My Cantopop Nights

byEmma-Lee Moss

A Memoir in Songs

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A story of music, fandom and identity, from the acclaimed singer-songwriter Emma-Lee Moss (a.k.a. Emmy the Great)

For 11-year-old Emma-Lee, the sound of Hong Kong in the summer of 1995 is Cantopop. The Cantopop stars she idolises are everywhere - their images are on every billboard and their music spills from shop speakers onto the streets. When she and her family move to England later that year, Emma-Lee’s love of Cantopop will be pushed underground – the sound and symbol of her secret childhood identity.

My Cantopop Nights is the story of how Emma-Lee found herself in a Hong Kong bar twenty years later, listening to a Cantopop song and realising that this music was her inheritance. It’s about suffering an identity crisis just as the city’s post-colonial tensions erupt into protests. It’s a story of uncanny coincidences, magical thinking and a quest to reconcile the different sides of her heritage: Hong Konger and British, Cantopop and indie.

It’s a story of falling in love with a city, a country, its people and its music, while trying to find your own place to belong.

One of my favourite musicians on some of her favourite musicians. A beautiful meditation on how belonging is something we create day by day, year by year.

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

About Emma-Lee Moss

Emma-Lee Moss is a writer and musician. As a writer, Emma-Lee has contributed to the Guardian, Vice, i-D, British GQ, Wired, the Good Journal and more. As a singer-songwriter performing under the name Emmy the Great, she released four studio albums, as well as several collaborations and soundtracks. She writes original songs for film, theatre, television, radio and community projects, and is interested in the way that songs interact with our everyday lives. My Cantopop Nights is her first book. She lives in East Sussex.
Details
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • ISBN: 9781787334540
  • Length: 352 pages
  • Price: £22.00
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