As an important component of popular culture, music is often conceived of as an unorganized activity or the result of consumer choices. Yet its art forms—melodies, lyrics, rhythms and so forth —are always embedded in deeper meanings, sentimental values and complex identities.[1] In fact, the sphere of popular music never escapes the influence of ideologies and power relations. Thus, it is crucial to situate music in the broader economic, political and social context. China’s popular music is a unique case because the coexistence of extensive state control and a seemingly prosperous market adds nuance to the relationship between popular music and the state. This essay argues that in the terrain of music, if state control and cooptation are ultimately hegemonic processes, then the Chinese people have transformed popular music into a counter-hegemonic space where mainstream aesthetics and ideologies are resisted through the production, circulation and consumption of music. This essay will begin with a brief history of the state’s policy toward popular music, and subsequently examine two cases where music served as a vehicle to express alternative aesthetics and political positions.
In the eyes of the Chinese state, popular music is an expression of its ideology and therefore a fundamentally political space. During the Cultural Revolution and at the beginning of China’s economic reforms, the Chinese state used songs to deliver revolutionary values to its people.[2] Popular music served as an integral part of the extensive revolutionary regimes in China’s history. The song “East is Red” almost became the anthem of the Cultural Revolution, cultivating the personalist cult of Mao Zedong by portraying him as “the sun in heaven” and “saviour of the people.”[3] As tensions grew in a politically charged atmosphere, singing revolutionary songs itself became a form of “political education.” Mao himself stated: “artists should first learn from the people and then proceed to educate them.” For instance, the song “Praise to Lei Feng” is based on the story of a young, dedicated soldier, and glorifies Lei Feng as the Socialist role model for Chinese generations to come.[4]
While commercial spaces for music have dramatically expanded since the economic reforms and the Open-Door policy, introduced in the early 1980s, popular music has remained under the strict management, regulation and surveillance of the state. Originally, the government intended to prevent the circulation of “heterodox” and “foreign” content in China’s domestic market.[5] Prior to the mid-1980s, very few Western songs from Hong Kong and Taiwan were permitted as legal imports to the mainland.[6] The few songs that were officially endorsed at the time either carried strong nationalist characteristics or openly celebrated ethnic unity. Songs such as “My Chinese Heart” and “Let the World be Full of Love” are typical examples of this tendency.[7] Since the 1990s, the commercial music market has further expanded quite drastically, and Chinese popular music has gradually diverged into two parallel paths. The first path of officially-sanctioned music performed by state-funded professional musicians usually resonates with the ideological imperatives of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The prosperous underground networks of Chinese rock music and illegally imported foreign music fall into the second category.[8] While the former genre demonstrates the CCP’s persistent and extensive power over China’s cultural production, the latter reflects a growing demand from the masses and the possibility of bottom-up resilience to state control.
To date, the Chinese government’s continuing control over key distribution and promotion channels has allowed the state to limit the commercial viability of artists that it does not explicitly endorse.[9] Practices of direct bans and censorship continue to persist in the status quo. Nevertheless, it would be a simplification to describe the Chinese state’s role in popular music as one of authoritarian control. The Chinese state has evolved into an active agent that seeks to produce a particular kind of popular music that reflects national ideologies.[10] In addition, the state interpellates a seemingly promising music industry into a signal of China’s progression and modernization, which largely “depoliticized” popular music.[11]
Take the co-opting of Hong Kong’s Cantonpop as an example. In the 1990s, the Chinese state highlighted its pursuit of economic development and adopted a more flexible attitude towards a capitalist agenda. Cantonpop was not only apolitical in nature, as its context mostly focused on personal emotions, it also had a “modern image” due to its Western origins. As a result, the state incrementally yet steadily relaxed restrictions on the circulation of Cantonpop, which precipitated a Cantonpop fever in mainland China.[12] Scholar Jeroen de Kloet argues that the 1990s was an era of “the commercial displacing the political.”[13] In this regard, the Chinese state managed to transform the role of popular music from merely “a political tool” to “a socially manageable everyday culture.”[14]
If popular music is a site of struggle in China, and state ideologies, control and cooptation are ultimately hegemonic processes, can people forge “counter-hegemonic” spaces through the production, circulation and consumption of certain kinds of music? First, the art form of music—its lyrics, style, or slang—can often disguise content that is critical of the political regime. This reserves a space for the expression of alternative political stances and avoids ostensible confrontation with the regime. Second, the sentimental values attached to music products and the introduction of a live house provide emotional and material bases for the subjectivation of alternative political communities.[15] These two characteristics have enabled the Chinese people to use music as a tactic of resistance against mainstream aesthetics and ideologies.
