Undercurrent

American Folk Revival

2011-12-25T10:01:00.000-08:00

The American Folk Revival was significant episode in American Music History. It saw the rise of Bob Dylan and lay the groundwork for the rock culture later. At the same time it's also significant among Chinese rock communities. Many rockers in underground China hold copies of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg's poems and pirated CDs of Dylan, their strength sometimes drawing from the spirit of the folk revival.

In that regard, I have posted 2 essays I wrote on the American Folk Revival for a class. They illustrate the interactions between Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music and the American society at the time.

You'll find them here:

American Folk and the Cold War era

American Folk, Materialism, and the Fringe

A Look at the American Folk Revival 2

2011-12-25T09:59:00.000-08:00

This essay explores how Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Songs interact with the political climate of the day.

(Un-)American Folk Songs

War never ended. As soon as Japan signed its treaty of surrender, the Cold War was rolling on the way. Iron Curtain dropped overnight across the center of Europe, and a mist of Red Scare permeated across America. The House Un-American Activities Committee became a standing committee in 1945, and politicians such Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon used it as a platform to advance their careers. Utilizing the public fear of communists, McCarthy built a solid popular support and power in the government. Many authors and artists saw through the tactic and attacked the practice. But in order not to fall victim of the Red Scare, they had to hide their comments under a guise of normal literature. For example, Arthur Miller’s Crucible posed as a historical drama but in effect compared Communist accusations to superstitious Salem witch hunts. Similarly, “it was no accident that Anthology [of American Folk Music] was issued in 1952, at the height of [McCarthyism]” (Marcus, 92): in his selection of folk songs for the Anthology, Harry Smith laid a subtle criticism of the rampant McCarthyism in songs that allegorically expose its regime of fear.

The opening ballad “Henry Lee” immediately establishes a mood of doubt and anarchy. It tells a tale of “SCORNING OFFER OF COSTLY TRAPPINGS, BIRD REFUSES AID TO KNIGHT THROWN IN WELL BY LADY” (Smith, (1)). It started as a chivalric tale when the Knight refused to stay with a lady, saying “the girl I have in that merry green land/I love far better than thee.” Suddenly the parable turned awry. The girl leaned against a fence and “With a little pen knife held in her hand/She plugged him through and through.” Then rest of the song finished in a dark exchange between the girl and the bird who saw the entire murder, in which the former first goaded then threatened the latter with violence. The rhyming, simple structure of the verses, the light, repeating guitar line, and the easygoing, invariant voice contrasted with the grotesque happening produce a lawless feel to the song, as if murder and betrayal and breach of trust occurred every day. A casual listener would leave this conclusion in the medieval European setting; a careful listener would realize that this mood perversely surrounds the McCarthy America. In this America, threats were easier than warning of violence; the mere suggestion of name-calling sufficed. There was the mood of distrust among Americans, just as there was between the bird and the lady. Those who saw the corruption of McCarthyism could not speak out for the fear of being indicted by it. Thus begins the Anthology’s map to America: an overground path of a folk music collection and an underground path of allegories and metaphors criticizing the suspicion between people and McCarthyists’ taking advantage of them.

Some of Smith’s songs tell stories from individual viewpoints. In “Fishing Blues,” Henry Thomas sings about:

WENT ON HILL 12 O’CLOCK; GOT POLE. WENT TO HARDWARE; GOT HOOK, PUT LINE ON HOOK. LOOK DOWN RIVER, ONE O’CLOCK, SPIED CATFISH, GOT HUNGRY, GOING TO CATCH CATFISH. PUT ON SKILLET, LID, COOK SHORTNING BREAD. YOU BEEN FISHING ALL TIME, I’M GOING FISHING TOO. BET LIFE, LOVING WIFE, CATCH MORE THAN YOU. ANY FISH BITE, I’M GOING FISHING TOO. (Smith, (84))

The guitar tune immediately gives off a cheerful aura, which runs through the enthusiastic vocal and the whistling. Even the topic of fishing is so idyllic that at a first listen, this song only seems to radiate glee. Yet, fishing, as mentioned by Smith, is a rare topic of American folk music. He even noted that he doesn’t have any references for the “fishing” lines (Smith, (84)). That Harry Smith included such an unconventional piece in this Anthology is grounds to look for other interpretations. The buoyant tone suddenly turns twisted when we consider the song against the Red Scare background: it takes the perspective of an American Anti-Communist, “bet[ting] life, loving wife,” competing with another for capturing more spies. He “got hungry, [and was] going to catch catfish” as if whether a spy exists is irrelevant to whether he wants to catch one. Even more scarily, he asserts “Here’s a little somethin’ I would like to relate./ Any fish bite, [if] you’ve got good bait” (Smith, (84), record) --- no matter who it is, the Anti-Communists may set one up as a spy and destroy his or her life. This parallel seems to point at the controversy around Alger Hiss, and the prominent Red Spy Hunters like Richard Nixon and McCarthy at the time, who built their reputation and support through exploiting Communist fears and swinging names at their opponents. Such contrast between the lighthearted surface and this allegorical interpretation casts an extremely negative light upon the advocates of McCarthyism.

“Feather Bed” tells the other side of the hunt. This story is narrated from a black man’s perspective. The Civil War had made his living condition better, and he openly embraced his newfound freedom (“over the road I’m bound to go”). Yet as he tried to leave, he was first distracted when he heard “[his] baby cry.” Then a policeman “grab[bed]” him, accusing him of stealing a jacket. He ran loose to find the thief and caught him in Courtsquare. Yet nevertheless he was still indicted of “stealing first degree” (Smith, (72)). Even though the Civil War happened almost 80 years ago, the story seems naturally to apply to the 1950’s America. The World War II lifted the United States out of the miseries of the Depression and onto the center of the world stage as an economic and political superpower (just as the Civil War emancipated all slaves and recognized them as a legitimate social force, no long properties). Yet before the citizens had the time to enjoy relief and freedom, the Red Scare imposed an oppression of fear (just as even Civil War could not eradicate the racism that led, for example, the court to charge the protagonist with thievery). Many people were accused of Un-American activities or even spying for the Communists, but most of them were innocent as the Black man in the story. Being called in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee often meant being placed on a blacklist and denied employment by companies. They were used as stepping stones by the Anti-Communists such as Nixon and McCarthy on their rise to popularity. This song thus sings the opposite perspective of “Fishing Blues.”

In another song, Ommie Wise, whose name the title bears, lured by the promise of “money and other fine things,” goes to Adams Spring with John Lewis. But he takes her in a boat and rows to the center of the spring, tells her about his lies, and drowns her (Smith, (13)). On the surface, the song, structured as a generic parable, seems to warn against greed. The “[archaic] combination of voice and violin” (Smith, (13)) further throws the song back in time, as if it’s a product of the 18^th century, even though the recording was made in 1927. Yet on a closer analysis, one sees that this story may just as well happen in 1950, for it mentions no fact that connects it to 18^th century. When applied against the background of the Red Scare, one can make it out as an allegory of America’s downfall. America, immersed in mass consumption of products and greedy advances in material comforts, resembles Ommie Wise. When promised a way out of the internal Communist threat by McCarthy, played by John Lewis in this song, America hanged on to him as they hanged on to their properties. But just as Ommie Wise is murdered by John Lewis, America may be drowned by the oppressive chaos imposed by McCarthyism. The obscure sense of time and the micro- and macro- perspectives on the different sides of allegory compares such a national problem to a personal parable, a contemporary issue to a historical tale. This effect gives confidence to a solution, as a personal problem is easier to solve than a national problem. It also begs them to think of the McCarthyist regime from a detached point of view one would use to view history, in order to separate themselves from the materialism and evaluate the situation objectively. Thus Smith’s selection of “Ommie Wise” signifies his warning of McCarthyism and materialism going out of control.

Finally, in “Drunkard’s Special,” a drunk man comes home and finds a new mule in his stable. He asks his wife about it, and she answers it’s a milk cow. He then wonders how does a milk cow have a saddle. The second night he comes home, he finds a coat on his coat rack. Again he asks his wife, and she answers it’s a bed quilt. He then wonders how can a bed quilt have pockets. The third night he comes home, he finds a “head on the pillow.” He asks his wife, and she answers it’s a cabbage head. He then wonders how can a cabbage head have hair (Smith, (4), record). The entire episode at first seems like a humorous jest at drunkards as it seems to describe the drunkard’s illusions. The wobbly, skeletal guitar playing and the dragging voice drench the scene in a drunken hallucination. The drunkard confuses mule with milk cow, coat with bed quilt, and head with cabbage, and even after his wife’s explanation he still cannot understand. Even the words of his wife are unreliable as they are told through his intoxicated mind. Thus the song paints a scene in which the drunkard bumbles through his home, misconstruing what he sees and hears, raising humorous questions and thoughts. But what if the drunkard is not as drunk as “he can be”? Then suddenly the narrative depicts a scheming wife who takes advantage of her husband’s drinking habit to have an affair right under his eyes. On the first night, he finds the mule of his wife’s lover in his stable; on the second, his coat; on the third, the lover himself in his bed. The evidences escalate in strength and suggestive quality: the mule only signifies the lover’s presence in the vicinity of the house; the coat suggests he’s in the house; finally the man himself is an undeniable proof that the drunkard’s wife has committed adultery. The entire song becomes an urgent warning when we interpret this as an allegory of the McCarthy America. Americans, drunk in a stupor of immense material wealth and communist fears, first found the government to establish the House Un-American Activities Committee and similar Senate committees. They raised the suspicion of them, but were retorted “to protect against Communist spies.” That was reason enough for the people to back off as they desperately held on to their material gains. Next, they found prominent people, like Charlie Chaplin and Pete Seeger, and ordinary men and women called before the HUAC, and many professional lives destroyed because nobody wanted to associate with a person whose loyalty was questioned. The populace started to more seriously question the validity of HUAC, but was again pacified by the slogan of anti-communism. Finally, they found men of the likes of McCarthy riding on the power of fear at the top of the government. The failure of the drunkard to recognize his wife’s trickery despite his suspicions does not show Smith’s pessimism at the people’s ability to dismantle the oppression. Rather, as the release of the Anthology coincides with the height of McCarthyism, it is more likely Smith’s warning that America may slip into a dictatorship of fear. On the other hand, the first interpretation of the story (a jest at drunkards) satirizes America’s inability to see through the materialism at the reality of the situation. Thoughts and actions became incoherent when Americans placed the unnecessary material comfort as an essentiality of their lives. Thus they could only see the anti-communism but not the infringement of their rights of speech in the government’s policies, just as the drunkard’s muddled consciousness sees a milk cow with a saddle, a bed quilt with pockets, and a cabbage head with hair. Hence the doublesided-ness of the story, depending on one’s interpretation of the drunkard’s sobriety, not only layers (and hides) Smith’s criticisms but also effectively amplifies them.

By laying these songs in the context of McCarthyism, one immediately sees the allegorical criticism toward it. Even though these songs were not written by Smith, his selection of them indicated his ill opinion of McCarthyism. On the other hand, the fact that these songs originated in early America or even medieval Europe gives a sense of history to the subject of McCarthyism. Contrary to what Marcus believes this device does, that “it would dispel the myth of history as progress” (102), I believe Smith expressed more hope in his countrymen, comparing the 1950s to the age-old folk tales to point out how far we have come from ancient history, and how far we can pull beyond the tyranny of McCarthyism. Thus his criticisms only exposed the ugly body of the regime of fear, but did not encourage a pessimism toward such an America. He wished that such disillusionment could promote Americans to look beyond the Red Scare and materialism to strive for a better American society.

Work Cited

Marcus, Greil. "The Old Weird America." The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes. New York, NY: Picador, 2001. 87-126. Print.

Smith, Harry. Anthology of American Folk Music. NYC: Folkway Records, 1952. Print.

A Look at the American Folk Revival 1

2011-12-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

This is something I wrote for a class on modern American sound/music movements. This piece concerns itself with Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, which started the whole Folk Revival in 1950s and 1960s.

I wrote another essay exploring how the anthology is related to the cold war sentiments of the time. You'll find it in the next post.

Anthology: A Conversation

The American generation of youth growing up during 1910s and 20s experienced the overwhelming richness and power of the United States, towering over the Old World and indeed every other country on the globe at the end of the exhaustive World War I. They were disillusioned with the excessive materialism of the newfound American culture, and many of them left US for France or Britain. They were known as the Lost Generation. The materialism they escaped from gave rise to commercialized, mass-produced records. When Ralph Peer at the end of WWI on accident discovered the “hillbilly” and “race” market, folk music for the first time appeared in history as a substantial identity. When Depression befell America, however, it also buried folk music. Only until 1952 did someone named Harry Smith recover this Lost Generation of songs in the form of the Anthology of American Folk Music. It sent shock waves through the postwar generation, who had again been enveloped in the all-consuming mainstream culture. The Anthology initiated a conversation between the “strange” culture of folk music and the mainstream, between self and society, and between self and true self, that led many to question again the lifestyle and morality of their age, as did the Lost Generation 40 years ago.

Perhaps because Folk Music had not been noticed enough before, or because this time they were presented in a centralized, collective format, Harry Smith caught the people of 1950s by surprise. The songs told bizarre mythologies of murders, cheatings, prayers, and punishments, and the singers sounded as old as these myths with their shaky voices and archaic dialects. The stories pieced together an “Old, Weird America” as Greil Marcus calls it, “a mystical body of the republic, a kind of public secret” (125). What did these singers want to tell us? From the depth of obscure, they seem to communicate to the 20^th century urbanites from the abyss of 17^th or 18^th; some even referred to them as “Elizabethan” (Marcus 115). Smith’s newspaper headline description mystically encapsulated the content of each song. The opening ballad “Henry Lee” tells a tale of “SCORNING OFFER OF COSTLY TRAPPINGS, BIRD REFUSES AID TO KNIGHT THROWN IN WELL BY LADY” (Smith, (1)). Tearing aside the shroud that seemed to cover this song, one found oneself in medieval Europe. It started as a chivalric tale when the Knight refused to stay with a lady, saying “the girl I have in that merry green land/I love far better than thee.” Suddenly the parable turned awry. The girl leaned against a fence and “With a little pen knife held in her hand/She plugged him through and through.” Then rest of the song finished in a dark exchange between the girl and the bird who saw the entire murder, in which the former first goaded then threatened the latter with violence. The rhyming, simple structure of the verses, the light, repeating guitar line, and the easygoing, invariant voice contrasted with the grotesque happening produce a lawless feel to it, as if murder and betrayal and breach of trust occurred every day. Indeed, the selections that followed illustrated how a woman lured and killed a child, how a baby drowned in a sinking ship, how a woman defeated a devil, how a father found his daughter’s body. The overwhelming amount of violence in this anthology juxtaposed with the lyrical singing style seemed not to describe medieval Europe, but the newborn America and the explorations of the West. These folk memes seemed to carry with them the reason why they survived the chaotic times of Colonial America and Western Exploration. That Smith noted under “Henry Lee” that the song came from Britain but probably hadn’t been sung there for over a hundred years, while it was current in many American countrysides, only makes this hypothesis more possible: Britain through its industrialization and invention of social institution such as the police force stabilized anarchic elements long ago, while Americans was just trekking through the jungles and deserts of the West in a lawless race to the finish. Thus what the folk musician’s “strange culture” conveyed to the mainstream was “the old free America” of Rexroth (Marcus, 89) --- not the Puritan idealistic “free[dom],” nor the transcendentalists’ romantic retelling of the Western “free[dom],” but the disillusioned lawless “free[dom]” of the frontiersmen inferred in the Anthology. The fringe began the conversation with the center by penetrating and tearing apart the self-righteousness that drew a glorious picture of its past and obligated itself to spread Democracy around the world. This Lost Generation of music, once revived, faced the drenching sense of materialism and national arrogance rather than fleeing from it, as the Lost Generation had done. Harry Smith had built a bridge of communication between these two cultures through Anthology, as “for the first time, people from isolated, scorned, forgotten, disdained communities and cultures had the chance to speak to each other and to the nation at large” (Marcus, 120). These are only the first words, the first notes, and the first songs of the conversation.

