Hong Kong had long been a British colony. Western cultural influences started early and seeped into people’s daily life as early as the 1920s.
Cultural influences from the West took an upward turn in the 1950s, firstly through films. During the time when Wong Jum-sum grew up, the number of Western films on show every year was never less than 200. The West was also prominent in radio broadcast. Thanks to the work of progressive radio show hosts like Aileen Woods and Uncle Ray, a whole generation came to be exposed to all styles and genres of Western pop music. They helped to nurture a world where one could embrace simultaneously the diverse sound and sentiments of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and Benny Goodman. A new collective outlook was thus embodied in the skin and bone of the baby boomer generation.
One major root of American pop is jazz. Today jazz is deemed a cultural heritage of the United States. In young Wong Jum-sum’s time, it bore no such burden: it was undiluted popular music.
Young Wong Jum-sum loved jazz. He read widely on jazz. He played the jazz drums. He listened profusely to the music of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and met the challenge of the bebop revolution head on.
When he came to write his doctoral thesis, he re-encountered the works of Buck Clayton, who influenced the development of Mando pop with his presence in Shanghai’s nightclub scene in the 1930s.
Through all this, he came to confirm jazz is a real treasure of American culture.
