The Subversive Sociocultural Meanings of Cantopop Electronic Dance Music

Abstract

This study identifies and analyzes the socioculturally subversive characteristics of "Cantopop electronic dance music," a pop music genre that has been completely neglected by scholars. The first characteristic is the music's facilitation of local resistance against the cultural authority of global music producers, audiences, and gatekeepers. The second is its empowering of underprivileged local social groups against local cultural elites. Next is its adoption of a colloquial vocabulary and local dialect instead of the national standard language. And last is its playful deconstruction of the conservative social ideologies embodied in mainstream Cantopop.