The people reacted. All of a sudden, “where no [folk] scene had existed before, one came into being” (von Schmidt, Rooney). The Anthology had quickly sowed its seeds, which sprouted overnight. By word of mouth, it became the topic of conversation in colleges, and one thing led to another, someone started collecting folk CDs like Smith, others took up instrument and sang:

An uncle had given someone a ukulele; someone else heard a record somewhere; something came out of the radio one day and caught someone’s ear; an older brother brought some records home from college. Each incident led each person to want to find out a little bit more. Maybe get an instrument or some more records. Get together with a friend or two and find out where to hear some more music like that. Share new information with each other. Have you heard Pete Seeger? Do you know where I can get some “folk” records? I heard this guy named Hank Williams. It’s called hillbilly music. Wait ‘til you hear this! It’s the “San Francisco Bay Blue.” (von Schmidt)

The dialogue between cultures fractionalized into dialogues between individuals. Slowly, these dialogues submitted the mainstream to the raw revelatory power of the Anthology. A coffeehouse folk culture emerged, in which folk artists showcased their musical abilities like the jazz bands at the time or the rock bands of today, and they would trade tunes with other folk enthusiasts. A famous coffeehouse Tulla’s in Cambridge Square boasted the likes of Joan Baez and Eric von Schmidt, and another nearby, Club 47, transitioned from a jazz coffeehouse to a folk coffeehouse. These coffeehouses were the foundations upon which the folk music grew among the mainstream culture. Soon, musicians started developing their own tapes, to which the Anthology was “a backdrop…, [and] more deeply,… a version of them” (Marcus, 88). As Pete Seeger asserted:

We believe in the idea that the average man and woman can make his own music, in this machine age. It doesn’t all have to come out of a loudspeaker. You can make it yourself, whether you want to shout or croon, sing sweet or rough. And it can be your own music. And when I say your own – music of your own kind, whether it’s your family, or your town, or your region, your race, or your place, your religion, or whatever it is.

This declaration of self-sufficiency was exactly one of the themes of the Anthology, as the tales of anarchic killings signified that each one was responsible for their own living and death. Hence each folk artist took up an instrument for their own lives to sing the first words of their responses to society and to the Anthology. Though Smith had believed in the homogeneity of the people, the message of different artists were different, representing their “own kind.” In the introduction of the documentary Festival, the jug blower of Jug Band said, “If you see me, you may think I’m weird. When I start playing, you know I am weird!” Many were like that; they used folk music to accent themselves from everyone else. There was tension between the self and society, as each tried to pull and protect his or her unique cultural lineage and also to push away the pressures of a technological, materialistic society. Marcus explains that this was because Anthology was “not exactly made by folk people. It was made by willful, ornery, displaced, unsatisfied, ambitious individuals…: contingent individuals who were trying to use the resources of the communities to stand out from those communities or to escape them, even if they never left home” (123).

Yet this did not mean these people were fragmented. Instead, they were united by the common declaration of self-sufficiency. Bands such as the Butterfield Blues Band integrated Black and White players. In music festivals, Mississippi John Hurt received as much attention and popularity as Mike Bloomfield regardless of color. The roots of such equality in folk music could perhaps be traced to the Anthology, in which Harry Smith “never identified a performer by race. ‘It took years,’ Smith said happily in 1968, ‘before anybody discovered that Mississippi John Hurt wasn’t a Hillbilly’” (Marcus 104). Such display of nondiscrimination communicated the folk enthusiasts’ value of equality to society.

The sprout set by Anthology then grew and flowered. In 1959, George Wein, the founder of Newport Jazz Festival, also gave birth to the Newport Folk Festival. This gathering congregated hundreds of folk musicians to play for twenty thousands of audience. At the same time, it showcased society what the conversation between the fringe folk culture and the mainstream culture has taught the American people: not just the songs, but also the inspiration for each person to converse with their true selves. People came from “many different backgrounds and many different places --- places like Grand Island, Nebraska; Dedham, Massachussets; Akron, Ohio; Kerrville, Texas; Westport, Connecticut; Los Angeles, California; Concord, New Hampshire; Grant’s Pass, Oregon; New York, New York --- wherever we were in the late forties and early fifties, ‘growing up,’ as they said then, during that flat pink and charcoal stretch of boredom known as Eisenhower Years” (Schmidt, Roony, 1979). No longer did people cower behind the mask of manners and social norms, “the mask that, when worn too long, makes the face behind it shrivel up and rot away” (Marcus 122). Before, they heard the CDs of Anthology, the unwavering confidence and will the singers had over their voice; now, they themselves sang with mastery over their lives. When these people went to audition for record companies or sign up to perform in the festival, “one singer after another would recall himself … how could they keep hold of the pride, speak their piece as if they knew their neighbors would hear, but also as if they imagined the nation itself might actually acknowledge their existence” (Marcus 123). At those moments, each singer chose to reveal their true faces from under the mask of fear of rejection, of un-belonging. Harry Smith had penetrated “Democracy of manners” (Marcus 125).

This was only the beginning of the conversation between the folk and the mainstream culture, between the self and the society, and between self and true self. The freedom of “manners” that the Anthology gifted the people turned out everywhere. Many took voluntary poverty upon themselves, living a bohemian life among the Beat generation. Others took up causes, and joined in the efforts of anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and civil rights movements. This generation spoke up, unlike their predecessor who expatriated themselves and allowed America to sink into its syrup of material self-gratification.

Work Cited

Marcus, Greil. "The Old Weird America." The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes. New York, NY: Picador, 2001. 87-126. Print.

Smith, Harry. Anthology of American Folk Music. NYC: Folkway Records, 1952. Print.

The Anthology of June Fourth Songs

2011-12-25T09:34:00.000-08:00

This is a project I did for a class on Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 last year. The topic is quite relevant to the discussion of society and music on this blog, and it shows how the two interact.

I researched 8 songs, many of which composed by Hong Kong pop stars as the hunger strike in Tiananmen Square went on, as a show of support. Though it's not surprising that my favorite among them is "Square" by the folk rock artist Lizhi, who evaluates the event more than a decade later with direct language.

I was planning on expanding the song selections, but I have shifted gears since then and will not extend this project in the near term.

Nevertheless, I hope you will enjoy it!

Contents

《血染的风采》”Bloodstained Demeanor”. 2

《历史的伤口》”Wound of History”. 4

《最后一枪》”The Last Bullet”. 5

《垃圾场》”Garbage Dump”. 7

《自由花》”Flower of Freedom”. 9

《为自由》“For Freedom”. 11

《妈妈我没有做错》“Mom I Didn’t Do Wrong”. 12

《广场》”Square”. 14

《血染的风采》”Bloodstained Demeanor”

《血染的风采》

作词：陈哲

作曲：苏越

也许我告别,将不再回来

你是否理解,你是否明白

也许我倒下,将不再起来

你是否还要永久的期待

如果是这样,你不要悲哀

共和国的旗帜上有我们血染的风采

如果是这样,你不要悲哀

共和国的旗帜上有我们血染的风采

也许我的眼睛,再不能睁开

你是否理解我沉默的情怀

也许我长眠,再不能醒来

你是否相信我化作了山脉

如果是这样,你不要悲哀

共和国的土壤里有我们付出的爱

如果是这样,你不要悲哀

共和国的土壤里有我们付出的爱

如果是这样,你不要悲哀

共和国的旗帜上有我们血染的风采

如果是这样,你不要悲哀

共和国的旗帜上有我们血染的风采

血染的风采

“Bloodstained Demeanor”

Lyrics by Chen Zhe

Music by Su Yue

Perhaps I will say goodbye, never to come back,

Would you sympathize? Would you understand?

Perhaps I shall fall down, never to get up,

Would you nevertheless wait eternally?

If this is so, you don't need to feel sorrow.

On the Republic's flag is our bloodstained demeanor.

If this is so, you don't need to feel sorrow.

On the Republic's flag is our bloodstained demeanor.

Perhaps my eyes are never to open again,

Would you sympathize with my silent emotions?

Perhaps I will fall asleep, never to wake up,

Would you believe that I have become the mountains?

If this is so, you don't need to feel sorrow.

In the Republic's soil is the love we gave.

If this is so, you don't need to feel sorrow.

In the Republic's soil is the love we gave.

If this is so, you don't need to feel sorrow.

On the Republic's flag is our bloodstained demeanor.

If this is so, you don't need to feel sorrow.

On the Republic's flag is our bloodstained demeanor.

Bloodstained demeanor

Notes:

China and Vietnam went to war in 1979 over border issues and because Vietnam occupied Cambodia, the only ally of China in Indochina at the time. In one battle, an entire troop was wiped out except one soldier, 徐良Xu Liang. He still suffered severe leg injury, but survived to become a symbol of the Liberation Army’s sacrifice for the people. He appeared in a wheel chair with pop singer Mao Aming in the 1987 Chinese New Year Eve Celebration singing this song for the first time. Ever since then the song became a hit across China. The song is further popularized when famous Chinese pop singer Anita Mui and Cantonese pop band Beyond covered it (separately).

After 1989, expatriated supporters of the Democracy Movement imbued new meaning into the song, using it as a memorial for those students who died on June Fourth.

Source: http://iask.sina.com.cn/b/4338223.html

《历史的伤口》”Wound of History”

《历史的伤口》

作词

林秋离、梁弘志、陈乐融、童安格、郑华娟、刘虞瑞

作曲

小虫、沈光远、李宗盛、李寿全、梁弘志、陈美威、陈复明、童安格、张洪量、黄韵玲

蒙上眼睛，就以为看不见。

捂上耳朵，就以为听不到。

而真理在心中，创痛在胸口。

还要忍多久，还要沉默多久？！

如果热泪可以洗净尘埃。

如果热血可以换来自由。

让明天能记得今天的怒吼。

让世界都看到历史的伤口！

Wound of History

Lyrics by:

Lin Qiuli, Liang Hongzhi, Chen Lerong, Tong Ange, Zheng Huajuan, Liu Yurui

Music by:

Xiao Chong, Shen Guangyun, Li Zongsheng, Li Shouquan, Liang Hongzhi, Chen Meiwei, Chen Fuming, Tong Ange, Zhang Hongliang, Huang Yunling

You covered your eyes, and thought you were blind,

You covered your ears, and thought you were deaf,

Yet the truth is in your heart, the wound in your bosom,

How much longer do you bear? How much longer do you keep quiet?

If hot tear can wash away dust,

If hot blood can be exchanged for freedom,

Then let tomorrow remember today's roars,

Then let the world see the wound of history!

Notes:

In response to the Tiananmen Protest, a group of Hong Kong songwriters (listed above) wrote and recorded this song over 2 days (May 26 to May 28), to support the students in Beijing.

《最后一枪》”The Last Bullet”

《最后一枪》

曲、词：崔健

一颗流弹打中我胸膛

刹那间往事涌在我心上

只有泪水　没有悲伤

如果这是最后的一枪

我愿接受这莫大的荣光

哦哦，最后一枪

不知道有多少，多少话还没讲

不知道有多少，多少欢乐没享

不知道有多少，多少人和我一样

不知道有多少，多少个最后一枪

安睡在这温暖的土地上

朝露夕阳花木自芬芳

哦哦，只有一句话，留在世界上

不知道有多少，多少话还没讲

不知道有多少，多少欢乐没享

不知道有多少，多少人和我一样

不知道有多少，多少个最后一枪

一颗流弹打中我胸膛

刹那间往事涌在我心上

哦哦，最后一枪

"The Last Bullet"

Music and lyrics by Cui Jian

A bullet penetrates my chest,

Instantly the matters of the past inundate my heart.

Only tears, no sadness

If this is the last bullet,

I am willing to accept this profound glory

O, o, the last bullet

Don't know how many, how many things not told,

Don't know how much, how much happiness not shared,

Don't know how many, how many people like me,

Don't know how many, how many "last bullets"

Sleeping peacefully on this warm earth,

Dews, twilight, flowers and woods naturally fragrant

O, o, only this one sentence remain in the world

Don't know how many, how many things not told,

Don't know how much, how much happiness not shared,

Don't know how many, how many people like me,

Don't know how many, how many "last bullets"

A bullet penetrates my chest,

Instantly the matters of the past inundate my heart.

O, o, the last bullet

Notes:

This song is also inspired by the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War (as is the “Bloodstained Demeanor”). Cui Jian intended this as a peace song. It appeared for the first time in the 1987 compilation album《无名高地──中国红歌星金曲选第一集》Nameless High Ground –China Red Pop Hit Selection Volume 1.

The original version was featured in the original soundtrack of the 1990 movie《火烧岛》Burning Island. Around the same time it was published in Cui Jian’s Album《解决》Solution. However, the lyrics of album version were significantly reduced in order to pass the inspection; all that was left were the last 4 verses (Starting with “A bullet” to the end).

After June Fourth, Cui Jian was banned from major venues until 1990, when the government realized the potential of his tours to raise money for The Asian Games. In the Chengdu stop he performed “The Last Bullet” and at the end asked,

“Do you guys know what that song was?”

“’The Last Bullet’!”

“Yes! Then let us hope that the gun shots we heard last year was the last ones!”

This behavior forced the government to stop the tour immediately and also to ban the song. Not until the Sichuan Earthquake in 2008 did Cui Jian perform this piece again, but only the instrumental.

Source: http://www.ntdtv.com/xtr/gb/2009/06/02/a302208.html

《垃圾场》”Garbage Dump”

《垃圾场》

作词、曲：何勇

我们生活的世界

就象一个垃圾场

人们就象虫子一样

在这里边你争我抢

吃的都是良心

拉的全是思想

你能看到你不知道

你能看到你不知道你不知道

我们生活的世界

就象一个垃圾场

只要你活着

你就不能停止幻想

有人减肥有人饿死没粮

饿死没粮饿死没粮

有没有希望

Garbage Dump

Lyrics and music by He Yong

The world that we live in

Is like a garbage dump.

People are like bugs,

Fight and rob inside this dump.

What we eat is conscience,

What we shit is ideology.

You can see, you don't know.

You can see, you don't know, you don’t know

The world that we live in

Is like a garbage dump.

As long as you live,

You cannot stop hallucinating.

Some people diet, some people die of hunger.

Die of hunger, Die of hunger,

Die of hunger, Die of hunger.

Is there hope?

Notes:

He Yong was one of the most influential rock artists of late 1980s and early 1990s, and also one of the most controversial because of the radical attitude of this song. “Garbage Dump” was written amidst the Tiananmen Protest, and was performed by He Yong for the students (on the same stage as Cui Jian).

Analysis:

The song starts with a highly distorted howl from the guitar, then a chromatic bass rhythm, a driving drum pattern, and then a chromatic piano run, opening with a highly dissonant, repellant sound. After a brief guitar solo, He Yong echoes the guitar howl at the beginning with his own. Then he yells “The world that we live in/ Is like a garbage dump.” The words screech against his throat but also seem to writhe out of his mouth. They are echoed by a synthesizer to amplify the hallucinogenic effect generated so far by the disharmony that is acknowledged by the later lyrics “As long as you live/ You cannot stop hallucinating.” All the while the piano gawks in dissonant cords every verse in dot-and-quarter note patterns. Under this musical backdrop, the lyrics paint an extreme dystopia that is the “garbage dump.” The verses “What we eat is conscience/ What we shit is ideology” are probably the most famous of the song. They described immoral practices imposed by the Chinese Communist’s ideology. The next verse “You can see, you don't know” is ambiguous on purpose. Is it “you can see” but “you don’t know”? Then He Yong laments the inability of senses to bring about revelations. Or “you can see” that “you don’t know”? Then he cries out against the willful ignorance of people. Or “you don’t know” whether “you can see”? Then he describes the people’s nascent disillusionment. The ambiguity hence obscures He Yong’s true message beyond such a dystopian song.

In the next stanza, He Yong mentions the wide disparity between the rich and poor, the former “diet” while the latter “die of hunger.” Then he begins screaming “die of hunger” faster and faster as the band accelerates, until he breaks down into random screeches. On top of his lungs, he proceeds to passionately cry “Is there hope?” again and again until the band rolls to a stop and he dissolves into heavy breathing. Again, does He Yong “hope” for better? Or are these screaming only hopeless grieves?

The entire song boasts of an extremely modern punk musicality that dangerously juxtaposes with the pop songs from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and even the old Communist songs that now have been imbued a new June Fourth meaning. It has a sharp, misanthropic edge that cuts against the people of 1989. Possibly because of this radical attitude it has never achieved such an anthem status as Cui Jian’s “Nothing to My Name” has done.

《自由花》”Flower of Freedom”

自由花

曲：郑智化

词：周礼茂

忘不了的，年月也不会蚕蚀

心中深处始终也记忆那年那夕

曾经痛惜，年月里转化为力

一点真理，一个理想永远地寻觅

悠悠长长继续前航不懂去惊怕

荆荆棘棘通通斩去不必多看它

浮浮沉沉昨日人群虽不说一话

不想清楚分析太多真心抑意假

但有一个梦，不会死，记着吧

无论雨怎么打，自由仍是会开花

但有一个梦，不会死，记着吧

来自你我的心，记着吧

忘不了的，留下了不死意识

深深相信始终会变真某年某夕

如此讯息，仍赖你跟我全力

加一把劲，将这理想继续在寻觅

悠悠长长继续前航不懂去惊怕

荆荆棘棘通通斩去不必多看它

浮浮沉沉昨日人群虽不说一话

不想清楚分析太多真心抑意假

但有一个梦，不会死，记着吧

无论雨怎么打，自由仍是会开花

但有一个梦，不会死，记着吧

来自你我的心，记着吧

Flower of Freedom

Music by Zheng Zhihua

Lyrics by Zhou Limao

That which can’t be forgotten, time won’t erode.

