Chinese opera recordings from early 1900s

[hbuchtel]

The US Library of Congress (in partnership with Sony, apparently), has made a huge collection of historical recordings available for streaming from its website: National Jukebox

In the Chinese language section there are four recordings of Chinese opera from 1902 and 1903 - pretty wild sounds! I can't identify the style of opera or the dialect, although I'd hazard a guess at it being Cantonese opera. The names of the recordings are:

1. 貳其子送 (link)

2. (I can't read this one) (link)

3. (or this one) (link)

4. 號七氣吐章文 (link)

It looks like the LOC couldn't be troubled to find somebody to read the characters written on each record, as the 'title' section of each recording has been left blank. Perhaps if folks here can get some more information about the recordings we could send it to them!

[skylee]

I guess you know they should be read from right to left ...

1. 送子其貳

2. 寄子全宗六號

3. 湘子登仙弍號

4. 文章吐氣七號

[hbuchtel]

I guess you know they should be read from right to left.

Hah hah, no, I didn't know that! They make much more sense now. :rolleyes:

edit: ah, that explains why some of the records also say "听好“. I was assuming that the record producer didn't know what the characters meant and made a mistake (like some of the random Chinese character tattoos or English t-shirts one sees).

[Amelia Atenna]

Hello there!

I was wondering if you know of more chinese music from 1900-1910.
Recordings are so hard to find!
I am also interested to find out what were the popular chinese folk songs of the time, children's songs even.
I live in San Francisco, and I want to find out more about what were the sounds of everyday was like for Chinese people at the time in San Francisc Chinese immigrants, mainly 1900-1905. and 1900-1910 as well.
Hope you are well!

Hope to hear from you!
X,

A