen
dc.subjectImagined communitiesen
dc.subjectMusic and martial artsen
dc.subjectKung fu moviesen
dc.subjectHong Kong cinemaen
dc.subjectWong Fei-hungen
dc.subjectHuang Feihongen
dc.subjectOnce Upon a Time in Chinaen
dc.subjectCantoneseen
dc.titleUnisonance in kung fu film music, or the Wong Fei-hung theme song as a Cantonese transnational anthemen
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)en
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