The depth of my heart still remembers that time.

The mourning once has been turned by time into motivation.

A truth, an ideal you are always searching for.

Despite the length of the journey, you still sail on, ignorant of fear,

Cut away all the thistles and thorns; no need to look at them.

Though after ups and downs the people of yesterday stay silent,

Unclear thinking, overanalysis, true heart will suppress false beliefs.

But there’s a dream that will not die, remember it!

No matter how the rain pours, freedom will still bloom!

But there’s a dream that will not die, remember it!

It comes from our heart, remember it!

The unforgettable left immortal revelations,

Still believing that someday they will be realized.

Such message still depends on you and me giving our all.

Push a little more, continue to find this ideal.

Despite the length of the journey, you still sail on, ignorant of fear,

Cut away all the thistles and thorns; no need to look at them.

Though after ups and downs the people of yesterday stay silent,

Unclear thinking, overanalysis, true heart will suppress false beliefs.

But there’s a dream that will not die, remember it!

No matter how the rain pours, freedom will still bloom!

But there’s a dream that will not die, remember it!

It comes from our heart, remember it!

Notes:

The original music is from Taiwanese singer Zheng Zhihua’s song “Sailor.” When democratic dissident Wang Shizhe was released in 1993, he was heard humming “Sailor.” The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movement in China then asked Zhou Limao to rewrite the lyrics to the song, the end product being the above verses. Soon after, Hong Kong’s Victoria Park June Fourth Candlelight Gathering adopted this song.

The word “Flower of Freedom” actually originated from the Communist Party itself, specifically from one of senior party member Chen Yi’s poems before 1949. In addition, when the Chinese Nationalist Party was still in power, those communists who were executed by them also cried out “Let my blood nurture the flower of freedom!” Hence the phrase has an inherent connotation of subversion against tyranny.

Sources: http://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/自由花

《为自由》“For Freedom”

为自由

作词：唐书琛

作曲：卢冠廷

腾腾昂怀存大志，凛凛正气满心间，

奋勇创出新领域，拼命踏前路。

茫茫长途凭浩气，你我永远两手牵，

奋勇创出新领域，溅热汗，却未累，溅热血，却未惧。

爱自由，为自由，你我齐奋斗进取，手牵手。

挥不去，挡不了，壮志澎湃满世间，绕千山。

腾腾昂怀存大志，凛凛正气满心间，

奋勇创出新领域，拼命踏前路。

茫茫长途凭浩气，你我永远两手牵，

去向纵荆棘满路，溅热汗，却未累，溅热血，却未惧。

爱自由，为自由，你我齐奋斗进取，手牵手。

挥不去，挡不了，壮志澎湃满世间，绕千山

爱自由，为自由，你我齐奋斗进取，手牵手。

挥不去，挡不了，壮志澎湃满世间，绕千山。

“For Freedom”

Lyrics by Tang Shushen

Music by Lowell Lu (Lu Guanyan)

There’s ambition in lofty hearts, full of a sense of justice.

Bravely pioneer new fields, fiercely walk out new roads.

Endless journey rely on noble spirits, your hand always in mine.

Bravely pioneer new fields, splash hot sweat, but not tired, splash hot blood, but not afraid.

Love freedom, for freedom, you and me together push forward, hand in hand.

Can’t be waved away, can’t be blocked away, ambitions fill this world, surround a thousand mountains.

There’s ambition in lofty hearts, full of a sense of justice.

Bravely pioneer new fields, fiercely march out new roads.

Endless journey rely on noble spirits, your hand always in mine.

We journey up, the road full of thorns, splash hot sweat, but not tired, splash hot blood, but not afraid.

Love freedom, for freedom, you and me together push forward, hand in hand.

Can’t be waved away, can’t be blocked away, ambitions fill this world, surround a thousand mountains.

Love freedom, for freedom, you and me together push forward, hand in hand.

Can’t be waved away, can’t be blocked away, ambitions fill this world, surround a thousand mountains.

Notes:

Lowell Lu gathered almost all of Hong Kong’s pop singers of 1989 to sing this song in support of the Tiananmen students.

《妈妈我没有做错》“Mom I Didn’t Do Wrong”

《妈妈我没有做错》

词: 刘卓辉

曲: 林慕德

不要谁来订制对不对不要谁在乱判我的罪

不想太阳再升起再升起再次软禁真理

不要无奈地悄悄低诉不要麻木地慨叹风暴

不可放下那伤悲那伤悲再次冷却不理

妈妈让我听听你的心里话

多少噩梦你不想你不敢去怒骂

妈妈若我远去你将我忘记吧

风吹雨下我不想我不想再懦弱

妈妈我没有过错，妈妈我没有过错，

一起继续我与你不死的勇气

妈妈让我听听你的心里话

多少噩梦你不想你不敢去怒骂

妈妈若我远去你将我忘记吧

风吹雨下我不想我不想再懦弱

妈妈我没有过错，妈妈我没有过错，

一起继续我与你不死的勇气

妈妈我没有过错，妈妈我没有过错，

一起继续我与你不死的勇气

(重复一遍)

风时仍弥漫冷冷空气

春雨仍流泪遍布土地

多么盼望有一天有一天世界永远优美

“Mom I Didn’t Do Wrong”

Lyrics by Liu Zhuohui

Music by Lin Mude

Don’t want anyone to dictate morals, don’t want anyone to arbitrarily arbitrate my crime,

Don’t want the sun to rise again, rise again, put the truth in house arrest again.

Don’t want to futilely whisper, don’t want to numbly sigh at storms with regret.

Can’t put down that sorrow, that sorrow, can’t neglect it and look the other way again.

Mom, let me hear the words in your heart,

How many nightmares you don’t want, don’t dare to rant against.

Mom, if I leave here, please forget me,

Storm or rain, I no longer, no longer want to be weak.

Mom, I didn’t do wrong. Mom, I didn’t do wrong.

Let’s continue your and my immortal courage.

Mom, let me hear the words in your heart,

How many nightmares you don’t want, don’t dare to rant against.

Mom, if I leave here, please forget me,

Storm or rain, I no longer, no longer want to be weak.

Mom, I didn’t do wrong. Mom, I didn’t do wrong.

Let’s continue your and my immortal courage.

Mom, I didn’t do wrong. Mom, I didn’t do wrong.

Let’s continue your and my immortal courage.

(repeat once)

Wind still permeates the chilly air,

Spring still sheds its tears on earth.

How much do I long for one day, one day the world will always be beautiful.

Notes:

This is sung by 夏韶声 (Danny Summer), who is hailed as the “Father of Hong Kong Rock.”

《广场》”Square”

《广场》

词、曲：李志

（白：还没有熟的一个果子，然后一些人就很饿，饥不择食，然后忽然发现一个果子以后扑上去把它摘下来吃了，一口吃下去，甚至于连嚼都没嚼就咽下去，咽下去以后发现肚子痛，然后又苦又涩的感觉，你说他应该不应该吃，你要说不应该吃他饿，你要说他应该吃他吃的是个涩的是个不可以吃的东西）

你的踏板车要滑向哪里

你在滑行里快乐旋转着

有人看着你为你祝福

我曾经和你有一样的脸庞

如今这个广场是我的坟墓

这个歌声将来是你的挽歌

你会被教育成一个坏人

见死不救吃喝拉撒的动物

(背景：救护车，快，救护车！！众人：畜牲！畜牲！畜牲！）

请你不要相信她的爱情

你看黎明还没有来临

请你不要相信他的关心

他的手枪正瞄准你的胸膛

如今这个广场是我的坟墓

这个歌声将来是你的挽歌

你会被教育成一个坏人

见死不救吃喝拉撒的动物

啦啦啦啦啦

（背景：一片嘈杂，枪声）

（一直预感着有一场灾难要来的，可来的太快，而且扎扎实实的就落在我头上，是我最怕生事的人的头上，它夺去了我最心爱的儿子）

“Square”

Lyrics and music by Li Zhi

(monologue: There’s a premature fruit, and someone is so hungry that he will eat anything. He then found this fruit and jumped to it and ate it in a single bite, without even chewing it. When he swallowed it his stomach started to hurt, and then he tasted bitterness. Would you say he should or should not have eaten the fruit? If you say no, he’s still hungry; if you say yes, what he ate was still bitter, inedible.)

Where is your motorcycle heading to?

You spin happily as you ride,

Some people watch you and wish you happiness,

I once had the same face as yours.

*Yet today this square is my grave,

And tomorrow this song will be your elegy.

You will be educated into an immoral person,

An animal that lets those in danger die, who only eat, drink, shit, and piss.

(background: ambulance, hurry, ambulance! Crowd: You monsters! Monsters! Monsters!)

Please do not believe her love,

You see the twilight has not come.

Please do not believe his care,

His gun is aimed at your chest.

Yet today this square is my grave,

This song will be your elegy.

You will be educated into an immoral person,

An animal that lets those in danger die, who only eat, drink, shit, and piss.

**La la la,...

(background: chaos; gunshots)

(end monologue: I had the ominous feeling that a disaster would come, but it came too fast, and fell right on me, the person who’s afraid of troubles the most. It took away my most beloved son.)

Notes:

Both monologues were pulled from the documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace, with the beginning one spoken by Han Dongfang韩东方, and the ending one spoken by Ding Zilin 丁子霖.

The song is in Li Zhi’s second album 《梵高先生》 (Mr. Van Gogh) but was not featured in the album’s 2007 official release in China for the obvious reasons.

Analysis:

The song starts with a triplet dance tune. The slow tempo renders an idyllic, joyful feel. Yet soon Han starts describing his metaphor of June Fourth, sharply contrasting the established mood. With this setup Li Zhi begins singing in his signature folkish rough voice, reminiscent of the Northwest Wind style of late 1980s. The mood thus becomes more melancholic.

The entire song is phrased as advices given to the modern Chinese teenagers by the teenagers of ‘89. The first verse addresses a youngster riding his motorcycle, which symbolizes the new wealth Chinese citizens find themselves with in the 21^st century. Li Zhi acknowledges that most other Chinese people would only “wish […] happiness,” but he’s warns “I once had the same face as yours/ Yet today this square is my grave/ And tomorrow this song will be your elegy.” Indeed in 1989, those patriotic college students had other citizens of Beijing bestow their best “wish[es]” on them and were looking forward to real changes. But in June Fourth many perished in that square as those wishes were crushed. Instead of sacrificing for freedom, the teenagers of today “will be educated into immoral person[s]/ […] animals that [let] those in danger die, who only eat, drink, shit, and piss.” These statements echo the older generation’s complaints of “spiritual dilution.” Moreover, it carries a subtle reference to He Yong’s “Garbage Dump”: “What we eat is conscience/ What we shit is ideology.”

The drums come in as Li Zhi utters “today this square is my grave,” as if to mimic the gunshots that penetrated the tense air on the night of June 3^rd. Light hi-hat and short drum rolls create brief senses of chaos. They are joined by a real recording of the pandemonium of June Fourth at the end of the second stanza. The rhythmic triplet guitar strumming continues to contrast the arrhythmic screaming and yelling in the background.

In the third stanza Li Zhi pleads the audience not to believe the government’s “love” or the army’s “care,” for they come with a gun “at your chest” as it was in 1989.

As Li Zhi finishes the 4^th stanza, the drums begin to play more syncopated rhythms, with accents falling on the 3^rd triplet subdivision of some beats. This adds more complexity and chaos, and eventually the song dissolves in to Ding Zilin’s sobs. Hence it starts simple and ends simple, but what at the beginning feels idyllic at the end becomes tragic.

Cui Jian and Carsick Cars

2010-12-27T21:12:00.000-08:00

I wrote another long paper...to make up for the silence of many moons. Hope you'll enjoy!

Chinese Rock’s Evolution: Cui Jian to Carsick Cars

In 1989 on the open square in the center of Beijing, Cui Jian repeated the cries “I have nothing!” above quick guitar riffs, a melody from Dizi, and a steady drum beat (“Nothing to My Name,” Cui Jian). Those words ignited the patriotic hearts of a hundred thousand students. 20 years later, Carsick Cars repeats the cries “This was a hopeless square,” pressing on top of a mesh of guitar sounds and drums and cymbals in a night club just to the north of Tiananmen (“Square,” Carsick Cars).

Carsick Cars parallels Cui Jian in many ways. Both use sounds that oppose the mainstream of their times. Both subtly criticize Chinese politics and society through their lyrics. And both are the most popular underground rock group in their own eras. Hence it’s fair to say that both groups more or less accurately represent their respective intellectual youth populations and are the embodiment of their epochs.

Part of Cui Jian’s identity and Chinese rock’s history is the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest where students from all over the country rose up and demonstrated their spirit of reform. Cui Jian was the manifestation of those students’ messages in musical form. Yet, Carsick Cars’ assertion that Tiananmen “was a hopeless square” seems to dismiss the effort and sacrifices of these students. Based on the authority of their voices as discussed in the last paragraph, does this statement constitute modern Chinese rock’s abandonment of its 1989 origin?

I claim that in fact it doesn’t. Even though C-rock’s musical strategies of pronouncing criticisms of society and politics have changed over the past 21 years (their styles seemed to have “softened” from Cui Jian to Carsick Cars) due to China’s own metamorphosis, modern C-rock still inherits the role as an organ of social commentary, just as Cui Jian had in 1989.

I will first show the differences between Cui Jian’s and Carsick Cars’ sounds. Then I proceed to explain these differences by tracing the modern history of nationalism and Chinese pop. Finally, I will demonstrate Carsick Cars’ penetrating lyrical social criticisms through the example of “Zhong Nan Hai,” and argue that indeed this characteristic has not changed from Cui Jian’s days.

Without a doubt, Cui Jian’s musical style differs significantly from that of Carsick Cars. As the father of Chinese Rock, he employed a wide array of different styles in his music in 1989. Reggae guitar appears in “Start Over” (“从头再来”); Ska appears in “Rock n’ Roll on the New Long March” (“新长征路上的摇滚”); Punk appears in “Let Me Have a Good Sleep” (“让我睡个好觉”); and so on. Many different styles fuse with traditional Chinese instruments in a single song: “he combines the sounds of the electric guitar with that of what are considered classical Chinese instruments, such as the guzheng, suona (a reed instrument), and dizi (a transverse flute made of bamboo)” (De Kloet 2005, 231). In comparison to Carsick Cars, the rhythms are more lively and quick, the changes sudden, and the structure of the songs more complex. The overall feel, from a cosmopolitan point of view today, is a hodge-podge of western and eastern instruments and styles, but whose mixed stylistic innovation no doubt have surprised the audience of 1980’s China and appeared to them to be revolutionary and modernizing.

On the other hand, the first second of any record of Carsick Cars would already mark to the listener its incredible difference from the classics of Cui Jian. Carsick Cars possesses a post-modern guitar sound, overlaid with various techniques of noise distortion; a simple rhythm from the drums lightly carries on the progressions of the songs; a bass line subtly creeps under the rhythms and guitar effects. The rhythm is sometimes purposefully disconnected between instruments to create a sense of chaos, a feel of anxiety. The music style is slow, gradual, and delicate in changes, inducing a kind of trance in the listener. If Carsick Cars is to “[bring one] to that desired plateau of non-being”, they would melt as opposed to blow one away with urgent rhythms and heavy bass (De Kloet 2001, 55). Their sound is on the forefront of the international rock movement, devoid of any trace of Chinese cultural influence. What “rocks” in their music is not rhythm or use of new instruments, but the adoption of new sound techniques (especially different types of noise) and the redefining of the role of rhythm in driving the music. Such characteristics are shared with avant-garde bands around the world, not just in China.

In addition, the vocals of the two rock groups are almost on opposite poles. Cui Jian employed a deep, rough voice inherited from the Xibeifeng trend in 1980’s China, sometimes with “staccato[, snare-like]” articulations “that are reminiscent of Maoist gunshots during the Cultural Revolution” (Matusitz 158). These characteristics fuel what de Kloet calls the “Rock Mythology”: that rock is “subcultural, masculine, rebellious, and (counter-)political” (de Kloet 2005, 232). Cui Jian in each song tirelessly utters away the buried voices of his generation, of those 1989 students who tried to “cut at [the government’s] hypocrisy ’til [they] get some truth” (Jones, Like a Knife 148). In contrast, the frontman of Carsick Cars, Zhang Shouwang, has a smooth, tranquil vocal, so much so that at times it would be able to be characterized as the opposite of the rock mythology: compliant, quiet, orderly. He uses a voice that is between talking and singing. If listening half-heartedly, Zhang sounds as if he’s just chatting to the rhythm, but on a closer listen, one finds that one cannot fully understand Zhang’s words because he subtly superimposes pitches over the natural tone of each character. His voice does not intrude upon the fuzzing monolith of noise of his band as often as other bands sing. For example, in the 6:45 neo-C-rock anthem “Zhong Nan Hai,” Zhang’s voice appears for about a total of only 2 minutes, and even most of that is repeating the 3 words “Zhong Nan Hai.” Hence the sound of the guitar, the bass, and the drums play a much greater role in the holistic feel of the band than they did in Cui Jian’s group in 1989.

