Butterfly dream — Ancestors & me

is the translation of the title of the next 2-disc set. I don’t know if it’s right to say it’s the name of a song, an opera, an episode, a chapter or what exactly. Cantonese operas themselves are potentially hours long, but not always performed in their entirety— some performances are more like “greatest hits” or compilations of favorite scenes. And these rekkids can only hold (at most) 3:30 per side, which made for some studio-artistic musical-arrangement decisionmaking back in the day and keeps the DJ busy thereafter.

Something is up with the abilities of my blog-possible-devices (old macbook, middle-aged iphone, new but not-super-powerful cheap ipad) to update this blog, so I’ll consider myself lucky to get these tracks and a little bit of text on here at the moment. Will follow up later with some photos of the labels, lyric sheet/ promotional literature and maybe squeeze in some “translating.”

Title: 蝴蝶夢 Húdié mèng (Butterfly dream)

Artists: 任劍輝 Yam Kim-fai (Rèn Jiànhuī)

芳艶芬 Fong Yim-Fen (Fāng Yànfēn)

Reading the names from right to left: it sez 任劍輝 Yam Kim-fai in Cantonese (Rèn Jiànhuī in Mandarin) below the photo on the right, with a 1950’s western hairstyle, and 芳艶芬 Fong Yim-Fen (Fāng Yànfēn) below the photo on the left in opera regalia. They’re both women and I’m pretty sure the photos and names are swapped now that I’m googling them.

芳艶芬 Fong Yim-Fen / Fāng Yànfēn kept rocking that hairstyle throughout the years. According to the linked article (in translation) she developed her own style of singing — “uttered through her nose and jaw, round and elegant, with lingering lingering sounds like pearls falling on the plate and mercury flooding the ground, creating a "fragrant cavity", forming a unique genre that fascinated the listener.”

任劍輝 Yam Kim-fai /Rèn Jiànhuī was known to sing in the lower register and play male roles in all-female opera troupes, which I find intriguing. The linked article explains: “Because of her complete voice, color and art, her appearance is handsome, charming, and she is absolutely non-female. Many female audiences such as wives, girls, and even mothers are attracted by it and have become "drama lovers."

These two performers collaborated frequently and you’ll see both names again, together and with others, in this rekkid collection.

On most of the rekkids in this collection, the (Chinese) text on the labels and their accompanying literature reads R to L. Being no kind of student of the Chinese language at all and especially unfamiliar with the vocabulary and grammar of opera singing, I ran some titles backwards and forwards thru goog translate and still had trouble telling which was correct. I’m reasonably sure I got them all right way round now but we’ll see.