Popular Music in China Contents
I. Politics of Popular Music in China i Early History ii Social Changes and the State of Pop in China iii Post-Cultural Revolution • Market Economy and Gangtai Pop • Thomas B. Gold, “Go with your Feelings” iv Rock in China • Internal Emergence and Cui Jian • Andrew Jones, Like a Knife . . . Multiple Centres of Chinese Popular Cultures: China—Hong Kong—Taiwan—PRC Western music in China
• Before 20th C: • Religious missionaries: Matteo Ricci (early 17C) • Protestant Hymn (19th C) • Western powers and treaties (19th C) • Opium War I (1839-42) & II (1856-60) • May 4th, 1919 and modernization • Criticism but seduced by Western cultures • In 1920s Shanghai, jammed with Jazz, club culture (cabarets), film, modern technologies (gramophones), fashion, cafes, etc. Shanghai
Hub of Popular Culture and Modernity The City of Shanghai https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Dba67SLBQzM
Life of Shanghai in the early 20th century 1911-1937: Shanghai
• Despite Japanese military aggression and China’s civil war but Shanghai was bloomed with clubs:
• In the 1930s, 300 cabarets in Shanghai, almost 3.5 million people (4th largest city in the world at the time) • Shanghai Jazz movement followed music and dance trends from the West such as the cha-cha, fox-trot, rumba, waltz, and tango. • Resident foreign musicians and bands from India, Philippines, Indonesia, Hawaii and Russia • Big cinema industry (since 1896) • By 1927, 106 movie theatres in China; 26 theatres in Shanghai .
• Gramophone: from public space to private consumption of popular music. • Large music companies and 2.7 million records a year were produced in China; 1.1 million imported records from the US and Europe in 1929. • In 1932, China’s domestic production and consumption of record had grown to 5.4 million albums a year. • Literary culture such as novels, magazines, news papers, and tabloids blossomed. • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXxeMGCz1fY • Zhou Xuan, “When Will You Return?” • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adZTK8tCL3s • Xhou Xuan, “Night of Shanghai” Popular Stars: e.g., Zhou Xuan (1918-1957)
• One of 7 Great Singers in China • Known as Shanghai Golden Voice • Shidaiqu singer and actress • Shidaiqu: Jazz instrumentation + Chinese folk/indigenous songs Shidaiqu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adZTK8tCL3s Yao Lee or Yao Li (1922)
• Another Seven Great Singers in Shanghai in 1940s. • Fled to HK and continue to pursue her career in popular music as a singer and later producer.
• “Rose, Rose, I Love you” • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeHLPsLzchg BUT since 1937~ • 1937 to 1945: Japanese Occupation • Rich and intellectuals fled to Hong Kong • Musicians and actors • Japanese army controlled over mass media • Theatres closed doewn • End of renaissance
• 1945: End of WWII and KMT (Kuomintang) • Fighting with communists Songs for the Masses in PRC China until 1978
• Chinese popular music centre moved to HK and Taiwan. • Ban of Yellow Music, 黃色音樂 • Mao Zedong’s 1942, “Talks at the Yan’an Forum” • Emphasis on the “revolutionary songs” (geming gequ) and “revolutionary operas” (geming geju) • During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), only 8 operas and ballets were allowed. • “March of Revolutionary Youth” • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1os_wge8yME • “Internationale” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28GYLcMx-2M Geming Gequ: East is Red
Dongfang hong The East is red Taiyang shang The sun is rising Zhongguo chule ge Mao Zedong China has brought forth Mao Zedong
Ta wei renmin mo xinfu He has a plan to bring the Chinese people good fortune. Huerhaiya, ta shi renmin da Hooray, he is the people’s great jiuxing saviour.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls5fgD2_bF8 Post-CR PRC (from 1970s)
• Popular music from HK and Taiwan. • Political tool from Taiwan. • But appealed with the life issues than revolutionary spirits. • PRC’s exposure to Teresa Teng (Deng Lijun) was “like a dry field in which a match had been thrown” (Baranovitch, Nimrod). • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv_cEeDlop0 Teresa Teng (1953-1995)
-Taiwanese singer -Internationally recognized -Peak in 1970s and 1980s -Sung and produced albums in Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Indonesian, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiXJG English oOdR34 Interview excerpt from Moskowitz, Marc. 2010. Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow. • About the impact of Teresa Teng:
[The Gang-Tai invasion] began with Teresa Teng and then with people like Fei Xiang, an American-born Chines singer who also came to China in the 1980s. Before T. Teng no one listened to pop music. It was all revolutionary songs. It was Teng that ushered in love songs. Her stuff was really great because she sang about real life issues, not just about politics. . . . My mom loves T. Teng and all the other music from that era. My folks were in their twenties and thirties at that time, and that is the age when people usually listen to pop music, right? . . . If you had to choose one star and say “she is the absolute most important pop singer in the history of Chines pop music” there is no doubt it would be Teresa Teng (19-20). Thomas B. Gold. 1993. “Go with Your Feelings”
• Appeal of Gangtai Pops to the People in the PRC 1) Inter-Asian and International appeal in 1980s 2) Novelty 3) Personal: feeling and mundane issues 4) Chinese language: cultural synaesthesia 5) Foreign and modern: attraction of difference 6) Liminality or space of experience “escapes” What enabled/assisted the massive spread of Gangtai Pop?: Social change and emergence
• Technology • Social Structure • Economics • Politics 1978 to 1989
