Fluid Soundscapes: Media Shifts, Nostalgia, and Identity in Hong Kong Popular Music

Wei Geng

doi:10.54691/x4vcb016

Authors

Wei Geng School of Music and Dance, Lingnan Normal University, Zhanjiang, China

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54691/x4vcb016

Keywords:

Hong Kong popular music, soundscape, nostalgia, cultural identity.

Abstract

This study, from the perspective of fluid soundscapes, explores how media evolution and geopolitical restructuring have reshaped Hong Kong's identity, memory, and sense of spatial belonging. Integrating concepts such as soundscape theory, media materiality, digital value, reflective nostalgia, and musical linking objects, the research examines three stages: the nascent stage of local consciousness and national imagination, the stirrings of cross-regional migration and return, and the algorithmic reconstruction in the digital age. Through analysis of key works, artists, this study reveals how Hong Kong popular music transcends physical and digital forms, local and transnational spaces, and the temporal dimensions of past and present. Hong Kong popular music is a hybrid "transitional zone" within Chinese modernity.

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