Such radical differences in style can be explained through a look at China’s transformations and Cui’s philosophy of rock: “rock is born out of opposing society’s traditional ideology” (Xue 1993, trans. Jeroen Groenewegen). In particular, the conversion of nationalism from a pure propaganda tool to a genuine sentiment of the Chinese populace and finally to its polarization in the 21^st century reveals much about the sounds of the two groups.

From the birth of PRC, CCP instituted education that stressed “nationalism” --- not just the love of China, but the love of Communist China --- through compulsory reading of classical Chinese works in addition to Communist writings such as Mao’s Little Red Book. During the Cultural Revolution, the book was even mandatory for everyone to carry around with, or else one could be beaten by the Red Guards (Shaw, 92). Accompanied with the notion of “nationalism” was the nativism. Through the storms of Cultural Revolution, city-dwellers got to see the most rural, technologically backward parts of the country by “education through labor.” In addition, Communist texts emphasized the merits of labor, which were often framed in rural China such that the image of labor fused with the image of agriculture. Even though after Deng Xiaoping took power and the Revolution ended, these specific examples faded in influence, the overall trend of government-monopolized nationalistic (and nativist) education continued up to late 1980s when Cui Jian started performing.

This background helps explain Cui Jian’s musical style as a reaction to the artificial injection of nationalistic values. Cui’s incorporation of Western rock elements rebelled against Mao’s idea of a self-sufficient China able to fend off the West’s “corruption,” which for the period of China’s closure had re-instilled a sense of national confidence. It refuted China’s nationalistic aloofness by melting Chinese music into sounds of the West. At the same time, it destroyed the nativistic picture of China by importing something that was completely un-Chinese and equated with modernity (think about Cui Jian’s use of electric instruments!). Cui Jian’s popularity with the college youth and intellectuals was probably a result of their weariness of China’s nationalistic exclusion and nativistic backwardness along with their yearning of the West.

From 1989 on, however, things reversed in favor of the party for the first time:

Patriotic sentiment was no longer the sole province of the party and its propagandists. Just as commercialization created a new and avaricious social contract, so too did nationalism increasingly become the basis for a consensus beyond the bounds of official culture. It was a consensus that for a time, at least, benefited the party […] Both economic realities and national priorities required a strong central state and thus tended naturally to give an ideologically weakened Communist Party a renewed role in the broader contest for the nation.

(Barme 256)

In his amusingly named chapter “To Screw Foreigner is Patriotic,” Barme gave further examples of popular works which confirmed and amplified the nationalistic sentiments:

1) A Beijing Man in New York, a Chinese TV series, climaxed in a suggestive scenes of the Beijinger protagonist having sex with an American prostitute, showering down money on her and demanding her to cry “I love you, I love you.”

2) A post-apocalyptic novel in which a deadly computer virus destroyed everything outside of China, due to the Great Firewall’s protective power. A Chinese man saved the world with the help of his half-Russian girlfriend, who could use her power of foresight only when she’s having sex.

3) The following poem was published in a 1996 anthology of Australian works:

"Sex Notice" by Ouyang Yu

I have come to this country for 90 days

90 days without a fuck

I've seen your dirty books dirty videos

and dirty, dirty mags

I want your women I want your girls

I want whoever is willing

Your sun is cold your moon is hot

your suburb is too too dead

and your city is arty your money thirsty

your life farty and lousy

so instead of boring me let me bore you

with a brand new China-made flute

to play you a tune of starved love

for five thousand years

to flood you with the fresh cum

of the Yellow River and the Yangtse

so if you want to come and be my love

call me at six six six plus triple sex.

Hence it’s easy to see that the nationalism of early 1990s quickly combined with xenophobia and escalated into jingoism. The effect is even clear today. Anti-cnn.com was established by Rao Jin to report factual misconducts of Western media. During the torch relay in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, pro-China protesters appeared against other protesters who rallied against the Tibet incident.

In this environment, Carsick Cars emerges as a reaction to the chauvinism that arises from the Chinese people themselves. It deliberately blurs national boundary with its post-modern post-punk sound. In contrast to the works briefly described above, Carsick Cars’ noises bear no resemblance to any cultural norm in the world; it doesn’t even connect with mainstream rock and roll in the US. The noises dissolve all the transnational conflicts into an international emptiness. Neither are these noises violent like heavy guitar riffs. They do not suggest any kind of sexual or physical violation associated with the works above. Together with the calm, somewhat disaffected voice of Zhang, they disconnect the sound from the over-the-top nationalistic passion of Chinese people.

To explain the differences in vocal style, we need to look at the differences in the mainstream music that they oppose. Cui Jian performed in the Golden Age of Cantopop, whose singers sang with sweet, pleasing voices characterized by legato and occasional vibrato. In reaction, Cui Jian sang in a rough, masculine voice, often staccato, resembling rap. The pop also had slower tempos to emphasize the drawn-out legatos and the “soft emotions,” and its accompaniment was as well low on percussion. Cui Jian, however, typically went on a much faster tempo in comparison and employed heavier percussion to emphasize rhythm. Comparisons like “Chinese Madonna” Anita Mui’s “Years Flowing Like Water” (“流年如水”) versus Cui Jian’s “Let Me Have A Good Sleep” best exemplify these polarities.

In the current age, Chinese pop has incorporated the brief mainstream flash of rock in the early 90s and also mainstream rap from America. These influences are apparent in songs such as Jay Chou’s “Anti-War Song" (“止战之殇”), Wang Lihong's "What's wrong with Rock" (“摇滚怎么了”) and Xiao Jingteng's "Prince’s New Clothes” (“王子的新衣”). In response to the harder sounds of pop, Carsick Cars adopts a more malleable musicality in the form of noise. In response to rap’s quick and long soliloquies, the band “says” less in the lyrics. And instead of pronouncing words in their natural tone, as is done in pop rap, or stretching the words out in their musical tone, as is done in other pop songs, the band takes the middle way and subtly superimposes inflections on each word after its natural tone is enunciated.

Hence the evolution of mainstream pop induces a parallel (and a reverse, reactionary) evolution in the musical strategies of Carsick Cars, making its voice softer and more reserved compared to Cui Jian.

Now, Carsick Cars’ economy of words begs this question: Has it given up the rich power of text as social commentary?

I argue with the following example that the answer is no. On the contrary, such a relatively low-key, peaceful packaging of their lyrical contents perhaps only makes Carsick Cars more incisive. There’s a reason that “Zhong Nan Hai” became such an anthem in today’s Chinese youths beyond its unique style to “[build up] a perfect, instantaneously catchy [tune], and [then] detonating [it] midstream amid a howling wall of guitar noise” (RoC, Carsick Cars). Its lyrics are very simple:

中南海，中南海 x3

中南海，中南海

抽烟只抽中南海

中南海，中南海

抽烟只抽中南海

中南海，中南海

生活离不开中南海

中南海，中南海

生活离不开中南海

中南海，中南海 x3

谁抽了我的中南海

(“中南海”)

Zhong Nan Hai, Zhong Nan Hai x3

Zhong Nan Hai, Zhong Nan Hai

Only smoke Zhong Nan Hai

Zhong Nan Hai, Zhong Nan Hai

Only smoke Zhong Nan Hai

Zhong Nan Hai, Zhong Nan Hai

Life can’t be without Zhong Nan Hai

Zhong Nan Hai, Zhong Nan Hai

Life can’t be without Zhong Nan Hai

Zhong Nan Hai, Zhong Nan Hai x3

Who smoked my Zhong Nan Hai?

(“Zhong Nan Hai”, Carsick Cars)

(The left side is the original lyrics, and the right side is my translation)

A foreigner looking into this set of lyrics probably will be unimpressed at best. But the ingenious trick here is the double identity of Zhong Nan Hai. It is both a brand of cigarette and the name of the building that houses the Chinese Communist Party, akin to the White House. The former has a history of being specially made for party elders, and later trickled down to the Beijingers as a commodity of the rich (CCTV, 2008). The latter has a reputation of remaining obscure to people outside of the top exclusion of CCP. Hence the first is a symbol for the success of capitalistic reform while the second is a symbol for the opaque, and perhaps whimsical, workings of the CCP (which, of course, equals the central government).

Let’s trace the implication of “Zhong Nan Hai”’s the first meaning, as the overall frame of the lyrics would at first suggest. The song then seems to celebrate the cigarette. In translating “抽烟只抽中南海” to “Only smoke Zhong Nan Hai” I have left the structure of the original sentence as is in English. Without a subject written down, the implied subject may be “I,” “we,” “you,” or “they.” Thus the ambiguity induces a sort of universality. Then the sentence boasts of the wealth of the new Beijing, whose citizens are now able to afford such a luxury product. The next phrase ending “Life can’t be without Zhong Nan Hai” starts to sound awry, as “we” become addicted to Zhong Nan Hai --- or the newfound materialism. Finally, the last phrase ending “Who smoked my Zhong Nan Hai?” hints at the narrator’s accusing somebody of stealing. Chaining these together, we see a progression from economical success, to materialist immersion, to materialistic obsession. Remarkably, in the short stanzas Carsick Cars has embedded a farsighted warning of the capitalist excesses Chinese culture is saturated with right now.

Now let’s take the other interpretation of Zhong Nan Hai as the headquarter of CCP. “抽烟只抽中南海” (“Only smoke Zhong Nan Hai”) then suggests a different translation: “Can only smoke Zhong Nan Hai.” Immediately the sentence becomes somewhat of outcry against CCP’s tight control. The next phrase ending “生活离不开中南海” now seems to translate to “Life can’t get rid of Zhong Nan Hai,” bearing a critical connotation similar to the previous sentence. Finally, “谁抽了我的中南海” pivots its meaning on the word “抽” and the historical significance of “中南海.” “抽” means “to smoke” when grouped with the word “cigarette,” but also “to draw, to suck” as a common verb. 中南海 (Zhong Nan Hai) used to be an imperial palace before the end of Qing Dynasty, hence loaded with ancient Chinese essence. Zhang thus rhetorically asks “who took away our Chinese spirit?,” pointing at the violation of morals in contemporary China, looking at the CCP elders sitting inside Zhong Nan Hai.

Hence, even though the sound and texture of Carsick Cars may seem cosmopolitan and unobtrusive, its core remains fiercely, intellectually, and complexly critical of the Chinese society in the form of loaded lyrics. As such, it stays true to Cui Jian’s defining of rock:

Interviewer: “Why have you said rock is the most serious music? Is there a more concrete explanation for your remarks about yourself as ‘confident, free and natural’?”

Cui Jian: “Because rock has social responsibility. First, regarding the emergence of this form, rock is born out of opposing society’s traditional ideology. It absolutely is not an art form that can bring happiness to everyone in society. Second, every society has its problems, any rock should sharply criticize these social problems. The only difference between rock and other forms of critique is that it uses musical forms to express the dissatisfaction people feel about these social problems.” (Xue, trans. Jeroen Groenewegen)

In this paper, I explained the gap between Cui Jian’s and Carsick Cars’ musical styles through the evolution of nationalism and the change in Chinese pop. Nevertheless, they both still bear the responsibility of social critique despite these differences. The “rock ideology” still remains intact across the gulf of 21 years.

In this light, “[Tiananmen] was a hopeless square” probably does not mean Carsick Cars’ denouncement of the rock legacies of 1989. Rather, it is the band’s affirmation of the legacy of intellectual criticism, as it lashes out against the surviving student leaders for failing to carry the efforts of 1989 on to the present, that the idealism of 1989 in the end is devoured by “hopeless[ness]” at democracy.

Work Cited

Barmé, Geremie. "To Screw Foreigners is Patriotic." In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 255-280. Print.

De Kloet, Jeroen. Red Sonic Trajectories: Popular Music and Youth in Urban China. Phd dissertation, University of Amersterdam, 2001. Print.

De Kloet, Jeroen. "Authenticating Geographies and Temporalities: Representations of Chinese Rock in China." Visual Anthropology 18.2/3 (2005): 229-255. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 3 Dec. 2010. Matusitz, Jonathan. "Semiotics of Music: Analysis of Cui Jian's “Nothing to My Name,” the Anthem for the Chinese Youths in the Post-Cultural Revolution Era." Journal of Popular Culture 43.1 (2010): 156-175. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 3 Dec. 2010. Jones, Andrew F, 1992. “Beijing Bastards.” Spin Magazine 7 Aug. 1992: 80–90, 122–23.——. Like a Knife: Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music. Ithaca, NY: Cornell East Asian Program, 1992.

Shaw, Karl. Power Mad!: A Book of Deranged Dictators. London: O'Mara, 2004. Print.

Wang, Hongyu, and Yi Lu. "地道京味儿何处寻：最北京 (Where to Find The Best Taste of Beijing?: Maximum Edition)." CCTV. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Dec. 2010. .

Xue, Ji. 《摇滚梦寻-中国摇滚乐实录》 (Dreamseeking: a True Record of Chinese Rock Music). Beijing: 中国电影出版社 (China Movie Publisher), 1993. Print.

Tree Village and Beijing Underground

2010-08-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the silence of almost 3 months! I have been a bit scatterbrained about things, plus enjoying my summer by wasting time. But finally I have finished a long discourse about Tree Village and the underground community. I started this idea in May and thought I could finish in a week, but who would have predicted I am just be done! (Well, I probably should have foreseen my lack of concentration) This is my first attempt to incorporate existing literature on the subject with my own experience and knowledge to produce a fresh perspective. I hope it is enlightening on the matter of Beijing Underground.

(If you feel the blog format is a little cramped, here's the pdf version on http://www.scribd.com/doc/35934548/Tree-Village-and-Beijing-Underground)

Tree Village and Beijing Underground

By Greg Yang

8/15/10

0. Introduction

This paper attempts to reveal the lifestyles and life-attitudes of Beijing underground rock artists and analyze the various geographical patterns, including settlement, migration, and organization, associated with them. A special focus is placed on Tree Village and its surroundings. The time frame stretches from mid-1990s to mid-2000s. To my regret I am not able to gather primary sources through first-hand field study in Beijing. Nevertheless I have found a myriad of sources and data that have been very enlightening on this matter.

1. The Underground Community(ies)

There are a few consistent themes in the Chinese (and especially Beijing, which will form the basis for the analysis below) rock scene: among them are overground vs. underground; community vs. individuality; and conformity vs. marginality. The fringe nature of underground rock movement necessitates a network of interconnectivity among its musicians for several reasons:

1) The Beijing underground of late 1990s and 2000s is formed by out-of-towners 外地人 who are attracted to the cultural capital. This city offers the biggest pool of rock audiences and the only rock and roll school in the entire nation -- the Midi School of Music. In fact the school proved so instrumental in uniting musicians from around the nations that the famous poet and music critic Yan Jun once remarked that "If it would change its name to Midi Music Association, I don't think anyone would object" (Yan 2002). But common Beijingers have a deep-seated prejudice against these out-of-towners that roots in the historical political and cultural dominance of the capital. They treat them as uncouth heathens and to an extreme even inferior citizens (I remember suffering some of this prejudice at school back in the 90s). This is not unlike the attitude of city dwellers toward industrial newcomers from the countryside in early cities. Thus their common exclusion was cause for their mutual inclusion in the underground rock community.

2) Beijing society (and indeed that of any other major cities in China) is extremely complex. Dead corners are everywhere. Without the right connection, it's horrifyingly easy for an outsider to be conned. Particularly, rockers need to know the right people to play for and the right places to play at. Even if they can find these eventually, having connections significantly saves their time, which, given their general poorness and lack of a second job other than playing music, is money that goes into their basic amenities. So again, the insider-outsider complex also forces them to bunch together.

3) Last but not the least, their common rock spirit forms the inherent bond of the community. The underground shares the same disgust toward commercialization, and often times toward the brainwashing nature of the mainstream (of course, with the irony that the underground is constantly incorporated by the mainstream). They play not for mass consumption, but for fans who appreciate their music --- in other words, they do not seek to persuade, but only to express meaning and unmeaning to those who wish to interpret, those who already possess the rock spirit. A running joke in Beijing says, “Metal bands play for themselves; punk bands play for the next band,” and another goes, “Any Beijinger who listens to rock has probably already formed his or her own band” (“Beijing Underground”).

Let me qualify this seemingly united front of the underground. In truth, the underground despite a monolithic appearance is diversely fragmented by subgenres, especially in the extremal forms like death metal and hardcore punk and even hip-hop. It’s furthermore fragmented by geography which is often closely associated with genre. On the national level, the Beijing scene will be more cohesive within itself than with the Wuhan scene; on a municipal level, which is the primary concern of this discourse, two far apart rock villages will intersect much less often than with themselves. But regardless, the spirit of experimentation and pioneering pervades the entire body, and interplay between subgenres are not unusual, as exemplified by the song 《都别废话》 ("Shut the Fuck Up") by Twisted Machines and the rapper IN3, which remarks: “摇滚和hip-hop没有冲突 (There's no conflict between rock and hip-hop).”

