How can music, art, and popular culture survive and even thrive in the current political tide? How can it open up new imaginations of the present or future? Can it help us to live life differently? In It’s My Party: Tat Ming Pair and the Postcolonial Politics of Popular Music in Hong Kong, the authors focus on just one band from one city – but the story of Tat Ming Pair, in so many ways, is the story of Hong Kong’s recent decades, from the Handover to the Umbrella Movement to the social protests in 2019. The book, published by Palgrave, is a timely and daring inquiry into the intricate relationship between politics and pop music. This is all the more urgent in times like ours, where we can witness an increasing urgency for a different and more resilient cultural politics – not only in East Asia but also in the world at large.

The book is the first outcome of the ERC-funded project ‘RESCUE: Resilient Cultures – Music, Art, and Cinema in Mainland China and Hong Kong.’ The book is freely available through Open Access.