Shanghai jazz (時代曲 shídàiqū, 'songs of the times') is the Chinese-language popular music produced in the international-settlement Shanghai roughly from 1927 to the 1949 founding of the People's Republic. Its defining feature is the fusion of American swing rhythm with Chinese pentatonic (gong-shang-jue-zhi-yu) melodic contour. Instrumentation is big-band jazz: saxophone, trumpet, trombone, piano, upright bass, drum kit, occasionally erhu and pipa for a Chinese colouring. Tempos run 90-140 BPM, most often in fox-trot. The genre's vocal signature is the light, nasally-sweet high-female voice — Zhou Xuan's 'golden throat' — that became the model for Chinese-language female pop.

After the 1917 Russian Revolution, White Russian musicians fled to Shanghai and staffed the professional orchestras of its ballrooms — the Paramount, the Majestic, Ciro's. In 1927 Li Jinhui (1891-1967) released 'Drizzle,' generally credited as the first Chinese-language pop hit. Filipino musicians (Jimmy King and others) brought American jazz into the same rooms in the early 1930s. Buck Clayton, the future Count Basie trumpeter, was resident at Shanghai's Canidrome from 1934 to 1936. On the vocal side, Zhou Xuan (1920-57) became the era's undisputed star, singing 'The Wandering Songstress' and 'Song of the Four Seasons' for the 1937 film Street Angel.

Listen first to how thin Zhou Xuan's voice is. Not chest-resonated operatic; nasally, sweetly, high-headed — the 'golden throat' template. The backing on 'The Wandering Songstress' is minimal jazz trio plus occasional erhu — the arrangement stays out of her way. Yao Lee's 'Rose, Rose, I Love You' (1940) uses a full big band; Frankie Laine's English-language cover reached number 3 on Billboard in 1951, the first Chinese-language pop song to become an international hit. Bai Guang's 'Autumn Night' uses an alto-husky voice deliberately opposite to the soprano fashion of the day; contemporaries called it a 'demonic low.' Zhou Xuan's 'Shanghai Nights' (1946) delivers the era's urban glamour in fox-trot swing.

Zhou Xuan's 'Shanghai Nights' (1946) is the emblematic entry. Then 'The Wandering Songstress' (1937) from Street Angel. Yao Lee's 'Rose, Rose, I Love You' (1940) for the international-hit context. Bai Guang's 'Autumn Night' for the contrarian low-register style. Late night, mono speakers, embracing the surface noise of the 1930s-40s shellacs.

After 1949 the Communist Party denounced Shanghai jazz as 'decadent music' and banned recording and performance outright. Many singers and composers (Li Jinguang, Yao Min, Yao Lee, Bai Guang) fled to Hong Kong, where they became the founding generation of Hong Kong Mandarin-language shídàiqū and, eventually, the roots of early Cantopop. Teresa Teng emerged in the 1970s as the direct heir of this Shanghai lineage. Li Xianglan (Yamaguchi Yoshiko, 1920-2014), Japanese-born and a star of Manchukuo film who sang in Chinese, was detained in Shanghai in August 1945 as a 'Chinese collaborator' but was released once her Japanese citizenship was proved. Her autobiography My Life as Li Xianglan (1987) became a Japanese bestseller. She later served in Japan's House of Councillors.