(From here on, this essay deals with geography more intensively, and for your reading ease, a Google map is provided here.)

2. Historical Background

The cohesion of the underground both leads to and is a result of its geographic congregation. Historically, Emperor Kang Xi in 18^th century built the summer palace Yuanmingyuan 圆明园and his son Qian Long encouraged its settlement of artists and built it up as a cultural hearth of the nation. This was all destroyed by European Imperial powers in the Second Opium War in 1856-1860. But in late 1980s and early 1990s, a second wave of artists settled in it and recreated the palace as a center of avant-garde art. Among the settlers mingled some poor rock students of Midi. Even though this art village was closed down by the Beijing government in 1995, the spirit of community remained, and its artists dispersed elsewhere to join existing or to create new ones.

At the same time around 1989, a small group of rockers centered themselves around Xi San Qi 西三旗, the base of Cao Ping (a famous rock instructor); among them was the fledgling precursor of Tang Dynasty (“Band Data”). Sometime during mid-1990s rockers also gathered around Dong Bei Wang 东北旺, to the west of Xi San Qi.

According to Jereon Groenewegen, year 1997 saw the emergence of a new rock community centered in the Tree Village 树村 as discussed above (55). This group along with Dong Bei Wang is largely formed by out-of-towner rock artists around the country. (Prominent among them was the band Tongue whose role in the underground formed the basis for Groenewegen’s master thesis.)

3. Geographical Visualization and Factors of Migration and Settlement

All of the above communities mentioned dot(ted) around northwest or north Beijing just inside or outside the 5^th ring. To get a contemporaneous sense of their geography (much of which has changed in the rapidly developing city that is Beijing), let me translate a passage from “No, Tree Village is Not Utopia” by the music critic and researcher Yan Jun (I have provided the Chinese characters of important place, people, and band names after the English names) :

From the west gate of Qinghua University head north, pass the stinky the river on the left and the piano factory on the right, and you’ll reach Tree Village. Then after a street you’ll see Hou Ying后营--- from July 1998 on groups of Midi students settled in here and made it a lively village. Now head north for another 20 minutes, pass Tree Village Elementary School or Rock Pawn Shop, and if you aren’t hit by the 371 buses that run on the street then you’ll have arrived at the Chrysanthemum Park East Station菊园东站. Then, of course, walk west to reach the park itself. If you don’t mind me jabbering on, walk north for 15 more minutes and you’ll find yourself at a crossroad. Around you are some restaurants, grocery stores, supermarkets, neighborhoods, black cars (taxis without licenses), idle people, dirty water, and, finally, a big sign saying “Dong Bei Wang” 东北旺--- This is the other major rock village.

What should be of your concern right now is the police station 150 meters from here. If you aren’t a legal resident of Beijing, you’ll very likely be jailed in Chang Ping and fined and be deported; however, if you are, let’s continue north through the narrow alleys and spacious streets, passing the Dong Bei Wang Elementary School and the old fishing place, to Gou Bei Tou’s沟北头public bathroom. Immediately turn east and proceed to the end of the road. OK. Tongue practices here ever since August 1998; Wu Tun (translation note: vocalist of Tongue) 吴吞and documentary filmmaker Sun Zhiqiang孙志强lived here for a very long period. Now Wednesday’s Travel星期三的旅行practices here along with Tongue, and also the band members of Sound Fragment声音的碎片and Duke of the Dark Night暗夜公爵live here.

If I haven’t made you dizzy yet, let’s walk back, back to Chrysanthemum Park, and follow the road east, take a few turns --- every road connects to Tree Village, this is just one --- to arrive at Shang Di Hi-tech Development Zone Road Island上地高新技术开发区上地环岛(translation note: a disk in the middle of a road conjunction like that of the Arc de Triomphe). Head East, and before you pass Shang Di Bridge上地桥, look south. This is Midi School’s 3^rd address. After 10 minutes of car ride, you’ll reach Xiao Ying Traffic Island小营环岛 --- from 1998 to 1999, Zuo Xiao Zu Zhou左小祖咒lived near Qing River清河to the south of here --- and then西三旗环岛Xi San Qi Traffic Island. To the east is Long Xiang龙乡where the band Autumn’s Worms秋天的虫子lives and where Xie Tian Xiao谢天笑of Cold-Blooded Animals冷血动物and the unsuccessful folk singer Yi Wu尹吾lived in the past. Now let’s walk some more and then turn north, snake our way through Huang Tu Dian’s黄土店weedy greens and railway tracks, and park our car at Hua Long Yuan South Subdivision华龙苑南里小区. What you are seeing right now is Huo Ying霍营 (translation note: this is different from Hou Ying). It’s not on the maps because it’s a new rock community. From late 2000 to early 2001, following Xiao Zhu (translation note: a friend of the author) and Tongue’s move here, about 30 to 50 other musicians broke Wang Fan’s王凡peace of 3 years --- before it was only him, enjoying a panoramic view of the sceneries.

Note that this article was written in 2002, and if you followed the map while reading, you’ll find a few places like the elementary schools that don’t exist on the map and a lot more development on the map than the area seemed as described by the passage (and, of course, Huo Ying is on the map now). The major difference though is the different locations of Midi School now and then. As Yan Jun mentions later in the same article, the proximity to Midi School was a major factor in the congregation of artists in Tree Village, Hou Ying, and Dong Bei Wang. Recall the connecting role of Midi discussed above: Midi’s reputation involves not only its education of modern music but also its building of connections between musicians from around the country. As this reputation grows through its infant years in Shuang An building in the People’s University to its 3^rd address at Shang Di industrial development district, it truly became an “association” and attracted musicians to settle in at its vicinities. Moreover, 1993 to 2000 constituted the formative years of the new underground, and Midi acted as a central directory to the insides of this community.

Yan Jun asserts in the same article that the main reason for settling in Tree Village and its surroundings was the cheap housing. He gave the example of his friend Xiao Zhu: Zhu rented a place at 120 RMB per month (about 14.50 USD in 2000, or 17.50 USD today), and all other bills per month totaled about 150 RMB (about 18 USD in 2000, or 22 USD today). So the total expense was only 250 RMB, quite cheap for Beijing standards. We must remember that all of these rock musicians are barely --- or not --- economically self-sufficient:

Every Chinese New Year, the musicians can’t find enough travel fare, so many of them sell their instruments or their clothes to go home. They adopt a sadhu-like lifestyle. Put on an arbitrary outfit and they are good to go. But they want to be avant-garde within the financial restriction, so having long hair became one of their most prominent expressions. The food is even scarcer and poorer. If one is fortunate, then ramen (translator’s note: instant noodles) everyday, and maybe real noodles every 10 days or half-a-month. The majority of these musicians are stuck with 50-cent vegie buns for 10 to 20 days at a time. The least fortunate of them can only get half-catty (translator’s note: a catty is about 500 grams) lao bing (translator’s note: lao bing is a pastry shaped like a pancake but may be salty instead of sweet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laobing) with cold water. According to them, in the hardest times, surviving a week with only 2 dollars isn’t uncommon.

Here 90% of the people depend on their families wiring money. Unless absolutely necessary, they do not apply for jobs so that they can focus solely on their music. Thus the older ones here who cannot in good conscience ask for money from their families anymore suffer the most.

There are two kinds of musicians: one is called “Show Runner赶场” --- these people perform at the bars few times each week. The pay is inconsistent. Sometimes there’s not much left after the taxis. People of the other kind focus all their energy on their music. According to them this is the real rock spirit. They are aloof from the “show runners,” but their living conditions are often much worse. (“Beijing Underground”)

Indeed what differentiates these rockers from beggars is often the fact that they sleep under roofs. Thus the low housing price is absolutely essential at the least as storage places for instruments and equipment.

The third reason for which the bands find Tree Village and its surroundings suitable for settlement is, contrary to what the average person would like when seeking new houses, its “low-tech and low-key” --- the lack of rules and of neighbors who would yell at the noise (Yan, “No”). The artists find themselves at the fringe of (mainstream) culture, their art unaccepted by the majority, and their persons unwelcome in most neighborhoods. After all, rock is an imported form of art. Its lifespan in China has merely 30 years. Only a limited amount of artists entered the mainstream: Cui Jian, Black Panther, Tang Dynasty, etc. But these old guards quickly faded away in the last decade of 20^th century, and rock was not entirely assimilated into the mainstream consciousness even of the city. Only in the outskirts of the city are houses (as opposed to apartments in the inner city; albeit probably smaller in size than the apartments) that offer enough space between neighbors to mediate the intensity of sound; only in the outskirts can the population density be low enough that a neighborhood association doesn’t exist to bother these musicians.

4. Case Study – Tongue

The story of Tongue illustrates the typical (as much as “typical” can be defined for such a heterogeneous population) out-of-towner band living in the rock slums of Beijing. The band consists of vocalist Wu Tun吴吞, guitarists Zhu Xiaolong朱小龙and Li Hongjun李红军, bassist Wu Junde吴俊德, Keyboardist Guo Dagang郭大纲, and drummer Li Dan李旦. All members hail from Xinjiang, a controversial region of clashing cultures. According to an interview between Jereon Groenewegen and the band, Li Dan and Zhu Xiaolong enrolled in Midi in 1995 and 1994 respectively, and Wu Tun wandered into Beijing to search for saw-cut tapes (a form of pirated oversea records; Yan Jun elaborates on their impact on Chinese rock in the essay “Iron Blood or Robber Sweat --- Looking Back at Ten Years of Rock” in his book UnderGroundGround). All three lived near Yuanmingyuan, the budding art village, though none of them knew each other then. Back in Xinjiang, Li Dan passed the exam to perform with an opera crew, receiving government salaries, while Zhu Xiaolong and Wu Junde worked in factories. After gaining experience in separate cover bands, the 6 finally got together, and Tongue was born in Urumqi, Xinjiang. They initially lived in a small shack built by Wu Junde’s father. After a productive period of music creation and practice, they decided to challenge Beijing’s cultural authority and to immerse themselves in its vast music-related resources.

At first they practiced in the basement of Midi School in Shangdi (refer to the map) and lived, the 6 of them, in a single room with one bed. In 1998 they moved to Tree Village, in 1999 to Dongbeiwang, and in 2002 to Huoying. They eventually got their own separate rooms but still used the public bathroom, and sometimes even bathed in the Tree Village Lake. Wu Tun, accustomed to his vagabond life, insisted on living with friends instead of having his own place.

Village life could be basically broken down to rehearsal, eat, and sleep. Occasionally, the band members fought with local thugs. Sun Mengjing, a Shanghaiese music commentator, remarked:

At the time [1999] they were fighting regularly, you could tell by their appearance. ... They had a rather strong sense of justice 仗义 , [they had] a sense of justice and were vigorous and upright 血气[literally, 'blood and pneuma'], as vigorous and upright as steel 血气方刚. They would often see things they did not understand or despised, and would immediately take action. Maybe that is a good way [of life], it is not a way I object to. (Groenewegen, 58)

Thus in some way, the band, and similarly the other artists who make up these communities, exchanged security and safety for their “low-key” and cheap housing. In pursuit of these values, Tongue’s move north escapes from, and thus parallels, the expansion of Beijing’s development and the incorporation of hinterlands into its central network. This partly explains why the order of the peak prosperity and liveliness of these communities accords with the distance from the center.

A look at the relationship status of the band members reveals interesting things. In general, each of these rock villages is/was almost homogeneously male, hence the difficulty to find a partner in most cases. Tongue’s members, however, have better luck than most other similarly situated musicians. Li Dan, Li Hongjun, and Wu Junde’s girlfriends are also involved in music themselves. Zhu Xiaolong has a French girlfriend, who got in touch with Beijing music scene through Zuoxiao Zuzhou. Wu Tun’s girlfriend is a writer and graduate of Lanzhou University. Guo Dagang wed a Beijing woman. With the increased fragmentation propelled by the privacy required by each pair, the band members have all moved into more “family friendly” apartments or yards. This slow disintegration illustrates a phase gone through by all bygone teenage rock artists. (Groenewegen 55-60)

One time in 1999 Yan Jun had dinner at a local restaurant with the band and other friends, and, recounting, he remarked that the money for the meal was pooled from everybody, and such luxury was far from the routine for them. The two most popular restaurants there, contrary to popular belief, did not host tattooed skinheads every day. More characteristic of them was their acceptance of Eat-Now-Pay-Later, which was perhaps the only plausible business model in these neighborhoods. (Yan, “No”) Sun Mengjin had a similar experience with the band. In a conversation with Groenewegen, he tells:

What impressed me deepest was, when I went there in 2000 that they had a custom 习惯 of buying each other dinner. Tongue went to Shanghai to play and earned a few hundred RMB, it was only a few hundred. When they went back they bought dinner. The restaurants there were very cheap; sometimes they would occupy several tables. When I went there and they heard about it --- because maybe we have more money than they have, a steady income because of our jobs --- they would say: Sun Mengjin arrived, and then thirty, forty people would come. The people I did not know would be introduced, one after the other. Everybody would be drinking and talking. That vibe is very free. To them, if there would be someone that bought them dinner every day, they could live! (Laughter) They were all like that, including Wu Tun, he often did not have any money. Even nowadays, these things are not becoming better easily. (Groenewegen 58)

Sun’s description reinforces the image of poor young artists relying on each other for survival. It also reveals the brotherhood-like solidarity between the bands in Tree Village and other rock communities. There wasn’t a concept of wealth: bands earn and spend; if there are leftovers, they share them with the other struggling musicians. They lived in the present as long as there was music. The free “vibe” proved fundamental in the co-evolution of themselves, their music, and the rock communities.

Often over tabletops some rumors were created and slipped. One claimed that Muma 木马 members received $1000 living allowance every month. It probably started when people observed that they moved from shacks into an apartment. But of course, that sum of money never existed. In 2000, someone broke Muma’s practice room lock, so they moved out of Dongbeiwang, sold some equipment, and disappeared to write new songs. The money for the apartment probably came from their secondhand sales. Another rumor quite unrealistically charged that Yaksa ate out every dinner. (Yan, “No”) In truth, Yaksa did not fare much better than the rest of bands in Tree Village. Instant-noodles were more the common meal. In addition to providing snippets of Tree Village’s daily noise, these buzzes, like the matches of the Little Match Girl, testified the musicians’ battle with hunger, malnutrition, and poverty.

5. Ideological Unity and the Controversy of Beijing Rocks

There’s of course a strong correlation between their congregation and their shared ideologies. But it’s not clear whether this commonality was a cause, a result, or both, of the rise rock villages. Yan Jun claims that “their assemblage at and movement between [Dongbeiwang, Tree Village, and Huoying] has only to do with cheap housing and other convenience but not music style or philosophies” (Yan, “No”).

Yet, one cannot ignore the fact that Tree Village is impressed upon most people as the hearth of the Nu-Metal movement in Beijing. Miserable Faith moved in in 1998 and Yaksa followed soon after, initiating a tidal wave of Metalcore acts (in the context of Beijing rock, Nu-Metal and Metalcore are interchangeable; the sound resembles that of Korn more than likes of Rage Against the Machine or Linkin Park). Tree Village became famous at the peak of the movement in 2000. Though, beneath the blanket of newspaper stories on the nu-metal explosion, the Village actually quite a heterogeneous mix of styles. Autumn’s Worms and Hang On The Box, two critically acclaimed indie bands, practiced at Tree Village. Muma and PK14, renowned for their energetic, intelligent postpunk sound, resided there at one time or another. Other musicians have entirely uncategorizable styles, like Xiao He and his improvisational performances. Again, the line between causation and effect becomes blurred here. One certainly cannot view Tree Village as a monolithic nu-metal oasis, nor can one refute the significance nu-metal plays in its identity.

