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 When ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ was released in 1974, the ‘Oriental Theme’ (MIDI file) was immediately recognisable as a ‘Chinese’ motif through comedy, cartoons and musicals. It is now so firmly embedded in the western mind that it is considered genuine oriental music.
The tune, a nine note phrase, is found throughout modern popular music most famously in the introduction to Carl Douglas’s ‘Kung fu fighting’, The Vapour’s ‘Turning Japanese’, and David Bowie’s “China Girl”. Nevertheless, it first evolved as a racist genre during first western contact with Chinese and other ethnic groups in mid 19th century America.
Prior to this, ‘Chineseness’ was portrayed in western culture as an exotic and romantic ideal. Chinoiserie and Orientalism was a stylistic vogue during the 18th century portraying China as a distant misty land where mandarins frolicked with their concubines in bamboo pergolas.
The first large scale western contact with Chinese people came in the 1850s when thousands of migrants moved to work on the US railroads. The post civil war slump saw growing animosity towards the Chinese community from groups including the ‘Supreme Order Of Caucasians’, ‘Asiatic Exclusion League’ and ‘Anti-Coolies Association’ who organised boycotts, segregation and organised attacks on Chinese businesses.
“One can hardly help laughing at the strange race, they seem such a queer sort of patch in the mottled quilt of California life. They do everything in such a comical way! They never walk, but jog; they never run, but trot. If they ride horseback, as they are fond of doing, they sit so near the horse’s tail, they are in constant danger of going off behind. When they wish to rest in their journeys afoot, they squat down, three or four often in a row, in the most ridiculous attitude imaginable.”
 Such attitudes culminated in the Los Angeles ‘Chinese Massacre’ of 1871 which killed 23 immigrants and destroyed hundreds of Chinese businesses and homes. The ‘Chinese Exclusion Act’ of 1882 was the first immigration control banned unskilled Chinese as an ‘undesirable race’. Whilst the Act was designed to last ten years, it was finally repealed in 1943.
During the 19th century, the oppression of the African-American population was propagated and normalised through popular culture using genres such as ‘Blackface’, ’Coon Song’ and Minstrel shows. Similarly, ‘Yellowface’ became a way of disseminating ideas of racial subservience. It began as Chinese entertainers performing Chinese themed Vaudeville acts.
Yet like minstrel shows, these became the domain of ‘yellowed-up’ white performers ridiculing Chinese culture. These comprised humorous renditions of Chinese music exaggerating the perceived atonality of Asian music, or songs sung with high pitched voices and mock ‘Chinese’ accents, thus ‘Oriental Theme’ were born.
Probably the first published version was from the somewhat racially confused “Aladdin Quick Step” (MIDI File) from “The Grand Chinese Spectacle of Aladdin, or, The Wonderful Lamp” (1847 T.Comer). The theme is developed in “The Chinese Gallop” of 1871 and “Tommy Polka” (MIDI File) of 1860.
By the 1900’s, the ‘genre’ began to combine a variety of co-existing Asian stereotypes. These included the perfidious humorous buffoon or the yellow peril/Fu-Manchu persona, together with the ‘China Doll’ sexually available Asian woman stereotype. This produced a new sub-genre of light music, including “My Little Hong Kong Baby” (John Bratton, 1902) and “A Chinese Maiden” (Harry L. Stone, 1903) “Japloo Baby” (1916) and “Me No Sabbee. An Army Episode in China” (Theo. Northrup, 1904), all using versions of the ‘Oriental Theme.’
"Chinatown, My Chinatown"
When the town is fast asleep,
And it's midnight in the sky,
That's the time the festive Chink
Starts to wink his other eye,
Starts to wink his dreamy eye,
Lazily you'll hear him sigh.
Strangers taking in the sights,
Pigtails flying here and there;
See that broken Wall Street sport
Still thinks he's a millionaire,
Still thinks he's a millionaire,
Pipe dreams banish ev'ry care."
The first major Chinese cliché genre hit was Jerome and Jean Schwartz’s “Chinatown My Chinatown” in 1915. The success of this piece triggered a slew imitations including amongst many others “Blinky Winky Chinky Chinatown” (Jean Schwartz, 1915) and “Chong, He come from Hong Kong” (Harold Weeks, 1919). The use of the theme continued throughout the 20th century by artists as diverse as George Formby, Django Rienhart, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Zappa. (Martin Nilsson, 2006 has compiled an exhaustive list.)
Despite the theme’s unavoidably racist past, the Oriental Theme ‘for some reason is still considered an acceptable form of indicating ‘Chineseness’. This has reached a point where the creation of an ‘orientalist’ piece of music requires no actual knowledge of the orient - a simple knowledge of oriental stereotypes is sufficient. This situation is symptomatic of the relatively recent unacceptability of Asian racism compared to say, Afro-Caribbean racism.
The return of the ‘Black and White Minstrel Show’ or modern pop music using ‘Coon song’ parody and fake negro plantation speech over a disco beat would provoke outcry, yet the Asian equivalent is alive and kicking in current contemporary ‘serious’ music as well as popular culture.
 ‘Oriental Theme’ Top Ten
1. Desmond Decker “The Face of Fu man Chu”
2. David bowie ” China Girl’
3. The Vapours (1980) ” Turning Japanese”
4. Carl Douglas (1974) ” kung fu Fighting”
5. The Coasters (1964) “Bad Detective”
6. Rush (1976) “A Passage to Bangkok”
7. Horace Silver (1965) “Tokyo blues”
8. “Betty Boop in Making Stars” Cartoon (1935)
9. Peter Bjorn and John (2006) “Young Folks”
10. The gaylords (1960) “Ah-So!“
Simon Crab
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Sources
http://parlorsongs.com/insearch/coonsongs/coonsongs.php
http://revoltinthedesert.blogspot.com/2007/06/looking-in-mirror-orientalism-in-music.html
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/music/Info/CMJ/Articles/1997/02/01.html
http://www.danwei.org/music/funky_chinatown_and_the_asian.php
Yellowface: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s–1920s. By Krystyn R. Moon. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2005.
Jim Crow Museum of Racist memorabilia
An Indepth musical history of the “Asian Riff”: http://chinoiserie.atspace.com/index.html
“Postcolonialism on the Make: The Music of John Mellencamp, David Bowie and John Zorn” Author(s): Ellie M. Hisama Source: Popular Music, Vol. 12, No. 2 (May, 1993), pp. 91-104 Published by: Cambridge University Press
“Chinatown, Whose Chinatown? Defining America’s Borders with Musical Orientalism” Author(s): Charles Hiroshi Garrett Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), pp. 119- 173 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society
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