Copyright by Timothy Lane Brace 1992 MODERNIZATION AND MUSIC IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA: CRISIS, IDENTITY, AND THE POLITICS OF STYLE APPROVED BY DISSERTATION COMMITTEE: STEPHEN SLAWEK STEVEN FELD KATHLEEN HIGGINS GAIL KLIGMAN GERARD BEHAGUE MODERNIZATION AND MUSIC IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA: CRISIS, IDENTITY, AND THE POLITICS OF STYLE by Timothy Lane Brace, B.A., B.M., M.M., Ph.D. DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN AUGUST, 1992 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank those most responsible for the ideas contained within this dissertation: the Chinese themselves. However, to do so by name would be ethically indefensible. I acknowledge their voices as the bases from which my interpretations have been built. Without them my ideas would be mere theoretical fancy; with them they have a power that only grounded theory can have. I can, however, name others who have contributed to different phases of this project. I am grateful to the Kaltenborn Foundation for its enlightened attitude in understanding music as a form of communication and for helping to fund some of my fieldwork in Beijing. I would like to thank Huang Qingliang for opening her Beijing apartment to me twice and for mothering me into the subtleties of Chinese social life, and to Cai Liangyu for devoting so much of her busy time to helping arrange for me to meet with Chinese music scholars, and for becoming my friend. For the members of my committee I have special thanks. To Steven Feld, whose depth of understanding, breadth of knowledge, and integrity as a scholar serve as a model for all who know him; to Gerard Behague, for his experience in knowing how to produce quality work and his encouragement of my first fledgling efforts to do so; to Gail Kligman, for her careful reading of this text and her many valuable comments despite the distance between us; to Kathleen Higgins, for helping in the philosophical/aesthetic framing of the issues in this dissertation; and to Stephen Slawek, for his steady support and patience, and for his understanding of the graduate school experience. And finally, I acknowledge my debt to my wife Donna and to our children Conor and Erin. I know what they have paid for this dissertation. iv MODERNIZATION AND MUSIC IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA: CRISIS, IDENTITY, AND THE POLITICS OF STYLE Publication No. ___________ Timothy Lane Brace, Ph.D The University of Texas at Austin, 1992 Supervisor: Stephen Slawek The modernization of Chinese culture has been a major feature of domestic policy since the Chinese Communist Party assumed political leadership in 1949. This modernization program has had profound effects upon indigenous musical practices. But the influence is mutual, for music, as a participant in modernization efforts, becomes a location both for legitimating and for subverting governmental policies. The overdetermined process of this dialectic has produced a contemporary cultural crisis: a crisis of national identity. This dissertation draws on ethnography, historical analysis and critical theory in an attempt to understand the concrete configurations of this historically situated crisis in three different cultural domains: Peking Opera, popular music and "serious" music. It will be shown that clashes of hegemonic strategies -- struggles within the relations of power -- are in large part responsible for the crisis, and that these clashes and struggles occur in all three domains studied. However, the specific dynamic of this process differs within each domain. Each of the three central chapters of the dissertation is devoted to an analysis of the crisis in one domain. The final chapter synthesizes the analyses within the context of the Deng regime's goal of socialist construction: a socialism with Chinese characteristics. v Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One: The Traditional Peking Opera (Chuantong jingju) 31 Part One: Introduction 32 Jingju and Xiju 35 Jingju and Reform (gaige) 38 Reform and Tradition 40 Part Two: Chuantongxi, 1949-1978 45 Characteristics and Developmental Trends 48 Characteristics, ca. 1949 49 Trends and Issues, 1949-78 55 Part Three: Traditional Peking Opera in the "New Era" 77 Politics, Economics, and Opera: Crisis Within a Modern Socialist State 78 On the Future: Pluralism, Protectionism, and Preservationism 91 Part Four: Summary and Conclusions -- Four Problems for Contemporary Peking Opera 98 The Contradictions of Modernization 99 The Problem of the Audience 100 The Audience: Solutions Offered 107 The Performers and Their Traditions 110 The Traditional Peking Opera and Socialist Revolution 113 Revolution as Break With the Past 116 Revolution as