“We arrive at the tipping point in our tour of Shanghai's 7 most revered songstresses- today we present 白虹, whose name means White Rainbow. She got her start in the same song and dance troupe as Zhou Xuan (see the jam of three days past), and by the 1940s was almost as big a star. She's got a broad vocal range and super clear diction in Mandarin, which was not altogether common outside of Beijing at the time. Sadly she decided to stay in China after the Cultural Revolution in1949 and had none too good a time of it, as was the case with most people in that insane period. Still, for that one decade she recorded many songs that are famous to this day. the words you see at :53 are a rough translation of the lyrics.”

4 more comments  /  21 loves