“님은 언제 다시 오나”: 노래하는 여성과 노래의 정치학 = “When Will You Come Back Again 何日君再來”: Sing-Song Girls and the Politics of Song

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

It is common in popular music that the persistence of a song is often determined not only by the quality of the song itself but also by the social, cultural, and political context surrounding it. However in the case of “When Will You Come Back Again 何日君再來” the vitality of the song has continued for an unusual long time; the song, which spans more than 60 years, mediates the modern and contemporary political and cultural history of China. Set against the backdrop of Shanghai modernism in the 1930s, the song follows the Chinese popular music, a hybrid of Western and traditional Chinese music, and its lyric focuses style on the common theme of breakups in popular songs. It was the question of “who is ‘you (君)’” that made this simple song the center of a heated debate, and what made it even more controversial was that the narrator was a woman. From Zhou Xuan to Li Lili, Li Xianglan to Deng Lijun, this article explores the multilayered and contradictory refractions of a song through the voices of female musicians.