However, in the incident of Beijing Rocks the musicians of Tree Village definitely demonstrated philosophical unity. In 2000, Hongkongese director Zhang Wanting came to Tree Village to film a movie, temporarily titled Beijing Rocks. At first the Villagers embraced the effort and helped in designing costumes, providing actors, and arranging dialogues. But soon, they discovered that the script was nothing like they imagined. It featured a commercialized romance in the backdrop of Beijing underground rock, and reflected nothing of the lifestyle, philosophies, and attitudes of the underground community. Yan Jun drafted a “Declaration of Tree Village” representing the Villagers that annulled their cooperation with the film crew as much as law allows. (A translation of the document by Groenewegen is attached to the end of the essay.) The document collected the signatures of some 50 bands and artists in the Village, including now renowned Miserable Faith, Ruins, Yaksa, Xiao He, among others. Thus one can argue that it indeed has the authority to voice for every Villager the following thoughts:

First, we believe that what this movie offers is another misunderstanding about the whole underground scene, and no real concern; Second, we believe that, just like music, movies do not only give people diverting entertainment, [and] we wish with a truthful attitude to decide if we participate in a work in which form substitutes content; Third, we believe that in our music, lyrics, conduct, and attitude in life we have from the beginning to the end opposed the harm inflicted on society and individuals by commercial culture and mainstream culture, therefore we see no reason to join in activities that would be self-contradictory; Finally, we believe that China's rock music will, just like in other countries, mean enormous profit and capital for the commercial system, but the barely emerged underground rock does not intend to do as the previous generation did, overhasty in joining the mainstream it once opposed. (Groenewegen, 152)

The first point clearly echoes the theme of underground vs. overground and the marginality of the underground. The second point compacts the issue of meaning, unmeaning, and trivial meaning in the phrase “form substitutes content.” By its stand, the Villagers swear against brainless entertainment and at the same time implying that their work possesses certain substance lacking in the mainstream. In fact in their own music, content sometimes completely subdues form, and music labels often only look at the characters expressed by the lyrics (Wang Yi, Music in China at the End of the Century: Postmodernism and Contemporary Music, 181). The third point, perhaps the keystone to the entire passage, declares their eternal resistance of “commercial” and “mainstream” culture. This resistance both bonds the Villagers together, as discussed in section 1, and disjoins them from the overground. The declaration connects all the aforementioned choices --- “low tech and low key,” poverty, comradeship, the escape from urban sprawl, and so on --- made by the musicians into a coherent direction that led them to settle in Tree Village and its surrounding neighborhoods. The final point highlights an inescapable fact: that the underground eventually will be incorporated into the mainstream regardless of how much resistance it puts up. It attempts to delay this inevitable process, holding fast to the ideological purity of underground rock, away from the contamination of commercialization.

They then proceed to qualify but as a result sharpen their claim against commercialism:

We wish to improve our living conditions, and are looking forward to seeing our music broadcasted, sold and commercially handled. But the greatest joy of being human and being a musician is striving to get as much freedom as you can, especially freedom of thought and spirit. (Groenewegen, 153)

These musicians do not despise commercialization as much for its compensations in exchange for products and the vast resources for spreading their work than that it devours their musical voice and thus their freedom of expression and spirit. The choice between money and independence poses a constant seduction, but they unite in placing “freedom” as the highest level of joy for which they are willing to sacrifice their “living conditions” and the chance for their music to be “broadcasted, sold, and commercially handled.”

“Being human is just like being a musician, that is the hardest thing,” they summarize (Groenewegen, 154).

6. The Demise

Despite the heroic front summoned against the invasion of the mainstream, the Tree Village itself eventually met its end. The exact reasons perhaps cannot be traced, but the rapid urban expansion certainly has forced out bands toward farther hinterlands. This only seems to confirm the low life-expectancy of art villages, following the death of Yuanmingyuan and Dongbeiwang.

Yet the talents that made up these communities, though maybe evolved through the years or separated from the bands for which they were famous for, still live on. Huoying seems to be the last place in the vicinity of Tree Village and Dongbeiwang to hold on to a large population of rock artists. But at the turn of the 21^st century’s first decade, it too faces an imminent disappearance.

Recently, Tongzhou (see map), a region in East Beijing, surfaced as a punk district following the hardcore band Demerit’s song “T.Z.Generation.” But details otherwise remain obscure about Tongzhou punk, and likely it is nowhere as united as Tree Village was.

Thus it seems that rock communities as geographical units have gradually phased out. The strides made by communication technology may have decreased the necessity to congregate physically. Also, over the past decade, local scenes in Chengdu and Shanghai, for example, have matured much, diverting streams of out-of-towners.

Nevertheless, Chinese rock continues to progress. Tree Village nurtured many ideas and effected many sound experiments that are still influential today. Some yesterday Villagers such as PK14 and Xiao He have even received favorable publicity in the Western market.

Works Cited

"Band Data: Tang Dynasty." Sina.com. Web. 15 Aug. 2010. .

"Beijing Underground and Tree Village." Chinaculture.org. 24 Jan. 2006. Web. 15 Aug. 2010. .

Groenewegen, Jereon. "Tongue - Making Sense of Beijing Underground Rock, 1997-2004." Thesis. Leiden Institute of Area Studies, 2005. Docin.com. Web. 15 Aug. 2010.

Yan, Jun. "No, Tree Village Is Not Utopia." Scene. Tianjin: Tianjin Social Science Academy Publications, 2002. Qi Chao's Blog. 18 Nov. 2009. Web. 15 Aug. 2010. .

Yan, Jun. UnderGroundGround. 2002. RockinChina.com. Web. 15 Aug. 2010.

Appendix: Declaration of Tree Village

Written by Yan Jun

Translated by Jereon Groenewegen

Edited by Greg Yang

A couple of months ago a movie with Beijing underground rock as setting is being prepared in Beijing. This is also Beijing Rocks (working title) about which there is much ado within the rock scene. It is directed by the Hong Kongese female director Zhang Wanting [Mabel Cheung], joined by famous movie stars. As a commercial movie, it contains the successful components of celebrities, love, commercial rock and alternative youths. The dress, language, performance and housing of underground bands will be important decorations of the movie’s setting.

The film crew and a lot of underground bands have had contact, they [the film crew] got help from a lot of musicians who participated in the production, the script and as actors. But, in the process of getting into contact with the film crew, getting to know each other and becoming friends, they became disillusioned. Because, while working hard and united with the film crew during the preparation, the participants gradually discovered the same misunderstanding of underground music by commercial culture as always. Just when our companions have signed contracts with the film crew and the movie is about to begin shooting, more and more underground bands that live in Tree Village and Dongbeiwang have clearly understood the following reality:

The creators of this film do not have the ability, nor the commitment, to do as we hoped, to truthfully reflect the life, thought and emotions of underground rock bands. We still respect the conduct and labor of the members of the film crew, and are grateful for the effort they put into getting to know us, but we have no way to remedy the superficial comprehension they have of underground rock. Misunderstandings based on different philosophies of life and attitudes in life cannot be solved by painstaking efforts by the makers or participation by musicians. Our companions can ameliorate the movie's dialogues and hairdos, but they absolutely cannot change the superficial and sensationalist beliefs of the commercial movie. Because we absolutely cannot make the makers comprehend why we choose this life and this music.

After discussion with representatives often bands or so, we seriously declare, under the precondition of breaking no contracts or laws, to terminate cooperation with the film crew of Beijing Rocks. Because in the end we do not want to kill our own form [of expression] with our own hands, reducing underground rock to instruments, dyed hair and tales of the strange. This decision is absolutely not aimed at any individual, nor is it a spearhead against anyone's movie, instead it is the elevation of the discussion to a topic that everybody has wanted to probe for a long time but for which there was no occasion. We can summarize our basically united attitude as following: First, we believe that what this movie offers is another misunderstanding about the whole underground scene, and no real concern; Second, we believe that, just like music, movies do not only give people diverting entertainment, and we wish with a truthful attitude to decide if we participate in a work in which form substitutes content; Third, we believe that in our music, lyrics, conduct, and attitude in life we have from the beginning to the end opposed the harm inflicted on society and individuals by commercial culture and mainstream culture, and therefore we see no reason to join in activities that would be self-contradictory; Finally, we believe that China's rock music will, just like in other countries, mean enormous profit and capital for the commercial system, but the barely emerged underground rock does not intend to do as the previous generation did, overhasty in joining the mainstream it once opposed. This movie is only an interlude in our lives no one wants to exaggerate. What we need to do now, is to take this chance and make clear what the basic attitude of rock bands is.

As for underground bands and underground rock, what we want to say is that no-one forced us to aspire to this way of life, and no-one ever lured us into these material circumstances. Soberly we wish to know everything about today and the future and take full responsibility for our conduct. Underground rock is not only about clothes, make-up and musical forms, nor is it only about being poor and angry. It is --- through reflection and decisiveness --- music with its own opinion about music and the attitudes that lie behind it. Its currents and innovations stem from instinctive needs. We wish to improve our living conditions, and are looking forward to seeing our music broadcasted, sold and commercially handled. But the greatest joy of being human and being a musician is striving to get as much freedom as you can, especially freedom of thought and spirit. What we are discussing now is not only Beijing Rocks, but a fundamental question: The majority of us has left our hometowns to live in the suburbs of Beijing, drinks plain tea, eats simple food, dresses strangely and will probably be playing in disordered little bars for the rest of our lives. What do we do it for? While we never had independent spirits, true emotions, free creation or social justice in any abstract sense, yet when we talk about these topics we are not acting on blind impulses: we know our position is under enormous, ever-present control and seduction. Imitating underground rock is easy, being human is just like being a musician, that is the hardest thing.

No-one can really represent Chinese rock [by themselves], but we sincerely believe that we are one among those [who represent Chinese rock]. We are only representing ourselves, but we are sure that we represent more people. Today, all over the world, in all the corners of Beijing, there are a great number of underground bands. The mainstream-culture controlled market and media both alienate underground rock and select those from their midst that can be transformed into idols and commodities. What underground is, what rock is, has been endlessly argued upon by busybodies who have nothing to do with it. Our action of today is bound to be disputed too. But the most important statement goes without argument: we are no organization, we do not have power, we furthermore neither have the opportunity nor the desire to market ourselves or control others through one-sided show-off, powerful propaganda, compromising exchanges or systemized oppression. We oppose light vulgarity and deceit, oppose the termination of thought. These are no slogans but come from the heart.

A Documentary of Beijing Punk

2010-04-30T18:28:00.000-07:00

I've just stumbled upon a documentary Beijing Punk released by Newgrounds Films last year. Check it out for yourselves:

http://beijingpunk.com/

Crock Weekly 7: Xie Tian Xiao

2010-04-01T16:25:00.000-07:00

Xie Tian Xiao, or X.T.X, was born in 1972 to a caring family. At 9 he studied Beijing Opera and performed in a local rendition of Journey to The West. Once he stole a bicycle and was placed under house arrest. The boredom led him to teach himself how to play guitar. Yet due to too much love and care from his parents that imprisoned him, he ran away from home at age 18 to Beijing to make a musical living for himself.

The life in the new city was hard at the outset, but that was what he craved. He found freedom amidst the difficulties: the freedom to take on challenges and to feel through their pressure. He received early recognition for his first band Hunters of the Cloth, for which he wrote the song "You're Not At All" that was featured as the theme song in the movie Vietnamese Girl.

In 1997, he formed another band Cold-Blooded Animals with his childhood friend Li Ming. The band received international acclaim and toured the US twice, and was the first Chinese band to perform at SXSW (for the recent Chinese Invasion performance at SXSW, see here). Soon afterwards, a San Francisco based Music Producer invited them to stay in California to try to break through to the American market.

X.T.X agreed, and from 2002 to 2003 remained in the US. What he saw and heard, however, eventually led him to return home. He remarked, "The US music scene is too fake, too shallow. Music is made only for music's sake. There is no purpose and no soul. The only thing they have is instrumental expertise, but that's about it."

All of these experiences have prompted him to pursue a course of native Chinese rock. He realized that imitating western styles will only stifle his own potentials and the culture of Chinese rock, and the only way to lead this culture to magnificence is through the strength of its own. Surprised himself, he found the skills of the opera he forwent a long time ago valuable and powerful in pursuit of this goal. Combined with his heavy Shandong accent, it gives his vocal a unique ethnic flavor that overlays the grunge and reggae musicality.

Probably one of the most identifying characteristic of X.T.X's band (whose name is now changed to X.T.X and Cold-Blooded Animal) is his playing of the Guzheng. Never before has anyone attempted to combine Guzheng, an instrument symbolic of the sagacity, with guitars, instruments of rebellion.

But precisely this kind of juxtaposition and the attention and meaning rendered to the poetic lyrics give X.T.X an air of authority that prompted the media to call him the "New Godfather" of Chinese Rock who rivals the reputation of "Old Godfather" Cui Jian.

Shanghai World Expo Pics!!

2010-04-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

The upcoming Shanghai Expo will be the largest in history. Here are some amazing pics from the site:http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/03/shanghai_prepares_for_expo_201.html

Caution!

2010-03-29T15:54:00.000-07:00

Yamaha has recalled 20,000 pianos due to a problem with the pedal sticking. This causes pianists to play faster than they normally would, resulting in a number of accidentals with several near misses reported in the carpal tunnel.

The sticky pedal also makes it harder to come to a full stop at the end of a piece, which makes it risky for audiences and professional reputations alike.

Despite many accidentals, there have fortunately been no reported deafs. Currently sales are flat and analysts are waiting to see if current volumes will be sustained or dampened.

Experts suggest that Yamaha's response will be the key.

Criticism of the company has been sharp, and Congress is planning hearings to find out when Yamaha first learned about the treble.

April Fools!

Maybe Mars bands at SXSW!!

2010-03-26T20:41:00.000-07:00

Maybe Mars dispatched the cream of its crop to the one of the most famous music festival in the world, SXSW (South by Southwest). Its troops include PK14, Carsick Cars, White, Xiao He, AV Okubo, and Snapline. They played from March 11 to March 20th in Austin, Texas, pulling off successful shows. In fact SPIN magazine named PK14 one of 50 bands to watch, and a reporter from the Washington Post named Carsick Cars as his favorite band of all of SXSW. (Also, an interview with White). The bands have now disembarked on a "Chinese Invasion Tour" of the West Coast. Kudos to China Music Radar for tracking down the bands!

Here are some footages of their performances at SXSW:

Carsick Cars:

AV Okubo:

************

On a (somewhat) unrelated note, here's some commentary by Ziyo frontwomen Helen on the Chinese rock scene:

Crock Weekly 6: Snapline

2010-03-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

With a challenge to "dance again on life's snapline," Snapline burst out of the chaos of the Chinese rock scene with their first album "Party is Over, Porno Star." While other bands fed on the decaying bodice of Britpop, the band "danced" on the Snapline of avant garde music and combined a unique mixture of colorless but urgent vocal, funky bassline, and eccentric guitar riffs with a steady pulse from the drum machine and a skillful use of mixer into a powerful marijuana of industrial rock. The messages uttered by the cold voice (and its artificial echoes) describe morbid tales of urban discontent. For example, in "Single Beat" the narrator has tied up someone, who is desperately asking for release; he refuses and rather "watches [the] bleeding." Perhaps this song embodies an enmity toward authority by taking its own point of view in its restricting, as if with a "rope," the people's freedoms and watching them "bleed" out their rebel spirit. But probably more so this song attempts to break free of the repression of expression -- the psychological and the social phenomenon more than the political oppression -- associated with the new generations of materialistic youngsters. In order to test the boundaries of feeling and conscience, the narrator tortures somebody else; he waits to see if the "trembling" and "bleeding" of the victim invoke anything in him. The vocal starts calm and lax, paralleling the initial repression. Then it grows louder and louder, perhaps trying to artificially create the sense of urgency and terror that should permeate the situation. But "it never happened." The sound then becomes hallucinogenic as an echo along with a backup of the vocal is added and the guitar moves up an octave and a background noise is introduced. The song then ends somewhat abruptly in middle of a pattern, and the repression seems to have triumphed.

Likewise in other songs, Snapline explores the boundary between feeling and unfeeling. The same theme appeared at the center of psychedelic rock in the late 1960s on the foreground of the Vietnam War, luxurious, careless spending, the wide inequity between classes and races, and internal suspicion in the US. Sound familiar, doesn't it? China has now one of the highest gaps between the rich and the poor. Huge patches of land used for subsistence scatter throughout the country surrounding "beacons" of urbanization and cosmopolitan culture, which has increasingly centralized around "making money to make luxury." The "establishment" -- the oligarchical government, the "military-industrial" complex that swallows money at a rate second only to that of the US, the overwhelming "moneymaking" culture, and the "mindless pleasure" that is Chinese pop -- stifles the political, social, and psychological freedoms of the new generation. While 40 years ago in the US the counterculture movement upheaved the entire system, we now have the Chinese rock movement, headed by the likes of Snapline, simmering with steam under the surface -- the surface will soon crack with heat, and then the wakeup call is due!

Let the "Holy Comments" feed us!

Crock Weekly 5

2010-03-15T09:31:00.000-07:00

In the face of the economic meltdown, the Sino-US relationship seems to have deteriorated despite Obama's visit to China last year. At the center of the controversy are the China's artificial depreciation of the renminbi, US's sale of arms to Taiwan, and the Sino-Tibet-US triangle. Beneath the surface, however, may lie the US's jealousy and agitation at China's robust growth and China's feeling of entitlement to its "Peaceful Rise" -- a feeling probably similar to how USSR felt during the Great Depression.

