ABSTRACT
The rise of choral singing as a public performance in Shanghai during the mid-1930s was the result of many historical developments and conditions. In this chapter, Tang considers how radio, sound cinema, the introduction of new singing subjects as well as subject matter, and an acute sense of the nation in crisis converged to turn “community singing” into a fresh musical practice and generate a new form of mass culture. Liu Liangmo, a secretary of the YMCA in Shanghai, was instrumental in initiating and promoting the community singing movement. His efforts, along with contributions by Lü Ji, a composer and music theorist of the cultural left, prepared for the emergence of China as a “singing nation” by the outbreak of the War of Resistance in 1937. Mass singing made it possible for the Chinese public to imagine its imperiled nation as a vocal community capable of rallying itself with a defiant outcry.
