SUNDAY: Reasons to Learn Cantonese #11

The other day I made a list of the ten most important reasons, off the top of my head, to learn Cantonese.  Yesterday I found another one.

I am a Luddite whose phone, a Nokia from 2006, is made of wood, so naturally I like to have real CDs in the house (now that cassettes have been so brutally discontinued) rather than downloading, uploading, cloud, iTunes, whatever. But what happened to my dear shop HMV? It no longer sells music! Only fluffy toys, video games and food.

So yesterday I went into a shop in IFC that I’ve seen many times without realising what was in it – many CD-like objects. But were they only Hollywood blockbusters? I asked the guy if they had any music and he showed me a shelf sagging under what looked like dismal muzak; fake covers showing birch trees at sunset, very 70s, hammond-organ and accordion-related, cover versions of Boney M. Not even I can listen to crap music ironically.Then I turned around and: There was shelf upon shelf of good old mainstream music! From Laurie Anderson to Yazoo, from Beach Boys to Zeppelin. Real, tangible CDs to put in a shelf.

I asked the guy why he hadn’t shown me those shelves at once and he said “you asked for music“. “What, isn’t this music?” I asked, pointing to Rod Stewart or whatever. “No, they are songs. Music is only instruments.”

Heh! Learn something new every day! That’s another reason to learn Cantonese, I think.

音樂 (yam uk – music)
歌 (go – song)
唱歌 (cheung go – singing)