Making Politics Serve Music Yu Huiyong, Composer and Minister of Culture Yawen Ludden Scholars from both the East and the West have long argued that China was subjected to a musical famine under the hegemony of Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing, during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).1 The common saying “8 works for 800 million people” reflects the widespread perception that the performing arts were severely restricted by Jiang’s oppressive political ambition. But in fact, this decade proved a heyday for yangbanxi (commonly translated as “model opera”), a new category of modern revolutionary performing arts designed to ener- gize the Chinese working class.2 Encompassing various performing arts, such as ballet, sym- phonic works, and Beijing opera, yangbanxi sparked mass participation as professional and amateur groups across the country emulated these revolutionary works on local stages. October 1976 precipitated a radical change. Just one month after Mao’s death, Jiang and several of her colleagues were arrested — including Yu Huiyong, the Minister of Culture (1975– 1976), who was in charge of all of China’s cultural affairs and a prominent architect and com- poser of yangbanxi. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was declared over, denounced as a decade of disaster by the Chinese government, and condemned by intellectuals as the dark- est age in Chinese history.3 Academic research on the Cultural Revolution was strongly discour- aged, and all kinds of music from this period — including yangbanxi — vanished from radio, TV, 1. I am grateful to the Fulbright Foundation for the opportunity to carry out research in China during the 2010/11 academic year. Unless otherwise specified, all interviews were conducted between May 2005 and July 2011. All are listed in the references. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. 2. The Chinese term yangbanxi is preferable to the term “opera,” which does not have the broad meaning of the Chinese word xi. Some writers refer to these works as “revolutionary Beijing opera” or “modern Beijing opera,” but these terms are equally problematic. There were many revolutionary Beijing operas or modern Beijing operas in China and not all of them are properly called yangbanxi. For example, the recently produced Beijing operas in China could be understood as using similar techniques as yangbanxi, but could also be called modern Beijing opera. Yangbanxi is the only term that clearly defines the character of the genre and the historical time period. 3. In August 1977, during the 11th meeting the Communist Party, Hua Guofeng, Chairman of the Party, announced the end of the Cultural Revolution. Yawen Ludden, a native of Shanghai, is completing her PhD dissertation in the Musicology and Ethno­ musicology Division of the University of Kentucky School of Music. Her thesis, entitled “The Chinese Music Revolution: From Beijing Opera to Yangbanxi,” focuses on the evolution and trans for ma tion of Beijing opera as well as its relationship with Chinese society and politics. She has presented her research at major national and international conferences such as the American Musicological Society (AMS), the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) and the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research (CHIME). She was also a Fulbright fellow at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 2010/11. [email protected] TDR: The Drama Review 56:2 (T214) Summer 2012. ©2012 152 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00172 by guest on 03 October 2021 and concert halls. This blackout persisted for about 10 years. Beginning around 1990, yang- banxi enjoyed a strong revival and continues to be a popular form of entertainment in theatres, on television, and in commercial and private entertainments such as karaoke.4 Even though the Chinese government has been reluctant to rehabilitate those most involved in the creation of yangbanxi, its artistic merits have been officially recognized, and it is regularly performed in China as well as overseas.5 However, in scholarly circles, the merit of yangbanxi remains a controversial subject. While many Chinese composers and performers credit yangbanxi with attaining the highest standards in the performing arts,6 the denunciations of the Cultural Revolution hang like a cloud over the debate, leading to negative critiques of yangbanxi, such as that it was “anti-cultural” (Chen 2010) or “tragic to both Chinese theater and Chinese art” (Lu 1997:580). In 2008, the Chinese Minister of Education received harsh criticism for including yangbanxi arias in the elementary to high school music curriculum.7 On 13 October 2009, China Youth Daily published a commen- tary titled “Why We Should Read Yangbanxi as a Record of History.” In this article, the author denounced yangbanxi as “technically sophisticated but lacking in originality” (Ye 2009). The controversies surrounding yangbanxi are extraordinarily wide-ranging and deserve to be taken seriously in all their dimensions. The many shortcomings of the Cultural