But as politics threatens the system of Chimerica, music attempts to tie it together with the rest of the world. Modern Sky, one of the largest Indie music labels in China, undertook and finished the herculean effort, Sing for China album with the tagline "Fight AIDS with art." The album comprises of numerous artists around the world including the famous Yoko Ono, American electronic duo Ratatat, Australian indie pop band I Heart Hiroshima, Japanese "Pajama-Pop" act Lullatone, British band Fonda 500, and of course the Chinese bands under the Modern Sky banner, among many others. The album is gigantic, spanning 44 tracks and 3 hours of listening, mirroring the international care toward the welfare of the AIDS-ravaged Chinese orphans and the increasingly cosmopolitan culture of China.

Here is a small selection of pieces from the album.

Crock Weekly 4

2010-03-09T16:06:00.000-08:00

Today we'll look at the band Twisted Machine, originally formed by Wang Xiao Ou as lead singer, Li Pei as guitarist, Yang Lei as bassist, and Xi Ye as drummer. The band claims heavy influence from the American Nu Metal group Rage Against the Machines, hence its name. It started out as a nu metal band with a very hip-hop-like vocal, a bass-focused metal accompaniment, and lyrics of blunt attacks on social customs - not unlike RAtM itself - with their debuting album Twisted Machine.

Soon, however, the lead singer left, and a new one, Liang Liang, was recruited. This move pushed the band toward a heavier sound and slowly onto the edge of metalcore -- though it still kept its nu-metal roots -- with the next album Return to the Underground.

In their next work Being appeared a piece that surprised everyone: an alternative metal piece, :Mirror," that starts calm but culminates into the spilling of feelings. The theme suddenly turned introspective as the band ponders the value of Being, ambivalently longing for the past but also looking toward the future.

Their most recent album XXX, released just around the turn of year 2009 into 2010, returned to their more heavy sounds.

Over the years, TM has evolved into one of China's most famous rock bands. Its sound continues to attract more and more followers in Asia and garner support and momentum to the Chinese Rock Movement.

Crock Weekly 3

2010-03-02T19:18:00.000-08:00

Today we'll listen to 3 pieces, "Goodbye," "Do You Wanna Feel," and "Cherish," by the band The New Perfume. The band has a pretty prominent Britpop style, both musically and lyrically as they yearn for the past.

The bandmates are actually very good students in college, but they still consider themselves on a path to become musicians and nothing else. This illustrates that Chinese rock in its origin is really elitist even though its message is universal. (In general Chinese rock artists consider themselves a tier higher than the pop artists, whose works are often described as "mindless pleasure")

Crock Weekly 2

2010-02-21T17:53:00.000-08:00

I recently read on New York Times about Mrs. Mu Sochua, an ardent woman of Cambodia campaigning for female rights. She is one among the new generations of women in Asia starting to overcome the deep-seated patriarchal culture. Many others attempt to transform the musical landscape through rock and roll. Here are a few of Chinese bands with female members:

This is the band Hedgehog, which has the female drummer Atom. Even though her size seems at first comical in front of the drum set, her skills at it are explosive.

Next up, Queen Sea Big Shark. The lead female singer Fu Han contributes an immense energy and throws her frantic vocals against the tight rhythms of the bass and drum.

Finally, Carsick Cars. Its female drummer Zhong Qiu has a lot of finesse and is instrumental in keeping the sound together.

These girls/women carry a heavy momentum toward the cultural liberation of females in China through their display of skills and power in music matching, if not surpassing, those of male bandmates. A round of applause, please.

Happy Chinese New Year!/Crock Weekly 1

2010-02-14T19:05:00.000-08:00

Well, it's Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year! It's also the anniversary of me getting off the boat and my granddad's birthday. Cool!

Here's what I decided for this new year: normally, analysis takes too long to set up and write, so now I'm going to add a new feature called Crock Weekly and showcase some Chinese rock each week with some brief descriptions rather than long verbose analysis.

Today I'm bringing 3 songs of the spring:

First off, Spring Story by Secondhand Rose. SR is a famous cross-dressing band in China. It combines folk singing styles characteristic of Northeast China with rock instrumentation, a quite unique blend of Western and Eastern flavors. Avant garde, to say the least.

Next, Spring's Here by Hedgehog. It has a certain energy and freshness that do render the coming of spring exciting.

Finally, on the harder spectrum, Spring Story by The Fly. Not exactly sure which category of metal would this fall in. It has a weird vocal combined with odd meters. The riff's catchy, however.

Hope you'll enjoy them!

PS: I've not forgotten about my promise of an entry on Chinese censorship and oppression :D

"Voice of the People" by Demerit(过失)

2010-01-05T21:30:00.000-08:00

Alright, I'm back. As a tribute to the human rights activist Liu Xiabo who was recently unjustly sentenced to 11 years, today we'll look at “Voice of the People” by Demerit. “Voice of the People” is actually the name of two songs. They can be respectively heard here and here.

The difference readily manifests as that between hardcore punk and melodic indie. In this entry we'll explore this difference as well as the commonality of these pieces. First of all, it's apparent that the lyrics of the two are very similar. Thus here I'll only give the lyrics of the second version:

The newspaper never speak the truth

That the people died in an accident.

Will they be reborn like the Bible says?

You need to find the truth and the way

Because there's fear inside this place

Wake up from your dream

Voice of the people can't find the reason

Wake up from your dream

Voice of the people can't find the reason

Wake up from your dream

Voice of the people can't find the reason

Wake up from your dream

The newspaper never speak the truth

That the people died in an accident.

Will they be reborn like the Bible says?

You need to find the truth and the way

Because there's fear inside this place

Wake up from your dream

Voice of the people can't find the reason

Wake up from your dream

Voice of the people can't find the reason

Wake up from your dream

Voice of the people can't find the reason

Wake up from your dream

Voice of the people can't find the reason

Voice of the people can't find the reason Voice of the people can't find the reason

Voice of the people can't find the reason

Wake up from your dream

Voice of the people can't find the reason

Wake up from your dream

Voice of the people can't find the reason

Wake up from your dream

Voice of the people can't find the reason

Wake up from your dream

The first stanza makes the point clear outright: the Chinese populace is blinded by censorship. One example is the famous 1989 Tiananmen Protest, where many college students perished under fire. Sarcastically, Demerit remarks that people like them died in “an accident” --- a standard cover-up technique adopted by the government controlled media. On another level, the “people” also refer to the general Chinese citizens, whose sovereignty of choice, a (western) defining aspect of “life,” “died” in the confiscation of knowledge. The double entendre continues with the Biblical reference. It asks two things: will the martyrs of freedom be designated as saints and “reborn” into the Kingdom of God? And will the people regain the vitality of free choice? Finally the message becomes explicit with the last 2 lines, calling for the “truth” and the “way” to live under this “fear” imposed by censorship and oppression. (The “way” may also be interpreted as the Tao way, which is the quintessential force behind the world in Taoism; in this sense the “way” implies that the attempts to cover up events will eventually be undone as Tao will maintain the natural balance in the world. However, as Western traditions actually appear to dominate the Eastern in this song, this interpretation may not be an intended effect of the band).

Next, the repetition of the chorus forms a powerful chant. The Chinese populace are trapped in a “dream” --- an irrational, surreal trance --- where they lose their “[reasoning ability]” and can't discern the cause of tragedies such as that of 1989 or any cause at all to unite under. Paradoxically, Demerit refers to a single “voice” of the people, expressing a strong belief in its unity after all. Thus, there is a bright hope of the day when everything becomes open, and Demerit with its own voice is desperately trying to ignite that hope in everyone's heart.

Note that both songs are in A Minor, which helps produce the darker sound.

Now, how does Demerit use the (almost) same set of lyrics to produce two drastically different styles? While the original version (this will be referred to as v1 from now on) bluntly asks for change, the later version (referred to as v2 from now on) reverberates the same slogan in a more mature and patient but still solidly determined tone.

In v1, the main vocal is hoarse and masculine while the backup is slightly sharper. The former is further characterized by “roaring” and the latter screaming. These are sounds of desperation, anger, and abandon. They direct Demerit's young energy into countering what they see as unjust and fettering. In addition, the guitar sounds are very dirty and grunge-like, and also the conservative attacks on cymbals of the drums (or maybe the placement of the recorder) blur their sounds into one another, befitting similar qualities of the vocals. The lo-fi quality compounds the effect more. The fast-paced rhythm carried on by the energetic drums combined with the vocals easily makes hard-rock audiences bang their heads and identify with Demerit's purposes. Lyrically, Demerit slurs the pronunciations and stresses the “voice of the people” a lot more with the main vocal's rapid repetition. Again, these attributes reinforce the lo-fi punk sound and the summoning of the people's spirits of revolution. The song ends with the decrescendo of the continuation of the chorus --- it's not over yet. And this is where v2 picks up.

On a direct contrast with v1, v2 has a markedly softer, more sombre musical and lyrical tone. The guitars unplugged themselves and slowed down. The drums completely disappeared, and the only percussions --- the clap and the tambourine --- enter only at the end. Segments of static is added as a backdrop for the guitar. The static relates to the industrial urban setting of China (or, more specifically, probably Beijing) and resembles the blurriness of truth resultant from censorship. The vocal becomes more tender but not resigning. Instead, the effect is of a more experienced and mature voice with a formidable determination compared to the seemingly reckless sound from v1. The main vocal in addition gains more finesse by singing through a speakerphone; its hushing quality actually sounds like that of one talking into a sleeper's ears. The vocals now resemble the “voice of the people” much more as 2 heterogeneous but synchronized voices. Finally, the hope and triumph crescendo in the song as the guitars pick up their rhythms (from more eighth note based to more sixteenth based) and dynamics and culminate in the last repetition of the chorus as the percussions come in. This less violent rendition appeal more to the average individual who may be appalled by the likes of v1's punk sound. Thus v2 calls not for a revolution but for a more graduated but momentous reform.

With v2, Demerit qualifies its own opinions from the previous album with this polar opposite edition of a past favorite. More importantly, the v2 “Voice of the People” ends its most recent album “Bastards of the Nation,” still characteristic mostly of hardcore punk, as a more peaceful resolution of its fight for change. It reminds listeners of fierceness and fearlessness in thought but of prudence and maturity in action.

OK. So how bad exactly are the problems of censorship and oppression in China? We'll explore this issue in the next entry.

New post soon!

2009-12-20T22:42:00.000-08:00

Hey guys,

Really sorry for not putting up anything for a while. Had to write papers for school, study for finals, and now college apps. But after all this craziness is done, which is very soon, I'll write a new analysis!

Meanwhile, you can enjoy these pieces:

The Chinos' "Lust for Life" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40xl0CF3Vlo

XTX's "Null" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZORgIzw1gM

Overload's "Lonely Marathoner" and "Magical Sky" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9_DToUBBXI

Tang Dynasty's "A Dream Return to Tang Dynasty" (this is credited as the epitome of Chinese classical metal) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk6OXjK1loQ&feature=related

Super VC's "A Disconsolete Star" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YONPsp6A3L4

Chinese Underground Invasion!

2009-11-24T21:42:00.000-08:00

Just recently the big hits of Chinese Rock, Carsick Cars, PK14, and Xiao He went on an official US tour. The press casted a hopeful and expectant light upon the event (http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/chinese-rock-and-roll-going-be-big-today-and-tomorrow/). Some music videos, photos, along with introductions to the bands are included in this report http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2009/11/carsick_cars_pk.html

My Music!

2009-11-07T11:34:00.001-08:00

Hey guys, sorry about not posting for a while. Loads of work came on me again. Before the next analysis though I'd like you to check out some songs I synthesized. They are "rough drafts" with some apparent balance and blending issues. To fix these issues I need your comments! Thanks!

Link: http://www.youtube.com/user/SorcererofDM#p/a/u/1/-jy3H9T917I

(The 3 songs I've made so far are: Pushing On, Table Salt, and PRC Anthem)

"Copycat" by Miserable Faith

2009-10-11T12:03:00.001-07:00

Today, we're looking at “Copycat” by Miserable Faith (from now on abbreviated MF). This song was released in 2001, riding on a western trend of nu-metal but exploring the foreign genre in the Chinese context. You can listen to it here.

The song's lyrics is simple, which, as we will see, only reinforces its theme.

Create another Marx
Engels
Lu Xun
Nietzsche

Create another Hitler
Mussolini
Hideki Tojo
Stalin

Create another Marx
Engels
Hitler
Stalin

copycat, copycat
threat already crushed by slogan
copycat, copycat
threat already crushed by slogan
copycat, copycat
threat already crushed by slogan
copycat, copycat
threat already crushed by slogan

Create another Marx
Engels
Hitler
Stalin

Newton
Watt
Einstein
Darwin
Gandhi
che Guevara
-
-
-
-
Metallica
Nirvana
-
Radiohead
Suede
-
threat already crushed by slogan
threat already crushed by slogan
threat already crushed by slogan
threat already crushed by slogan
crushed
crushed
crushed
crushed

(the - means I do not know what the singer is singing there; also I hope the repetition of “create another” has been clearly denoted by the indentations)

First of all, a comment on the general Chinese music and society: This set of lyrics is the epitome of the prevalent ambiguity of Chinese rock. The ambiguity functions in 2 ways: 1) it individualizes the content for everybody, enabling the listeners themselves to fill in the gap between music and words and to channel in part of their own lives into this piece and 2) it decreases the likelihood of censorship by the government. The first function must come as obvious to every listener of music with words. The second statement, however, may give the impression of a totalitarian Chinese regime. This second function is rarely manually put in the music but more likely a “side effect” from the first function. Thus, artists do not meticulously change their art to bypass the government, for that will go against their spirit of independence. In fact, artists with truly radical lyrics will “bypass” the government by releasing their music underground. Moreover, an absolute totalitarian will more likely censor ambiguity, discarding all possible sources of demagogue material; hence, the effectiveness of ambiguity to filter through inspection only speaks for the relative cultural liberalism of the government.

Now, back to this song.

Right from the start, the title “copycat” already insinuates that Miserable Faith attempts to assault the uncreative atmosphere of China. In fact, the general structure of this song mocks that atmosphere with its repetitive structure: Most of the verses parallel one another with the anaphora “create another” and only about 3 different guitar/bass lines exist. The citing of historic figures also creates a motif of cyclical time, which MF warns is the outcome (metaphorically) of such an atmosphere.

The first stanza mentions 4 philosophers. Marx and Engels coauthored the Communist Manifesto which originated the Communist economic theory. Lu Xun was a figurehead of the modern Chinese literature and a Communist sympathizer though he never joined the Chinese Communist Party. Nietzsche was a German thinker whose ideas led to the ideologies of nihilism and existentialism. By alluding to these 4 philosophers who had fundamentally influenced the modern Chinese society, economy, and government, MF hints that copying pre-existing ideas, though maybe groundbreaking in the past, add little to the present status. Looking deeper, we may find that MF applauds the current Chinese government. “Create another Marx, create another Engels” may refer to Mao's strict adherence to the idea of communes for economical production, which was marked by lack of motivation in the peasants and laborers and subsequently the failure of generating surplus for modernization and the Great Chinese Famine. In contrast, the economical reforms often called “socialism with Chinese characteristics” instituted in 1978 --- adopting “whatever works” --- opened up the market to foreign investors and abolished the communes. The end result, as seen by the world today, is a prospering nation and a growing world power. Thematically, Nietzsche's idea of Eternal Return, the hypothesis that time is cyclic instead of linear and that the world recurs in the same sequence of events over and over again, is exactly what MF fears if copying others' work become prevalent.

The 2nd stanza mentions 4 dictators or World War 2. Hitler, Mussolini, Hideki Tojo, and Stalin were respectively ruling Germany, Italy, Japan, and Soviets, which were all parts of the Axis or Axis sympathizer. They all committed atrocities: Hitler's Holocaust, Mussolini's Ethiopian Invasion and “weapon testing” in the Spanish Civil War, Hideki Tojo's Asian Holocaust, and Stalin's domestic reign of terror that sent around 3 million Soviets to their graves. It's likely that MF used these 4 contemporary despots of WWII to refer to Mao, whose reign and death count resembled Stalin's, and through this strategy MF successfully bypasses government censor and warns China of a second Mao. The possibility of such an event is not unlikely. First, China officially promotes a “personality cult” of Mao by painting him as a messiah (metaphorically without the religious sense) that brought China out of its backward agrarian state. All the state-mandated 6 year educational systems employ textbooks insinuating such godlike characteristics. Thus, all the young Chinese of today exhibit the deepest reverence toward him. Though this strategy bonds the nation together in a unifying force, most of the populace do not observe a cause-and-effect relationship between Mao's policies and the destruction ushered in by the Great Chinese Famine and Cultural Revolution. Hence future officers of the Communist Party might make the same mistakes.

