Musical Behavior of Young Hong Kong Students

This paper investigates the musical behavior of young Hong Kong students in terms of their musical influences, their habits of singing and listening, and their musical preferences. Data from a sample of 647 Hong Kong Chinese junior secondary school students supports the hypothesis that the most important determinants on young people’s musical tastes and behavior are they themselves, their peers and the mass media. 557 students chose CDs as their favorite media for listening, followed by 478 for television and 425 for radio. Although students loved listening to music at home, they did not like to sing there. Outside the school environment, 293 and 160 said that home karaoke and public karaoke were their preferred musical activities. Cantonese pop was the most well-liked style and Chinese classical vocal music was the least welcomed. These findings demonstrate a challenge to music educators to broaden young people’s musical tastes to include more different styles of music that might not be typically favored by youth culture. The development of such an openness must be a goal of school music education.