• Banning Gang-Tai pop, then permitted Gang-Tai pop but with a strong censorship • PRC’s own popular songs: Mando Pop • Make it grounded in local culture • Highlight the superiority of Chinese race, optimism, and love for the state, land, and nation. • Battle field between GT’s individualistic themes and PRC pop focusing on Chinese national identity and good citizenship. • Tongsu Yinyue • Popular Music in Mainland China • Focus on socialist ideals and praise of the state. • Government sanctioned music • Fusing Chinese songs [music feels] with disco beats • Lyrics feature the problems of modern society • Supported by the state as opposed to GT pop, claiming that more authentically Chinese than GT pops. • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPkOUfhUH MY • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On-i28ljs8s • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBDtXlBtiDw Tongsu Music
• Majority—government propaganda Rock Music • Nationalist • New mass culture—TV • Independent musicians • Personal and individualistic • Subculture • Cultural opposition (anti-feudal culture by means of a faith in individualism) Chinese Rock
• Beijing Rock: subculture, intellectual movement, demonstration • Resistance and opposition to the state control • Tiananmen square Rock Music and Subculture (Jones 1992, 116)
• Birmingham theorists have broadly defined subcultures as:
... meaning systems, modes of expression or lifestyles developed by groups in subordinated structural position in response to dominant meaning systems. ..which reflect their attempt to solve structural contradictions arising from the wider societal context (Michael Brake, Comparative Youth Culture, 1985, 8). Beijing Rock as Subculture
• Small Social Group • Not necessarily linked by any common social or educational class background as is frequently the case in British and American working-class subcultures. • Broader range of ages (16-32) • Most of all, rebel against oppression (feudalism) Gao Qi: a rock musician (Jones 1992, 120)
• Tongsu music is written for an older audience. Rock is youth music ... young people need to express themselves. They are in the process of developing their opinions, their identities .. . In China, we have several thousand years of feudalism, which makes people's thinking all alike, conformist, without individualism. Now, after reform and liberalization, you have a generation of youth that are familiar with all sorts of Western things and Western literature ... and this has resulted in a complete cultural transformation ... the younger you are, the greater the western influence ... the changes have been so fast that the generation gap is like leaping over thousands of years. And rock belongs to this younger generation. Tiananman Square Spirit (Jones 1992, 123)
• Wu'er Kaixi, one of the most prominent student organizers of the Tiananmen demonstrations:
Chinese culture is feudalistic, despotic, closed [fengbi]; it negates the individual, and it has lasted for 5,000 years ... After 1949 and during the Cultural Revolution this feudalistic culture developed to such an extreme that it now absolutely and completely negates individuality. With reform and the open door policy, and liberalism in thought and culture under Deng Xiaoping, resistance [to feudalism] erupted with full force . Cont’
. . . In recent years, Chinese college students have been stressing the individual, the self, and rebelling against all sorts of authority ... but this idealism and the sense of the individual are contradictory to the reality of present society [so] young people have been left lost and disoriented. The people who are most influential among young people are not [the prominent dissidents] Fang Lizhi and Wei Jingsheng, but. .. singers such as Cui Jian. His "I Have Nothing" ... serves to reflect the sense of loss and the disorientation of Chinese youth. Dong Dong, a Rock Musician (Jones 1992, 123) China is afflicted by feudalism, by conservatism and close.mindedness [fengbi]. The feudal powers [fengjian shili] oppose rock music. Feudal power comes out of blind obedience to Confucian ideals, and relationships between people in society. The open door policy is one way to solve this, but it has been only superficial. People have learned some foreign technologies, but they're still psychologically feudal, and their social circles are still feudal. Even some of the rock musicians long hair is a sign of this superficial approach to Westernization. We don't want to change the world, but we do want to challenge feudalism with a kind of spiritual liberalization Uingshen shang de kaifang] . . . River Elegy
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39j4ViRxcS8
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaUF7dLj964 Cui Jian (1961—)
• Cui Jian, “Nothing to [owe] My Name” “A Piece of Red Cloth” • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYwsPt854Xo • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2RVsAVWPW4 • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53E2Ij9uvP0 • https://lyricstranslate.com/ko/%E4%B8%80%E7%84%A1%E6%89%8 0%E6%9C%89-i-have-nothingnothing-my-name.html
• I have kept asking, when will you come with me • But you always laugh at me, having nothing • I want to give you my pursuit, along with my freedom • But you always laugh at me, having nothing ......
• Tell you I have been waiting for so long, tell you my last request • I want to grab your hands, you just come with me • This time your hand is trembling, this time your tears are flowing • Aren't you just telling me, you love me, having nothing? • Oh, you now come with me, oh, you now come with me • The land underneath is moving, the water aside is flowing x 3 A. Jones, “Cui Jian and the Ideology of Chinese Rock Music” (1992, 117)
• subcultures provide "a pool of available symbolic resources which particular individuals or groups can draw on in their attempt to make sense of their own specific situation and create a viable identity“(Brake 1985, 27). The subcultural rebellion usually occurs not in the realm of concrete political activity, but in terms of a revolt against cultural hegemony in music and fashion: their "rebellion seldom reaches [the level of] articulated opposition“ (Ibid., 7)