Popular Music in China’s Singing Culture: Historical, Theoretical, and Pedagogical Aspects

The article analyses the role and significance of popular music in China’s singing culture from the standpoint of historical and theoretical aspects. China’s popular culture is a relatively young phenomenon, having emerged and developed in less than half a century. Chinese pop culture has spread far beyond mainland China. It is a multilingual, relatively well-integrated cultural economy that functions in accordance with Chinese folk traditions. The history of pop music in China spans more than 30 years. The so-called popular music can be divided into pop music, blues, jazz music, rock, avangarde trends and multigenre popular melodies adapted for performance by various orchestras and ensembles. China did not completely copy the model of development of foreign popular music, but decided to combine Western popular music culture with its own musical culture, trying to maintain a reasonable balance in the ratio of these cultures. The aim of this study is to identify the pedagogical potential of popular music in Chinese singing culture.