Nanyin in Hong Kong

Nanyin (Southern tunes) is a form of narrative singing in the Cantonese dialect popular in the Pearl River Delta. Together with yue’ou (“Cantonese vernacular singing”), longzhou (“songs sung by itinerant singers holding wooden dragon boat-shaped piece”), muyu (“song sung in free rhythm”) and banyan (“beat pattern singing”), they are the important components of the vernacular ballad-singing of Guangdong.

Nanyin started to find its presence in Hong Kong at the beginning of the 20th century. As its popularity grew, it became a folk song-art that won a large following. There was a piece of nanyin lyrics in The Chinese Mail on 9th January, 1917 entitled, The Beggar’s Lament – it goes to show how popular the singing genre was at the time. Even literati were eager to contribute new lyrics, the contents of which were often topical issues about the life of the people.

Before the 1920s, nanyin was almost invariably sung by blind artists, the men being called gushi, and the female, shiniang. They might be itinerant singers who made this their living, or hired to perform on celebratory occasions, banquets, birthdays of deities etc., in teahouses, taverns, private homes and brothels.

The genre was slowly incorporated into Cantonese opera and Cantonese operatic song towards the beginning of the 20th century. The teahouses began to hire actresses instead of the blind artists to perform. Fortunately by the 1950s and 1960s, there were still programmes on Commercial Radio and Radio Hong Kong (later Radio Television Hong Kong) dedicated to nanyin and Cantonese operatic songs, with both male and female blind artists invited to sing. The most prominent figure among them was Dou Wun. Between 1955 and 1970, his voice could be heard on Radio Hong Kong singing nanyin. His repertoire included long narrative tunes that could last for a few months. This was a time when nanyin could widen its audience base significantly. But gradually, as the social environment changed and other forms of mass entertainment and music genres took over, nanyin began to phase out.