From: william@natimuk.acci.com.au (William Lo)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.hongkong
Subject: Re: HK Lyrics (Re: Tat Ming Pair)
Keywords: Cantonese
Date: 1 Oct 92 01:11:19 GMT
Organization: IBM Australia/ACCI

In article <23046@optima.cs.arizona.edu> leoso@cs.arizona.edu (Leo WaiChung So) writes:
>william@natimuk.acci.com.au (William Lo) writes:
>>	Their lyrics were always good! Not many cantonese songs nowadays
>>	are dressed with good lyrics IMHO. Think so? I reckon writing
>>	good cantonese lyrics is a more difficult job than writing good 
>>	lyrics in English or Mandarin or Italian(other languages?) You
>>	have so many more things to think about(like the rhyme, rhetoric, 
>>	etc. which cause tons of restraints tying things into knots). 
>>	Anyone here writes cantonese lyrics?  Well, I do and would like 
>>	to hear from someone who does that, too. 
>
>  I don't write cantonese lyrics. But I notice that nowadays HK music
>  is really weak in lyrics. Compare it with Sam's oldies, most of 
>  today's pop hits suck. 
>
>  I agree with you that Cantonese lyric is somewhat more difficult
>  because we have nine accents. But we have one advantage (?) in having
>  two ways to say our meaning in songs, i.e. Spoken Cantonese and 
>  written Chinese. I would say HK music can be more flexible in 
>  choosing words, and should not be limited to a few *standard* words 
						      ^^^^^^^^^^
	Some of our home-brand lyric writers tend to copy and repeat
	those frequently-used words from one song to other songs over
	and over again. They stick to those and never think of the  
	others otherwise. Weak-minded people... 

>  like "Po Yung" (hug), "Bing Dung" (cold), "Sun Kui" (body), "Bay Wan" 
>  (arm), "Yung Mun" (hug and kiss), "Tong Ha" (lay down) ... to name a 
>  few.

	Thanks. Commonly found examples.  

>
>  What's wrong? The first reason I can think of is that we write (or 
>  copy) songs before writing lyrics. So to a certain extent the room for
>  choosing words is limited. Taiwan songs do the opposite in that they
>  write lyrics before making melody for it. (My Taiwan roommate just
>  couldn't believe it when I told him our way.) One exception is Wang
>  Jie whose both Mandarin and Cantonese songs are good in lyrics.

	That's why I said writing a good Cantonese song is very tricky 
	and difficult. Starting a song with some lyrics should be
	sometimes possible I think. But remember, since we have taken a 
	music-then-lyrics approach to writing Cantonese songs, we're
	actually fitting Cantonese words between the notes rather than 
	*writing* something...   
>
>  Another reason maybe that the Chinese education in HK is not enough.
>  Not many secondary schools teach how to balance the "Ping Tsak" and 
>  the exposure to *useful* Chinese Literature is not enough. (BTW, is 
>  "San Man 3 Si" still in the cirriculum of School Cert? :) 

	I must accept this. Try looking at one of those pocket-type best
	sellers(most of which are written by Cantonese-speaking writers)
	and roughly count the "white words" and funny(weird) phrases... 

>
>  The last reason may be there are not enough lyric writers in HK. (Low

	In fact, there're many but big-name singers love to hire only  
	those famed(but not always good) ones.
 
>  Pay?) The surviving writers are just producing "Hong For", using those
>  standard, meaningless words. Our generation becomes used to this "Hong 
>  For" and just adhere to those standard words in mind and then repeatedly 
>  carry it forward... What a viscious cirle.

---Cheers,
	Bill	
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