In terms of circulation and sales of albums, the most popular pop music found in mainland China today is the Mandopop imported from Taiwan. The pop music that is genuinely locally produced in China by mainland producers and artists, and which is most notable to the outside world is probably the Chinese rock music and the wave of ‘northwest wind’ pop music produced locally in China in the late 1980s. However, after 2005, there emerged a new kind of Chinese pop that is commercially successful and a product of the national Pop Idol-like singing contest. This paper describes and explicates the broad popularity of this new wave of Chinese pop. Putting aside the overly discussed topic of democracy that comes out of such politicised Supergirl contests, this paper focuses on the nature of the melody and lyrics of pop idol winner Chris Li's songs and how their unique formulation evolves into an important ‘short wave’ of Chinese pop.

Israeli popular music includes many quotations from earlier Israeli songs as well as other Israeliana references. Quotations may take various forms, from cover versions to the mere evocation of song titles. This phenomenon preceded the rockisation of Israeli music, had its apex in the 1970s with early rockisation, and is continuing today, despite a certain decline. The purpose of the quotations is often a mere interaction with traditional materials, but it also sometimes expresses a striving towards an experience of life that is more sincere. Two subtopics of special significance are adolescence and political critique. Since earlier hegemony in Israel was maintained by the old left, the rock music rebellion was not as anti-capitalistic as in the Woodstock Festival, rather manifesting anti-authoritarian trends similar to (but milder than) those encountered in Eastern Europe.

This paper examines the performances of Taiwanese American Jack Hsu and his New Jersey-based progressive erhu-rock band The Hsu-nami, in transnational contexts fraught by ethnonationalism and race. Through an ethnographic approach, this paper highlights the band's depoliticising practice to deflect the geopolitics across the Taiwan Strait. It also discusses how Hsu adapts the musical and gender ideologies in rock music culture to diffuse racial ideologies surrounding his ethnicity and instrument. Finally, an analysis of the band's deployment of cultural diplomacy discusses pragmatic multiculturalism, a mode that reflects the tension between rock music's ostensibly counter-cultural front and its commercial foundation.

This paper focuses on Shibuya-kei, a style of independent popular music that emerged in Japan in the late 1980s and which has been influential in the popularisation of J-pop worldwide. Although usually treated as a uniquely Japanese musical genre, Shibuya-kei was from its inception defined by an ostentatious internationalism, fusing jazz, easy listening and bossa nova with British, American and French retro-pop styles. Tracing the international itineraries of Shibuya-kei musicians and the role of Western musicians and labels in promoting it outside Japan, this paper characterises Shibuya-kei not as just another J-pop genre but as a transnational soundscape, a collaborative project produced by a network of musicians circulating between Japan and the UK, the US, France, Germany, Spain and Brazil. As such, the paper suggests, it requires us to rethink the place of the national in relation to popular music.