Tradition: a Clash of Cultures 118 Economic Modernization: the Final Blow 121 Final Comments 125 Chapter Two: Popular Music 128 Part One: Introduction 129 Part Two: Three Representative Styles of Popular Music in China 136 Gangtaiyue 137 On the Construction of the "Popular": Stylistic and Political Implications 142 Xibeifeng (Northwest Wind) 146 Xibeifeng as Modern Chinese Popular Music Style 155 The Fall of Xibeifeng 159 vi Yaogun yinyue (Rock and Roll Music) 162 Cui Jian, Yaogunyue, and the Politics of Genre 163 Yaogun yinyue as Political Opposition 166 Yaogunyue: Ideology and Musical Style 170 Part Three: Music as Rhetoric 177 Selected Issues 178 Performance as Argument 178 Situation and the Encoding of Meaning 180 Rhetorical Argument Through Symbolic Juxtaposition 182 Rupture: The Limits of Hegemony 184 Incorporation, Legitimation, and Refusal 189 Part Four: Popular Music and Generational Conflict 194 Daigou (Generation Gap) 195 Contradictions and the Power of Symbols 200 Summary of Chapter Two 204 Chapter Three: "Serious Music" (Yansu yinyue) 206 Part One: Introduction 207 Part Two: Traditional Music and Music Traditions 212 Introduction 213 The Tradition Debates 214 On the Changeability of Tradition 215 Substantive Debates and Political Agendas 217 Discourse Control in Strategies for Power 221 The Responsibility Toward Musical Traditions: On Preservation, Protection, and Development 222 Preservation Vs. Protection 223 Fazhan 224 Preservation and Development 226 Protection and Development 228 Part Three: The Construction of a Chinese Concert Music Tradition (Juchanghua) 232 Introduction 233 The Goals of the New Tradition 234 vii Xiandaihua and Minzuhua (Modernization and Sinicization) 237 Instrument Construction and Orchestration 238 The Musical and Political Implications of Reform 247 Recent Developments 251 Performance Practice 256 Goals 256 Means 258 Composition 269 "This is our symphonic music" 270 Xinchao: the "New Wave" 277 The Response to Xinchao 282 Xinchao and Minzuhua/Xiandaihua 299 Part Four: Conclusions 301 People's Music Vs. Art for Art's Sake: What Does Socialist Art Music Sound Like? 302 Reassessing the Tradition: the Debates of 1988-1991 305 Final Comments 307 Conclusions 310 Brief Overview 311 Four Factors Influencing the Development of Chinese Music 314 Modern Chinese Aesthetics: Toward a Socialist Music with Chinese Characteristics 315 The Dismantling of Maoism 320 Red vs.Expert 322 Scientism as a Legitimator of Reform 325 The Open Door Policy 328 Closing Remarks 334 Chinese Language References 337 Chinese Language Periodicals, Newspapers 344 English Language References 345 English Language Newspapers, Journals, Magazines, Dictionaries 357 Vita 358 viii 1 INTRODUCTION 2 Goals China of the 1980s and 1990s is in the midst of a cultural crisis. This crisis has in fact lasted the whole of this century; but the effects of new political and economic policies implemented in the late 1970s have exacerbated -- or at least more clearly revealed the terms of -- the crisis. Chief among these terms is a confrontation -- a contradiction -- between Chinese culture and the culture of the West.1 This confrontation is a natural and necessary part of the process of modernization to which the Chinese political leadership has maintained a commitment for more than half a century. But the confrontation is not merely cultural (in the narrow sense of the term) -- it is political as well, for the depth of the political contradictions between a capitalist West and a Marxist China mirror (and profoundly influence) the depth of the contradictions between traditional Chinese and Western musical practices as well as the ideologies that inform, transform, and legitimate these practices. The goal of this dissertation is to analyze contemporary musics in China as presented and represented through live music concerts, mass mediated performances, and verbal discussions that took place within the boundaries of the capital city of Beijing; and to relate these presentations and representations to the larger issues of cultural and social modernization as they manifest in the individual lives and social institutions of contemporary China. In the pursuit of these goals I 1 My use of the term "contradiction" within this dissertation should not be read as carrying pejorative connotations. Rather, it is a dialectical term connoting a specific kind of tension involving some degree of opposition, and out of which change emerges. Its place within my analyses (and within the analyses of Chinese Marxists) will become evident as the dissertation unfolds. 3 will engage in musical, cultural, and ideological analyses of musical events, musical forms, musical styles and the discourses surrounding these events, forms, and styles. I