YE on Music Theory Print

Yé-yé

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Origin#

The movement had its origins in the radio program (loosely translated as “Hello, mates” or “Hello, pals”), created by Jean Frydman and hosted by Daniel Filipacchi and Frank Ténot, which first aired in December 1959. The phrase “Salut les copains” dates back to the title of a 1957 song by Gilbert Bécaud and Pierre Delanoë, who themselves had little regard for the yé-yé music that the radio show typically featured. The program became an immediate success, and one of its sections, “Le chouchou de la semaine” (“This Week’s Sweetheart”), became the starting point for most yé-yé singers. Any song that was presented as a chouchou went straight to the top places in the charts. The Salut les copains phenomenon continued with a magazine of the same name that was first published in 1962 in France, with German, Spanish, and Italian (“Ciao Amici”) editions following shortly afterward. “Radios were practicing a real hype, much more than today. We, the singers, were much, much less numerous than today – and there were fewer radios. It was also the heyday of Salut les copains, and the press played an extremely important role, it could promote beginners. I remember being on the front page of Paris Match very quickly, without being very well known or doing anything special for that; this would no longer be possible nowadays. In fact, in the 1960s, we saw the advent of the mass media. At the same time, fashion had assumed a considerable importance, which it had never before had. Singers like me became emblems of fashion, in addition to chanson, which helped to maintain notoriety.” —Françoise Hardy, Télérama, 2012. Françoise Hardy performed on Mireille Hartuch’s television show in February 1962 (a year before The Beatles recorded “She Loves You”), singing “”, which began with “Yeah yeah yeah yeah”. After she finished, Hartuch remarked on the “yé yé” lyrics and asked her what they meant. The term was popularised by Edgar Morin in a July 1963 article in .

Yellow music

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

China#

Yellow music () or yellow songs () was a label used to describe early generations of shidaiqu, i.e. Chinese popular music in Shanghai from the 1920s to the 1940s. The color yellow is associated with eroticism and sex in the country, since 黄, huáng, the Mandarin character for “yellow”, also means “erotic”. The Chinese Communist Party saw pop music as sexually indecent and labeled the C-pop genre as such. These restrictions prompted many Shanghai artists to flee to Hong Kong, where it reached its height in the 1950s until the late 1960s, when it was displaced by Mandarin-language Taiwanese pop (and later by Cantopop). The term was used continually up to the Cultural Revolution. By the early 1980s, however, yellow music could be performed again.

Yemeni hip-hop

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Context#

The Yemeni population is one of the poorest of the Arab world and is estimated to have a median age of 18 years. Around 60% of the population are under the age of 25. The Yemeni youth has constantly been related to issues regarding violence, unemployment, the controversial use of khat, participation in radical political groups, and other social problems. On the other hand, it has been a major actor in the latest political transformations and also on the development of a vivid hip hop scenery, facts that aren’t coincidentally associated. The hip hop expressions often contemplates social-political issues and played an important role on the Yemeni Revolution. Thus, the dynamicity of the Yemeni youth has been both the spontaneous generator and the vessel of a large hip hop scene in the country, even though facing lack of institutional support.