The land, and everyone and everything in it from Istanbul to Mumbai to Vladivostok to Indonesia.
The area roughly including Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, etc.
It just depends on which part of the English-speaking world you come from in determining which definition you use. I happen to use the second, and will use terms like “Middle Eastern” or “Indian / sub-continental” for those not included. But I understand the first usage too. Can we just agree to a tomahto - tomayto thing on this one? It’s starting to piss me off.
Slight sidetrack, but the Middle Eastern equivalent of the tune mentioned in the OP (played in any the “Belly dancing” scene of any classic movie), was invented for the Chicago Worlds Fair by the entertainer Sol Bloom.
I followed the link to a previous thread, which led me to a link to a previous thread, which led me to yet another previous thread, which had a link to a previous thread that I didn’t click on. I don’t think we’ll ever find the original thread on this question.
No, we can’t. Asia means the whole of Asia and nothing else. #2 is exactly covered by the term East Asia. On what authority, aside from your own (and others’) inaccurate usage, do you assert that Asia= East Asia? Why not use the more accurate description?
Common usage in Britain is “Asian” for “South Asian” and in American is “Asian” for “East Asian.” There might be very good reasons to dislike it, but it’s silly to berate the OP for using a term the way a lot of people use it. Actually, this is how we lost the useful term “Oriental.”
IIRC, a comedian made use of this show as a prime example of the stereotypical tune. If so, it would predate maybe all but one of the examples in this thread.
The Cartwright family had a Chinese immigrant servant, Hop Sing. Every time he would make a fresh appearance in a scene, the music would play. Again, IIRC, since I had never been a regular viewer of the show when it was in production. A couple of years back I caught a few episodes on TV Land, or some such, and that handful of episodes may easily have exceeded any I had seen prior to it.
Here it comes: The comedian thought it was rather odd that they would play this little tune at every opportunity, as if to say: “Here, now, is someone of the Oriental persuasion.” This comedy routine was several years ago, when there was less emphasis on sensitivity of the formal PC flavor. So the bit had a more lighthearted tone than it might today. The comedian wasn’t expressing disgust at the cliche, just puzzlement and amusement.
He wondered aloud whether we should also have a parallel cliche tune played whenever a Caucasian person entered.
Somehow I remember this being the ultimate answer to the original question on this topic. It’s a 1930’s Terrytoons cartoon by Paul Terry called “Chop Suey”. The exact theme in question comes in at 0:45 into the clip, and seems to be the earliest precise rendering of the riff. It appears to be a variation on a general series of pentatonic-based parodies of Asian music, particularly Beijing opera.
I think that’s the earliest that that particular riff has been found in pop culture so far, but I’m still of the opinion that that exact riff really gained currency as the result of “Kung Fu Fighting,” and that the earlier ones that matched it might have arisen independently.
I would have to say that that is more a reflection of your age than anything else. I grew up with “Kung fu fighting” (it was rubbish then and it is rubbish now) and I remember the OP’s riff from well before then. Different generations may have been introduced to it in different contexts, but to ascribe one particular bit of pop culture as the progenitor of “real currency” is the usual fallacy of thinking that the time when it was introduced to you is the most critical. It is like asking which bit of popular culture brought Orff’s O Fortuna to currency. Choose your movie or advertisement. You will get a lot of answers.