Revolution and the suffering inflicted on individual artists have been the object of much public and schol- arly discussion. But yangbanxi and its creators have long been overlooked. This article is based mostly on the testimony of those who took part directly in the Chinese performing arts during the Cultural Revolution, and examines yangbanxi’s relationship to prevailing cultural aesthetics and its socio-political context. Yu Huiyong (1925–1977) was yangbanxi’s main practitioner, chief composer, designer, and theorist. Under the aegis of Jiang Qing’s cultural program, Yu transformed the centuries-old Beijing opera into the modern and revolutionary yangbanxi, which functioned paradoxically as both popular and avantgarde entertainment.8 Among the 50 or so composers and perform- ers I interviewed, there was a marked consensus that yangbanxi represents the peak of artistic achievement during the Cultural Revolution and continues to influence theperforming arts 4. Yangbanxi is now regularly performed in major cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, and its CDs are sold in Chinese bookstores under the category of “Red Classic.” Karaoke remains one of the most popular public and family entertainments in China, and yangbanxi songs are ubiquitous on karaoke lists. 5. The continuing importance of yangbanxi in Chinese society is indisputable. In May 2009, China’s most influ- ential and largest state-owned television network CCTV broadcast two extravagant live concerts to celebrate the 60th anniversary of New China. The first concert was called “Red Classic: Beijing Opera Symphony,” which fea- tured music from yangbanxi; the second concert was entitled “Recreating Legend” and featured music from traditional Beijing opera ( jingju). Even without the suggestive titles, such grand-scale productions on such a com- memorative occasion served as a clear gesture to the public of the government’s support and endorsement of yangbanxi and Beijing opera. These performances were first broadcast on 30 and 31 May 2009 and were rerun several times on television. They can be viewed at www.tudou.com/programs/view/Sz4wy3ikWOQ. 6. The conductor of the Central Philharmonic Orchestra, Li Delun, said, “we’ll never match that quality again” (in Melvin and Jingdong Cai 2000). Liang asserts: “had this genre continued its development after the Cultural Revolution, it would have led to a national contemporary style of opera and certainly to a new height in Chinese operatic tradition” (1985:158). More recently, Barbara Mittler elevates yangbanxi to the status of cultural trans- mitter and claims “that the Cultural Revolution saved the folk tradition, precisely by reforming and modernizing it rather than destroying it” (2010:379). Xinjingbao 7. There were 15 Beijing opera arias in total, 11 of them from yangbanxi ( 2008). 8. This article was, in part, inspired by a lecture on American avantgarde theatre given by Richard Schechner at Huiyong Yu Shanghai Theatre Academy on 14 October 2010. Regarding American avantgarde theatre, Schechner demon- strated that innovation and excellence rarely coincide. Yet yangbanxi challenges this idea, as it reached a high level of innovation and excellence. 153 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00172 by guest on 03 October 2021 in China to this day.9 In particular, these art- ists all admire Yu for anchoring his yangbanxi compositions in China’s social, economic, and political realities, while at the same time incorporating non-Chinese musical and theatrical elements. While it is true that yangbanxi domi- nated the Chinese stage during the Cultural Revolution, this period was nonetheless one of considerable productivity for performing art- ists who were loyal to the socialist cause. In fact, the so-called “8 works for 800 million people” were all created in the years leading up to the Cultural Revolution and served as a model (hence the term “model opera”) for the development of new revolutionary works. By the end of the Cultural Revolution, at least 18 different works had been included in the cate- gory of yangbanxi.10 Furthermore, these works were widely performed by professional and amateur groups across the nation, and they inspired new revolutionary works by regional Figure 1. Portrait of Yu Huiyong from the early opera companies as well. 1960s. This was likely a relatively peaceful time In his 1942 forum on literature and art for Yu, as the Anti-Rightist Movement that had held in Yan’an, Mao Zedong called for a rev- caused him so much trouble was now past, and the olutionary theatre to complement the social Cultural Revolution had not yet started. (Photo and political revolution (Mao 1978:250). With courtesy of Ren Ke) the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, theatre reform, includ- ing Beijing opera, became a pressing policy issue for the new government. In Mao’s vision, the old stages were dominated by “emperors, kings, generals, ministers, scholars, and beauties” (Bo 1993:1225), but the new socialist stage would be peopled by the masters of the new nation — workers, peasants, and soldiers.