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October 28, 2016

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The ‘music valley’ that put China’s record industry on a golden path

IN one of the greenest part of Xujiahui stands an old red villa that was once the cradle of Chinese musical history. Nicknamed “Xiao Hong Lou” (small red house), the villa on Hengshan Road was the headquarters of the recording company, EMI (Electric & Musical Industries Ltd), in China.

“The ‘small red house’ was a symbolic structure of the Chinese recording industry. Music was created here and continued to bloom here for more than half a century,” says Chen Jianping, former editor-in-chief of China Records Shanghai Company, which took over EMI in 1949.

“A galaxy of stars recorded their songs here since the EMI era, such as ‘Golden Voice’ Zhou Xuan and Spanish singer Julio Iglesias. It was also here that the Chinese national anthem ‘March of the Volunteers’ was recorded, as was the internationally famous 1940 Mandarin song ‘Rose, Rose I Love You.’ The English version of this song was sung by American singer Frankie Laine in 1951,” says Chen.

Chen, who has been researching materials on EMI and China Records over the past five years, discovered that EMI had owned the 4,000-square-meter land in Xujiahui since 1919. Buildings started coming up around the 1920s and 1930s.

EMI held considerable influence in China’s record and gramophone industry. The company entered the Chinese market in 1908 and became the first and biggest music recording company in China before 1949.

The company produced records of famous Peking Opera singers and sold them with the “Rooster” logo. However in 1934, the Paris-based EMI went bankrupt and a British company took over its Shanghai branch.

In 1952, the state-owned China Records moved in.

“I remember the red villa had a round shade and a big tree in front of it. The wooden floor was not well maintained but it was still in good shape,” says Chen.

“The roof and the outer walls looked like a typical British residential house in the late 19th century,” says Tongji University Professor Liu Gang, an expert on architectural history of the former French concession. “This Neoclassical-style building also contains some French and Belgium elements.”

Chen says the first floor used to be a meeting room, drama-editing room and the office of the art editor.

The president’s office and publishing department were on the second floor while the music editors worked on the top floor.

The golden era for Chinese records was in the late 1980s when “The Red Sun,” a collection of popular songs praising Chairman Mao Zedong during the “cultural revolution” (1966-76) was produced here. The album sold a record 7 million copies nationwide.

“‘The Red Sun’ was so popular that the vehicles of wholesale buyers would be parked outside the ‘small red house’,” recalls Chen.

For local residents, the compound that housed the red villa was known as the “music valley.” The former retail department of China Records was a paradise for music lovers and record collectors. China’s first magazine for pop music, Audio-Video World, was also launched here in 1986.

In 1995, Chinese actress Gong Li recorded her first song in this red villa for director Zhang Yimou’s film “Shanghai Triad.”

But with the emergence of new technologies, the loss-making record companies were on their last legs.

In 2002, “music valley” had to make way for the planned Xujiahui Greenland. The buildings were demolished and with that the golden era of the record industry came to an end.

Only the “small red house” survived since “it was the most beautiful building in the compound and therefore preserved for its bit of history,” according to Chen.

For a while the villa was converted into a restaurant. It retained traces of the past with its exquisitely carved staircases, wooden floors, fireplaces and an iron safe on the first floor.

There are possible plans now to convert it into a museum for the Chinese record industry.

In 2004, China Records hosted a seminar in the “small red house” to mark a century of recording music in China. Well-known names from the industry, including the late Peking Opera singer Mei Baojiu and composer Chen Gang attended the event. The venue held a lot of memories for them. Their famous parents, Peking Opera master Mei Lanfang and renowned composer Chen Gexin, had worked in that building in the early part of last century.

“They felt at home as soon as they entered the ‘small red house’ and were a bit sad that the villa, which had played such an important role in the Chinese culture industry, was no longer associated with music,” Chen Jianping says.

“I sigh almost every time I pass by the ‘small red house,’ which is still so beautiful and attractive,” Chen Gang, the 81-year-old composer known for his “Butterfly Lovers Concerto,” says. “Looking at it, I can still ‘see’ people from the bygone era moving slowly in a wave of soft-toned old songs. I can ‘see’ Mei Lanfang weaving a sword and singing ‘Farewell My Concubine,’ while composer Nie Er writing ‘March of the Volunteers’ which later became our national anthem.

“And my father, Chen Gexin, walking into the room out of the big mirror frame on the second floor, sitting by the piano and accompanying singer Zhou Xuan for her famous number ‘Ye Shanghai ...’

“Next door, singer Yao Lee is belting out my father’s famous work — ‘Rose Rose I Love You’.”




 

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