The Politics of Pop: Tat Ming Pair

How can music, art, and popular culture survive and even thrive in the current political tide? How can it open up new imaginations of the present or future? Can it help us to live life differently? In It’s My Party: Tat Ming Pair and the Postcolonial Politics of Popular Music in Hong Kong, the authors focus on just one band from one city – but the story of Tat Ming Pair, in so many ways, is the story of Hong Kong’s recent decades, from the Handover to the Umbrella Movement to the social protests in 2019. The book, published by Palgrave, is a timely and daring inquiry into the intricate relationship between politics and pop music. This is all the more urgent in times like ours, where we can witness an increasing urgency for a different and more resilient cultural politics – not only in East Asia but also in the world at large.

The book is the first outcome of the ERC-funded project ‘RESCUE: Resilient Cultures – Music, Art, and Cinema in Mainland China and Hong Kong.’ The book is freely available through Open Access. 

About the speakers
Chow Yiu Fai was born in Hong Kong and received his PhD degree at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam. Currently a Professor at the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing of Hong Kong Baptist University. Chow is an award-winning writer. He released his first lyrics in 1989. Since then he has penned more than 1,000 lyrical works for a diversity of pop artists in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China. Lately, Chow has been increasingly involved in prose writing, multi-media and visual art projects.

Leonie Schmidt is an Associate Professor in the Media Studies department of the University of Amsterdam and a researcher affiliated with the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis. Her research interests cover ecomedia, elemental media, green cultural studies, religion, popular culture and climate change. Her current ERC-funded research explores cultural approaches to climate change, specifically focusing on the Global South.

Jaap Kooijman is an associate professor in Media Studies and American Studies and academic director of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Fabricating the Absolute Fake (AUP 2013) and De muziekfabriek (Mazirel 2024), and co-editor, with Glyn Davis, of The Richard Dyer Reader (BFI 2023).

Joke Hermes is professor of practice-based research at Inholland UAS and has a small appointment at the University of Amsterdam’s Media Studies department. The central theme in her work is cultural citizenship: the ways in which popular culture allows us to reflect on what worries us, what we hope for, fear or are critical of. As audience researcher she sees an urgent need to start listening with far more care, attention and analytical prowess.

Jeroen de Kloet (moderator) is Professor of Globalisation Studies at the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is affiliated with the Beijing Language and Culture University. He is also a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Art and Sciences (KNAW). He is the PI of RESCUE, funded by an ERC advanced grant. Publications includeYouth Cultures in China (with Anthony Fung, Polity 2017), and the edited volumes Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitization in the Time of Creative China (with Yiu Fai Chow and Lena Scheen, AUP 2019) and Trans-Asia as Method: Theory and Practices (with Yiu Fai Chow and Gladys Pak Lei Chong, Rowman and Littlefield, 2019).