The rise of Dakou culture in the mid-1990s—the importation of illegal, cut CDs from the West—signalled the efforts of Chinese youth to carve out their own space amidst state control and the tides of marketization. Dakou culture emerged in parallel with the perceived demise of Chinese rock. Representing the rebellious spirit and anger of the youth, Chinese rock thrived and achieved huge popularity following the chaotic and carnivalistic spring of 1989.[16] However, when it came to the mid-1990s, many musicians and scholars observed that the culture of the new generation was oriented around consumerism, and rock music was quickly eclipsed by the commercial pop culture originating from Hong Kong and Taiwan.[17] Compared with the latter genre, rock never received mainstream recognition and was always marginalized by the Chinese state.[18] In this context, Dakou CDs and tapes—plastic garbage dumped and meant to be recycled by Western companies—were smuggled into China and sold in the bustling black market. These CDs cover an incredibly diverse variety of music titles, ranging from Joy Division to the hardcore of Atari Teenage Riot to Celine Dion, all of which tremendously benefitted Chinese rock music in its next generation.[19] Dakou culture was itself an alternative music space, as it dodged state censorship and the pervasive commercial music industry. The concept of Dakou—da stands for break and kou stands for opening/cut—has created lasting and profound influence on a whole generation of urban youth, as musicians and listeners soon picked up this concept as a key signifier of their identity. A post on an online discussion forum writes as follows: “this is a dakou world, a new life where you don’t even have to leave the country to realize your spiritual adventure.”[20]
Since the 2000s, rock bands and folk singers in major cities such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou have actively mobilized the sonic and lyrical power of music to negotiate their relationship with new urban spaces in the making. On the one hand, the versatile music culture in Guangzhou reflects the demographic diversity of the city. Canton-rock presents a strong place-based identity by highlighting the use of Cantonese dialect. During the 2010 campaign against the state-led Mandarin standardisation program, Canton-rock functioned as a powerful vehicle to resist state-led language homogenization and cultural hegemonization. PROSA’s (Gong Ze) rap-rock song “Guangzhou” keeps posing the question “why forget our own language? Why speak like foreigners?”[21] Another music genre, urban folk, targets rural-to-urban migrants as its main audience. Through the reinvention of traditional folk songs and the incorporation of childhood stories, singers such as Jiang Ming challenge the deeply-rooted bias that people from rural areas are “su ren” (vulgar people) of lower culture and civility.[22] Additionally, some folk singers attempt to cover popular commercial songs in various local dialects, which signals a reverse tide of grassroot and subcultural music penetrating the official, mainstream musical sphere.[23]
On the other hand, small and dispersed live houses across cities have gradually appropriated unique urban spaces for Chinese rockers, and established networks of empowerment among musicians and the masses. Small music clubs, equipped with professional stereo equipment, offer alternative platforms for underground musicians that have no access to mainstream, commercial music facilities.[24] Live house performances are held on a regular basis and are usually located in major business clusters, which also signals a shift in the attitude of Chinese rockers. Instead of voluntarily labeling themselves as “underground” musicians, many rockers today attempt to retain an equal share of the city landscape and a more participatory role in local communities.[25]
At the same time, the industry of live houses has nurtured cooperation between different subcultural groups. Live houses not only connect independent musicians with business owners and event organizers, but also enable artists to reach out to the general public. Take the jointly hosted music festival “GrassU” for example. This festival takes place in a publicly accessible park, hosted under the slogan “free, fresh, friends.” The festival welcomes all music lovers to perform, whether they were amateurs or professionals.[26] By occupying public spaces in spontaneously assembled groups, such gatherings greatly extend the originally fragmented and scrutinized public sphere of music in Chinese society.[27]
In conclusion, popular music has always been a site of struggle in China. On the one hand, the Chinese state views popular music as a less obvious expression of its ideologies and has kept it under strict management, regulation and surveillance. Since the 1980s, the Chinese state has evolved to actively co-produce a type of popular music that resonates, and is compatible, with the CCP’s ideologies and “modernizing” discourses. On the other hand, Chinese people have also used music as a tactic to resist mainstream aesthetics and ideologies. The cases of Dakou culture in the 1990s and the empowerment of rock singers in major cities are two examples of such bottom-up processes of resistance to state domination and cooptation. In the terrain of popular music, top-down state control and bottom-up resistance of the people are ultimately two sides of the same coin, as both parties utilize the sonic and lyrical power of music to achieve their own ends. As discussed in this essay, the Chinese state is an active agent able to negotiate with new circumstances, and the Chinese people are becoming increasingly conscious of possible strategic solutions to re-occupy public sphere with resilience. The rise of social media has further facilitated the circulation of music and provided fertile ground for the establishment of online communities. In the long term, one can be optimistic that extensive, ubiquitous state control over popular music will be incrementally subverted by the dispersed grassroot resistance.
