The Gramophone Industry and Chinese Records in Pre-war Singapore: Global Network and Local Consumption

Abstract

This paper presents the history of the gramophone industry and Chinese records in pre-war Singapore, through exploring the position of Singapore in the global commercial networks of transnational gramophone enterprises, and the local consumption of Chinese music records. At the turn of the twentieth century, the emergence of gramophone companies in the United States and European countries enabled Chinese opera and music in different regional languages to be manufactured into records, and consumed as commodities by Chinese communities all around the globe. Shaped by multiple routes of trade and cultural connections, the Chinese records sold in Singapore were of diverse historical origins and regional languages that catered to the different Chinese dialect groups. By the 1920s and 1930s, the popularization of gramophones and Chinese records had engendered an unprecedented sonic experience in Singapore.