Pathé Records (Hong Kong)
Encyclopedia
- "China Record Company" redirects here. See also China Record CorporationChina Record CorporationChina Record Corporation is the Chinese government's oldest and largest record company. CRC's catalog of traditional Chinese ethnic, classical and folk music features over 60,000 releases spanning some 5,000 years of Chinese musical history, and includes the world-renowned Peking operas and a...
.
Pathé Records is the first major record company in Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and later Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
. The company was a subsidiary of the original Pathé Records
Pathé Records
Pathé Records was a France-based international record label and producer of phonographs, active from the 1890s through the 1930s.- Early years :...
conglomerate.
History
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
and played gramophone records to Chinese citizens who were curious. The phonograph
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
was purchased from Moutrie and Company, and he charged anyone 10 cents to listen to a novelty record called "Laughing Foreigners" (洋人大笑). Anyone capable of resisting any laughs or chuckles got their money back. Phonographs were becoming popular in the city in 1906. By 1908, he received help from a French engineer and an assistant from Ningbo
Ningbo
Ningbo is a seaport city of northeastern Zhejiang province, Eastern China. Holding sub-provincial administrative status, the municipality has a population of 7,605,700 inhabitants at the 2010 census whom 3,089,180 in the built up area made of 6 urban districts. It lies south of the Hangzhou Bay,...
and established "Pathé Orient" (東方百代), also known as "Pathé Asia," though other sources point to the renaming in 1921.
The company initially recorded Peking Opera. Mandarin popular songs became hits, and they were sold at stores like Wing On
Wing On
Wing On is a department store company in Hong Kong.The company is currently owned by a Hong Kong listed company Wing On Company International Limited , incorporated in Bermuda...
in Shanghai.
In 1930 Pathé's factory was taken over by Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
in Shanghai and was used to press odeon
Odeon Records
Odeon Records was a record label founded in 1903 by Max Straus and Heinrich Zuntz of the International Talking Machine Company in Berlin, Germany. It was named after a famous theatre in Paris, whose classical dome appears on the Odeon record label....
and beka
Beka Records
Beka Records was a record label based in Germany, active from about 1903 to 1925. Before World War I, Beka also made gramophone records for the United Kingdom market under the Beka-Grand Records label. The company became a subsidiary of the Carl Lindström Company which was sold to the Columbia...
with the manufacturing portion named "China Record Co. Ltd," and the distributor continued as Pathé Orient. In the same decade, Pathé went under British EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
, who were originally seeking to make a profit on the Bund
The Bund
The Bund is a waterfront area in central Shanghai, People's Republic of China. The area centres on a section of Zhongshan Road within the former Shanghai International Settlement, which runs along the western bank of the Huangpu River, facing Pudong, in the eastern part of Huangpu District...
selling gramophone record
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
s. Ren Guang became Pathé-EMI's new director and began getting involved with leftist music devoted to the proletarian cause. The leftist music was eventually cut off by the Japanese
Empire of Japan
The Empire of Japan is the name of the state of Japan that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of...
military officials in 1937, who also forced the company to fire Ren. Any Japanese plants were also taken back to the Nipponophone Company
Columbia Music Entertainment
is a Japanese record label founded in 1910 as . It affiliated itself with the Columbia Graphophone Company of the United Kingdom and adopted the standard UK Columbia trademarks in 1931. The company changed its name to Nippon Columbia Co., Ltd. in 1946. It used the Nippon Columbia name until...
(日本蓄音器株式会社).
From the late 1930s to 1940s the company held the rights
Rights
Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory...
to 90% of the mandopop
Mandopop
Mandopop is a colloquial abbreviation for "Mandarin popular music." It is categorized as a subgenre of commercial Chinese-language music within C-pop. Mandopop was the first variety of popular music in Chinese to establish itself as a viable industry. As the name implies, Mandopop features songs...
songs.
In 1950 Pathé stopped releasing records in China and was taken over by the Chinese Communist government. Two years later the Pathé office in Hong Kong started to cut records, thus returning the glory of Shanghainese pop music in the British colony. Pathé Hong Kong faced fierce competition in the 1960s with the rise of Diamond Records and eventually ceased Shanghainese pop production and cut Cantopop
Cantopop
Cantopop is a colloquialism for "Cantonese popular music". It is sometimes referred to as HK-pop, short for "Hong Kong popular music". It is categorized as a subgenre of Chinese popular music within C-pop...
instead, which gained popularity in the early 1970s.
Pathé Hong Kong has since changed its English name to EMI Hong Kong but has retained its original Chinese name to this day.