The next set of names involve influential scientists and engineers whose ideas and creations formed the foundation of the modern scientific world. Newton established the laws of physics along with refining calculus; Watt refined steam engine to a commercially plausible product and ushered in the Industrial Revolution; Darwin proposed the theory of evolution which affected the modern conservationist movements; and Einstein, of course, and his theories of relativity made possible the atomic bomb. These people are the idols of students of China's scientifically-oriented education system. China has placed heavy emphasis on math and science every since its independence to, at first, quickly modernize, and, now, to become a super power. In the early days scientific achievement was even equivalent to patriotism. Here MF seems to hint at 2 points: 1) scientific ideas, like philosophies, have no values for copying and probably need reformulation as new evidence come up; 2) the social pressure applied on young men and women to pursue scientific careers may not be beneficial in the long run. The more people that focus on science, the less people that contribute to the arts and culture like the Miserable Faith. The end result might compare to the classical Sparta, which minimized its cultural lives to maximize its military might. This configuration led them to dominate Greece as an equal to Athens, but in the end, though both fell to Rome, Athens was hailed as the “cradle of Western Civilization” while Sparta was lost to obscurity. Hence MF, as a leader of Chinese rock, may have suggested a balance of science and culture as the ideal approach.

Though I can't figure out 2 of the next 4 names, it seemed clear that they belong to revolutionaries of the 20th century. Gandhi's civil disobedience eventually won India a peaceful independence, while che Guevara helped Fidel Castro to overthrow the CIA-backed Cuban dictator Batista. Though these names connote bravery, patriotism, and leadership, MF seems to focus on their abilities to change society here more than those qualities. By discourage the “copying” of these greats, MF seems to advocate a stable society with only gradual reforms instead of the radical transformations ushered in by these men. It supports the stage-by-stage economic reforms of China, opposes the extreme leftist Communism and the extreme Rightist Fascism, and here disprove of radical reforms. Thus, if we must categorize MF politically, we should label it as a mild liberal.

The next 8 names contain Metallica, Radiohead, Nirvana, and Suede, so it seems to list giants of rock. Notice that while all the previous names belong to people already deceased, these names belong to bands that still perform and release new CDs. Thus, MF returns to the present and its own circle to deliver its central criticism of the uncreative spirit of Chinese rock, which, like a child trying to understand the mature world, imitates famous works like those of the aforementioned names. Thus Chinese rock has so far only been defined in comparison with western rock and contributed little of its own unique mix of culture (of course, there are a few major exceptions, as we'll see in later blog posts). Now, looking back again at all the previous names, we find that only one is Chinese. MF may have created this pattern to lament the comprehensive Westernization of China in the past century (and ironically they used a western form of music to express this idea).

Now let's come back and look at the chorus. “Threat” here does not necessarily mean a declaration of malicious intents, but just a general, neutrally connoted influence. For philosophers and scientists, it's their “threat” of radical ideological change; for dictators, it's their “threat” of reign of terror; for revolutionaries, it's their “threat” of societal upheaval; for musicians, it's their “threat” of creating new cultural trends. As one declares the name of the person he or she copies, all such “threat,” or potential for impact, dissipates. The chorus thus highlights the theme of this piece: that replicating others' work avail to nothing.

"Ciqi" by Confucius Says

2009-09-26T23:27:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the long hiatus. Many things happened: Summer Camp, school, college applications, job, etc... But here is the analysis I've longed to do since 2 months ago. Enjoy! And BTW, here is the download link to the entire album.

And here's the youtube link.

This song is from “The First Album” (“第一册”) by Confucius Says (子曰) in 1996. It's called Ciqi “瓷器.” This word literally translates to “pottery,” synonymous with “China”. Also, in the Beijing dialect of Mandarin, this word means “brothers.” The triple entendre, then, should become obvious. This song deals with the notion of brotherhood, and more generally, the cohesion of the people, paralleled by the properties of a pottery, in China. In translating the lyrics of this song, I thus left Ciqi as a word itself to preserve its triple entendre:

Boiling the beans while charring the stalks

and of this the beans thus wailed:
"Borne are we of the same root;
should you now burn me with such disregard?"

I scoop up a pile of dirt, and you spit into my hands, Ptui!

I shed two drops of tears, mix it up, mix it up,

turn it into a mushy mud. Hey, all's done!

Out of it we'll make a you and shape a me,

You within I, I within you.

Let's huddle, embrace, embrace, huddle, yea?

We're brothers! Ciqi!

Brothers, brothers,

Brothers, brothers,

Brothers, brothers,

Brothers, brothers,

I scoop up a pile of dirt, and you spit into my hands, Ptui!

I shed two drops of tears, mix it up, mix it up,

turn it into a mushy mud. Hey, all's done!

“This comrade is actually benign at heart,

but because he often did not exercise self-constraint,

the bourgeoisie ideas corrupted his mind,

insidiously changing his head,

as to make him commit evil in his daily life.

However, we still have to

welcome him, educate him, help him, sympathize with him.”

We are friends,

we are brothers

we are comrades

we are Ciqi!

We are yellow

We are big

We are long

We are black

we are Ciqi!

We are yellow

We are big

We are long

We are black

I scoop up a pile of dirt, and you spit into my hands, Ptui!

I shed two drops of tears, mix it up, mix it up,

turn it into a mushy mud. Hey, all's done!

Brothers, brothers,

Brothers, brothers,

We are friends, we are brothers

we are comrades, we are Ciqi!

We are yellow, We are big,

We are long, We are black.

If you help me, I'll help you

If you trick me, I'll kill you

Boiling the beans while charring the stalks

and of this the beans thus wailed:
"Borne are we of the same root;
should you now burn me with such disregard?"

The song opens with a jazzy duet between the bass guitar and the drums, preparing for the sober opera-voiced rendition of the famous poem “The Quatrain of Seven Steps” (the first 4 lines). The novel Romance of Three Kingdoms attributes this poem to Cao Zhi, the son of the Warlord Cao Cao. It is fabled that his brother Cao Pi, in fear of Cao Zhi's possible usurpation of his power, ordered him to produce a poem in 7 steps or else he would be put to death. To his surprise, Cao Zhi accomplished the feat, producing “The Quatrain of Seven Steps” lamenting in an extended metaphor brotherly love being destroyed by power struggles. The beans and stalks originally belonged to the same plant just as Cao Zhi and Cao Pi were born from the same womb, but now the stalks fueled the fire that boiled the beans just as Cao Pi attempted to kill Cao Zhi. In the same vein, this poem applies to the Chinese as a people, who often refer to themselves as “同胞兄弟” or “brothers from the same womb.” Confucius Says, like its name suggests, alludes to this classic work to open the song with force and authenticity, which is only rendered stronger by the opera-voice ---- another allusion to tradition ---- and the soft tone, which seems to mourn the decline of brotherly love.

The song then switches to a more cheerful mood, with the singer singing in a heavy Beijing accent. This voice details a traditional practice of making a promise, where the two parties spit in each other's hands after swearing. The practice manifests the cultural emphasis on being faithful to brothers, presenting a contrast to the poem before of power struggles. Confucius says continues the sweet words with symmetry between “I” and “you.” The loose drums and bass with “wahwah” highlights by the guitar meanwhile provide an optimistic pulse.

In the middle section of this song is a modified passage from a Xiangsheng, a form of comedy characteristic of its quick bantering. It uses a moralizing tone to describe and judge someone while the music again returns to a jazzy quiet duet between the bass guitar and drums. The return to the beginning style-wise signifies the return to the separating aspects. Here even though the Xiangshengist calls out to “welcome him, educate him, help him, sympathize with him,” the premise is that “he” inherently possesses an evil that is socially unacceptable. Thus “he” is alienated first before the attempt to embrace him. Whereas the classical poem describes a political, or more generally, a material incentive for alienation, this part describes an ideological (Marxism vs Capitalism) and a social incentive for alienation.

Then the song again breaks off to a more mirthful tone, with inclusion instead of exclusion as its theme: “We are friends, we are brothers, we are comrades, we are Ciqi!” However, the repetition and parallelism soon become more and more ridiculous with “yellow,” “big,” “black,” but deceitfully end with “we are Ciqi!” These lines satirize the state-run propaganda of a monolithic Chinese populace.

After a few more times of repetition, the song arrives at the explicit formulation of its message: “If you help me, I'll help you; If you trick me, I'll kill you.” The Chinese people, then, are as capable of sticking together as of backstabbing each other. Like a pot (Ciqi), the people feel adamantine and impenetrable to touch, but if we let something as natural as gravity or human greed to do its deeds, the pot will smash to pieces.

As the song's end comes back to meet its head, the cohesion and alienation also balance each other off. Confucius Says thus expresses a concern of the perpetual cycle of union and detachment recurring in Chinese history (for a very simple example, the dynastic cycles).

I have chosen this song with the inspiration of the Urumqi Massacre. Ciqi attacks the state for its propaganda of a culturally united China, but the truth, as shown by the Massacre, is a sadly no. The people in Urumqi live in cultural and ethnic hostility, and even for region as densely populated by Hans as Guangdong the few minority ethnicities still hold implicitly inferior positions. Moreover, Ciqi attempts to ameliorate the problem by appealing to human nature instead of solely by criticizing the state. The problem is inherently a cultural one, as shown by Ciqi's heavy allusion to traditional practices and literature and arts, that cannot be cured by laws only. One must rid the social prejudice in his or her heart and refrain from poisoning the new generation with such backward thoughts and then allow the potent social current to level out the injustice from there.

Urumqi Misfortunes

2009-07-10T00:24:00.000-07:00

Before I analyze another song in another post, I wish to offer my condolences to all those that suffered in the recent Urumqi Incident. Predictably, western and Chinese media are on the opposite ends of the bias spectrum despite some attempts (or disguises) to be completely neutral. So in order to give the uninformed a description as impartial as possible, I will now list some raw facts and figures:

1.pretext: On June 25-26, a brawl broke out between migrant Uyghurs and Han Chinese at Xuri Toy Factory in Shaguan, Guangdong, resulting in the death of 2 Uyghurs and 118 others injured. The trigger was officially established as a false rumor saying that some Uyghurs had sexually assaulted Han girls.

2.On July 5 evening, a peaceful protest started demanding a just and proper handling of the above case. The size of the crowd is not consistent across reports, but one can see for himself/herself here

3.The police cleared the crowd, and about 70 protesters were arrested.

4.Some of those that dispersed regrouped.

5.Violence, vandalism, looting, and arson started later. Uyghurs smashed and burnt buses, beat and killed Han Chinese bystanders and in some cases people in their homes

6.Internet was blocked, and cell phone service largely discontinued. The government actively censored anything related to the riots on the internet

7.Police was reinforced and quickly controlled the situation.

8.The official casualty count by Xinhua, China's state news agency, is 156 people killed and 1080 injured. Update: on July 11 Xinjiang time, the toll is raised to 184

9.A curfew was imposed and riot police forces patrolled the city

10.On July 6, the police arrested some 1400 Uyghur men for interrogation

11.On July 7 many Han Chinese came together welding home made weapons, swearing revenge. Riot police stopped their advancing to the Uyghur side of neighborhood using guard rails, tear gas, and persuasion.

12. On Friday July 1o all Mosques were ordered to be closed, but crowds of Uyghurs gathered outside few of the Mosques. The Police at the end opened them for worship.

I hope that was informative as neutrally possible. Now with the above firmly established in your mind, you should be ready for some facts of partial nature

1.This video is perhaps the most demonstrative of the havoc wreaked, but since it does not consider the Uyghur's motives, taken by itself one can argue it's tilted toward the Hans

2.World Uyghur Congress and its president Rebiya Kadeer have said in one way or another the following things:
I.Uyghurs were beaten and shot to death by Chinese Police, confirmed by witnesses
i.counter facts: Among the injured and dead, very few were Uyghur and very few were found with bullet wounds.
II.Kadeer admitted to calling on Uyghurs to rise as charged by the Chinese government
III.Chinese authorities always blame internal problems on external forces such as WUC
IV.demonstrators were not separatists and many carried the Chinese flag
V.10,000 Han Chinese had beat and killed 60 Uyghurs in the June 26 violence listed above as “pretext” (exclusive interview with Kadeer on Channel 4)
i.As the numbers above illustrate, this is quite far from the truth. Also 10000 to 60 seems like overkill; if truly happened, it was mysteriously overlooked by Western media
VI.Kadeer used a photo to illustrate the cruelty imposed by Chinese police, but the photo was actually taken on June 26 at another place.

3.The Chinese government has accused WUC as instigating violence at home and labels it as one of the worst terrorist groups

4.It also insists that the violence was planned by separatists and terrorists

5.International response was generally “both sides must show restraint”

6.Chinese premier Hu Jintao canceled his G8 tour to come back and deal with the situation

7.The western media was surprised by the openness toward western reporters and the speed with which reports went up

8.There is at least one family that was incarcerated alive with their house, and another invaded in their homes and beheaded. Witnesses told about innocent Hans being dragged to back alleys and mutilated, and some 50 of the dead were found in dark backstreets

9.Present-day Xinjiang has a highly diverse population with 45% Uyghurs, 40% Hans, and 15% other minorities. Its capital, Urumqi, contains 75% Han, 12.8% Uyghurs, and 10% other minorities.

Alright, here's my interpretations on the event, and as such, it is absolutely subject to my own biases.

Regarding all the western reports out there and debaters about the evils of Chinese bureaucracy, I want to remind you that this is at its heart still a human tragedy, where friends, relatives, parents and children were lost. Sometimes reading the hyper-politicization of those reports and debates I feel as if the western journalists don't care much about how much people suffered but only what their suffering would mean to the political arenas.

China has done a significantly better job in allowing foreign media greater access. The move can be argued by both sides: Opponents of China can say that it opened up only because the violence was incurred by the Uyghurs, and in doing so it gains the sympathy of the world; supporters can say that this is what the western media wants and the state gave it to them. Nevertheless, the invitation of western reporters and the quickness with which China published the relevant data helped demystify the situation and deconstruct part of the conception of the Chinese tyranny. For example, reporters now can show to the world the excellent policing done by the Chinese in times of turmoil. Contrary to what most westerners would believe, the police did not brutally beat and kill Uyghur protesters even when some of them were committing vandalism, looting, and even murder. In fact, one policeman was killed in reverse. However, the news also showed to the world the savagery of the minority group. While they definitely deserved to vent their anger over the June 25 event and more importantly the inequities between Uyghurs and Hans, the escalating violence only detracted from their cause. This combined with the obvious contradictions of WUC and Rebiya Kadeer may temporarily take away their credibility.

On the other hand, China still does not admit the problems in Xinjiang. These problems include uneven economic growth between Han and the minorities, the minorities' lack of rights, and the Hans' smothering of their culture by flooding their cities with people of Han ethnicity. Though the officially Chinese policies toward minorities have been “reverse discrimination” like in college admissions and police stations and encouragement of multiple children in contrast to the “one-child policy” applied to urban Han Chinese, the locals have quietly and maybe even unconsciously divided along a schism into the 2 camps of Hans and the Uyghurs at Urumqi and other cities. Perhaps this is only natural like how an oil drop behaves in water: like dissolves like, otherwise segregation results. We can find plenty of comparisons in Black histories before the Civil Rights Movement and after WWI in the US, in which the Great Migration pushed millions of southern Blacks toward northern cities, but widespread racism forced them to settle in the cities' innermost where pollutions were the worst. The similarities continue with the low employment rates, social status, and economic prosperity despite favorable laws. Thus, the problems' roots lie not directly in the government, as in both cases, but in the prevailing prejudices deep-seated in the majority group's culture and media; however, the responsibility of fixing the disparities absolutely lies in the government. With great effort from leaders like Kennedy, King, and LBJ and millions of civil right activists, laws were fixed and bigotry was healed over time. Perhaps similar actions might produce similar results? Well, the laws are the easy part for the one-party Chinese government, but the people part is a lot more difficult if the only pushing exerted is by the bureaucracy; and if the people part is not done, no matter how many legislations are enacted, revised, or destroyed, riots like the 7.5 incident will happen again and again in increasing severity --- Heck, even now the US has not seen the end of racial unrest. The people in Xinjiang need to reconcile and reestablish mutual trust and protect the next generation from continuing the feud.

Now let's come back to the present reality. That the violence in a distant city in Shandong can cause the near destruction of the capital of Xinjiang and more importantly of a longlasting stability in its society tells about the volatility of the ethnicities in China which has been exacerbated by the incident. It does not bode well at all for Uyghurs' reputation at home and in the world – the former might incite revenges from the Hans while the latter renders them less international support against true injustices. As it stands now, the future seems uneasy until we forget about this incident.

I have mentioned in my previous post that the recent years in China are its own Era of Good Feelings in which economic prosperity and heartfelt nationalism shadows potential problems in wide areas. This breakout in violence may very well be one of the first rocks that surface when the tide ebbs in the form of global recession. Indeed as I said above, the Uyghurs complained about the unequal economic status between them and the neighboring Hans. But even the industrial setting of the precursor event somewhat suggests the the role of recession in these doings. I wouldn't be surprised if job losses from the economic crisis left quite a few Uyghurs with little to do other than to shift their attentions to previously not-as-conspicuous problems and, riding on the anger generated by the recent June-25 event, organize the march that started it all.