MEDIA, MARKET ECONOMY, AND CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION: QIN MUSIC IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA by Da Lin B.A. in Music, Xi’an Conservatory of Music, 2005 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts University of Pittsburgh 2010 i UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This thesis was presented by Da Lin It was defended on November 29, 2010 and approved by Andrew Weintraub, Professor, Department of Music Adriana Helbig, Assistant Professor, Department of Music Thesis Director: Bell Yung, Professor, Department of Music ii Copyright © by Da Lin 2010 iii Bell Yung MEDIA, MARKET ECONOMY, AND CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION: QIN MUSIC IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA Da Lin, M.A. University of Pittsburgh, 2010 The qin, historically recognized as an instrument of Chinese literati, has been presented in various forms of mass media for over fifty years. After the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, the government promoted public performances in a propaganda/persuasion media system; consequently, mass media started to play significant roles in reshaping aesthetic standards, performance practices, musical features, and meanings of the qin tradition. The mass media in China, however, went through a commercialization reform after the late 1970s and has shaped the current propaganda/persuasion model. This new media structure has hastened the emergence of new musical features and meanings of the qin in the commercial logic as opposed to the Party logic. Such interactions with technology have arguably constituted contemporary performance practices that have departed from traditional aesthetic standards held by literati practitioners who played the qin for self-satisfaction. This paper analyzes qin music as it has been produced and disseminated in different forms of mass media after 1950s, reveals the dynamic multiplicity of meanings of qin music, and unfolds a transformation through which qin music lost its aura that was handed down from antiquity, but is gradually conditioned in its new environment characterized by the tension between the political and market forces. This thesis focuses on one of the most active qin musicians, Li Xiangting, and his activities in the past decade, to show how a prominent qin iv player, by exploiting mass media technology, mediates his music and ideological theories to promote new perceptions of musical features, aesthetical forms, and social values of the qin. It is through collaboration with the development of mass media in China that many contemporary qin musicians carry on their practices via social conflicts, accommodations, and changing conditions of Chinese economy, society, and culture. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ..................................................................................................................................... X 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 QIN MUSIC IN MASS MEDIA—A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF QIN MUSIC IN SOCIETY .................................................................................................. 2 1.2 MASS MEDIA IN CHINA .................................................................................... 4 1.3 SCOPE AND FRAMEWORK ............................................................................. 8 2.0 RECONFIGURATION OF QIN MUSIC IN CENTRALIZED MASS MEDIA . 12 2.1 RECORDINGS OF QIN MUSIC ....................................................................... 13 2.2 ALIENATION OF QIN MUSICIANS THROUGH RECORDINGS ............ 19 2.3 QIN MUSIC ON RADIO .................................................................................... 25 3.0 QIN MUSIC IN THE MARKET: ETHOS AND COMMERCIALIZATION ..... 32 3.1 CHALLENGES TO THE YOUNGER GENERATION OF QIN PLAYERS 33 3.2 CASSETTES AND THE POPULAR MUSIC MARKET ............................... 39 3.2.1 The advent of cassettes ................................................................................... 40 3.2.2 Qin music as a musical art ............................................................................. 47 4.0 NEW SOUNDS OF QIN MUSIC ............................................................................. 53 4.1 THE ARTISTIC QIN THEORY ........................................................................ 54 4.1.1 Mass musical culture vs. popular musical culture ....................................... 65 vi 4.2 IMPROVISATION IN CONTEMPORARY QIN MUSIC ............................. 70 5.0 QIN MUSIC IN AUDIO-VIDEO MEDIA ............................................................... 81 5.1 A PROVOCATIVE COLLABORATION: QIN MUSIC IN THE FIRST EMPEROR’S SHADOW ..................................................................................................... 81 5.2 TOWARD COMMERCIAL COLLABORATIONS WITH THE AV MEDIA INDUSTRY .......................................................................................................................... 89 5.3 STRUGGLES FOR MEANINGS: OFFICIAL MEDIA VS. COMMERCIAL MEDIA ................................................................................................................................ 93 5.3.1 Qin music in official media ............................................................................ 94 5.3.2 Qin music in commercial media .................................................................... 96 6.0 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 100 APPENDIX A ............................................................................................................................ 103 APPENDIX B ............................................................................................................................ 106 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 110 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Survey on the mode of music appreciation in Beijing 1988 ........................................... 43 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. A comparison between the spectrograms of the climax sections of Flowing Water by Guan Pinghu and by Li Xiangting ................................................................................................ 58 Figure 2. The Cover of Li Xiangting’s Extemporization Album Tangren shiyi .......................... 67 Figure 3. Li Xiangting’s Calligraphy in the liner note of Tangren shiyi ...................................... 68 Figure 4. Li Xiangting’s paining in the liner note of the album Songren ciyi ............................. 68 Figure 5. Li Xiangting’s Extemporizing No. 2, in 1989 ................................................................ 77 Figure 6. Poster of Zhao Jiazhen’s Audio-Visual Qin Concert “Qinyun shuimo” ....................... 97 Figure 7. The Stage Effect of Zhao Jiazhen’s Audio-Visual Qin Performance ............................ 98 ix PREFACE The Romanized forms of personal names in Mandarin pronunciation use the pinyin system, presented in the Chinese tradition with the family name first, followed by the given name. For the benefit of readers who know Chinese, the Chinese characters are provided in the glossary. All the translations from the sources in Chinese are by the author unless otherwise indicated. I wish to thank Drs. Bell Yung, Andrew Weintraub, and Adriana Helbig for their suggestions and support during the writing process. Additionally, my sincere gratitude goes to my husband Gao Jie for his everlasting love and support. x 1.0 INTRODUCTION On August 8, 2008, a Chinese string instrument, the qin, initiated the first section of the show in the Opening Ceremony of the 29th Olympic Games hosted by Beijing. The live qin performance, together with many symbolic images shown on a hug LED screen in the shape of a scroll including the calligraphy, pottery, rice paper, etc., represented the “glorious” Chinese civilization that China is proud of and would like to show to the world. What is particularly interesting about this performance is that in this global broadcast show, the qin player, Chen Leiji, dressed in a Han robe and sitting in the middle of the national stadium “Bird’s Nest,” vividly reconstructed a literati qin player’s performance whose qin tradition actually concentrated on privacy and self- enlightenment. Historically the qin has been widely known for its close association with Chinese literati who used to be the primary sponsors of qin music in Imperial China. But literati qin players have their own tradition of playing the qin for themselves or a very limited number of qin friends, mainly for the purpose of self-enlightenment and self-purification. The commonly used medium of sharing their music is elegant gathering yaji during which the elite qin amateurs would meet each other, enjoy tea, play the qin, paint or write poems, and are served by their servants. It is through this exclusive communication that Chinese literati successfully kept their qin tradition for centuries. Therefore, a mass-disseminated performance of qin music in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games suggest a change of meaning of this music in a modern context. What is the new message about this instrument having a long history? How does this change come about? Why is qin music presented on a national stage? What is qin music’s important for Chinese government, and the Chinese people nowadays? 1 This thesis examines the ways in which