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Lesson Transcript

Intro

Hi, everybody! Olivia here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I’ll answer some of your most common Cantonese questions.
The Question
The question for this lesson is: What is Cantopop?
Explanation
Cantopop is a colloquialism for "Cantonese pop music" or "Hong Kong popular music," in Cantonese it’s called 粵語流行曲 (jyut6 jyu5 lau4 hang4 kuk1).
Cantopop is one of the more prominent genres of music produced in Hong Kong. It has become synonymous with local music culture since its birth in Hong Kong. While many other forms of music exist, Cantopop is still the most popular; however, you'll also hear “Mandopop” from Taiwan and China in Hong Kong as well. Most artists are essentially multilingual these days and sing in both Cantonese and Mandarin.
One popular singer in recent years is 陳奕迅 (can4 jik6 seon3) Eason Chan, a male singer from Hong Kong. He has been described as a blast of fresh air in the Hong Kong music scene, and his album U87 has been recommended by Time Magazine as one of the five best Asian albums worth buying.
The 1980s are known as 黃金年代 (wong4 gam1 nin4 doi6 ) or the "Golden age" of Cantopop.
Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, George Lam, Alan Tam, Sally Yeh, Priscilla Chan, Sandy Lam, and Danny Chan are the top singers of that time.
In the 1990s, Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Aaron Kwok and Leon Lai were the most popular singers. They are also known as 四大天王(sei3 daai6 tin1 wong4), the "Four Heavenly Kings."
In the last decade or so, they have significantly sung less, but acted more, for both commercials and movies. They have also established successful companies running production houses and doing entertainment management. Occasionally, they do concerts tours, and are always sold out.

Outro

How was it? Pretty interesting right?
Do you have any more questions? Leave them in the comments below and I’ll try to answer them!
"See you next time!", 下次見! (haa6 ci3 gin3!)

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