Re-envisaging Chinese Traditional Music

Costume (period) drama has long been one of the most popular genres in the Chinese film industry. By the ingenious design of costume and arrangement of scenery, historical figures and events are reconstructed and re-envisaged through the perspective of screenwriters and directors. In this process of re-envisagement, the choice of music also has an important role. During the early period of development of Hong Kong post-war film (1950s and 60s), due to the limited production budget and resources, it was common to use pre-existing music. To suit the historical setting of the costume dramas, new programmatic and dramatic association were established between images and music, to the extent that some works were later on featured as “martial arts music” in record albums and concert performances. This paper examines the use of pre-existing Chinese music in representative examples of Hong Kong costume drama films produced in the 1950s and 1960s. It also demonstrates how traditional Chinese instrumental music is re-envisaged through their use as soundtrack in these films over the years. With the support of two representative examples – the Wong Fei-hung (黃飛鴻) and the Young Swordsman Lung Kim-fei (如來神掌) film series – on the one hand I aim to show how these Chinese instrumental works were recontextualised and later became recognized as “martial arts hero music”; on the other hand I will discuss how such re-envisagement inspired the filmmakers in creating their martial arts films in later periods.