Jeeby (Minghan) Sun is a contributor for Synergy: Journal of Contemporary Asian Studies, East Asia Section.
Bibliography
De Kloet, J. 2005. Popular Music and Youth in Urban China: The Dakou Generation. The China Quarterly (183): 609-626. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/stable/20192511
Fung, Anthony Y. H. 2007. “The Emerging (National) Popular Music Culture in China.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 8 (3): 425-437. doi:10.1080/14649370701393824.
Ho, Wai-Chung. 2006. “Social Change and Nationalism in China’s Popular Songs.” Social History 31 (4): 435-453. Doi:10.1080/03071020600944876.
Liu, Chen. 2014. Noise in Guangzhou: the Cultural Politics of Underground Popular Music in Contemporary Guangzhou. Area 46: 228-234. doi:10.1111/area.12102.
Montgomery, Lucy. 2009. “Space to grow: Copyright, cultural policy and commercially-focused music in China.” Chinese Journal of Communication 2 (1): 36–49. DOI: 10.1080/17544750802639044
O’Connor, Justin and Gu Xin. 2006. “A New Modernity?: The Arrival of ‘creative Industries’ in China.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 9 (3): 271-283. doi:10.1177/1367877906066874.
Wang, June and Li Chen. 2017. “Guerrilla Warfare, Flagship Project: The Spatial Politics of Chinese Rock in Shenzhen’s Post-Political Making of a Musical City.” Geoforum. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.04.014.
[1]A. Y. H. Fung. 2007. “The Emerging (National) Popular Music Culture in China.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 8 (3), 425. doi:10.1080/14649370701393824.
[2] Wai-Chung Ho. 2006. “Social Change and Nationalism in China’s Popular Songs.” Social History 31 (4), 437. Doi:10.1080/03071020600944876.
[3] Ho, 443.
[4] Ho, 442-443.
[5] L. Montgomery. 2009. “Space to grow: Copyright, cultural policy and commercially-focused music in China.” Chinese Journal of Communication 2 (1), 40. DOI: 10.1080/17544750802639044
[6] Fung, 427.
[7] Ho, 445; Fung, 428.
[8] Chen, Liu. 2014. Noise in Guangzhou: The Cultural Politics of Underground Popular Music in Contemporary Guangzhou. Area 46: 228. doi:10.1111/area.12102.
[9] Montgomery, 40.
[10] Fung, 425.
[11]J. O’Connor and Gu Xin. 2006. “A New Modernity?: The Arrival of ‘creative Industries’ in China.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 9 (3), 272. doi:10.1177/1367877906066874.
[12] Fung, 430-431.
[13] J. De Kloet. 2005. Popular Music and Youth in Urban China: The Dakou Generation. The China Quarterly (183): 613. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/stable/20192511
[14] Fung, 425.
[15] J. Wang and Li Chen. 2017. “Guerrilla Warfare, Flagship Project: The Spatial Politics of Chinese Rock in Shenzhen’s Post-Political Making of a Musical City.” Geoforum, 1. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.04.014.
[16] Kloet, 612.
[17] Kloet, 613.
[18] Fung, 433.
[19] Kloet, 617.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Liu, 231.
[22] Liu, 232.
[23] Liu, 233.
[24] Wang and Li, 4.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid, 5.
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