Filed under: Amoy Opera, Instrumental | Tags: amoy, chinese opera, Fujian, Hokkien, Taiwan
Amoy is in the Southeastern province of Fujian, across the strait from Taiwan. The language and culture are closely related to that of Taiwan. Here’s an Amoy Opera instrumental on a label I’ve never seen before. The name of the label translates as something like “Country Love Company”, or maybe more accurately “Patriotsim”, as one commentor has noted below . The music sounds very much like Taiwanese Opera (coming soon in a future post).
Filed under: Amoy Opera
Here’s an interesting one on Regal. Chinese opera was usually released in the form of a 2, 3 or 4 record series to accommodate the lengthy lyrics. The music tends to be very similar on each side of these series, often with subtle variations or key shifts. Such is the case with this 2 record series, of which this is the third part. The first three sides are almost musically identical except part 3 introduces some amazing sliding and tremolo. Not only is this effect not on the other songs in this series, I’ve never heard it on any other Chinese record!
I’m not too sure about the history of Regal, but it’s obviously a subsidiary of Pathe at the time of this release.
Filed under: Amoy Opera | Tags: 78 rpm, 78rpm, Amoy Opera, beijing opera, cantonese opera, chinese opera, erhu, His Master's Voice, HMV, Peking Opera, teochew
Welcome back, Dear Reader, for another dose of of exceedingly obscure Chinese Opera. This time we have an example of Amoy Opera on the His Master’s Voice label. Amoy (aka Hokkien) is a language/dialect from the Southern Chinese province of Fujian, which neighbors the Guangdong province, the origin of our last posting of Teochew Opera. Amoy is directly across the strait from Taiwan and the language and music are basically the same. Like the Teochew people, the Fujian people emigrated to many parts of Southeast Asia, taking their music and language with them. Forms of this opera style are still popular in the region today.
A bit noisy at first, but it clears up…Enjoy!