The first comprehensive study of Chinese popular music in a Western language. Drawing on extensive interviews with singers, songwriters and critics, as well as cultural, sociological, musical, and textual analysis, the book portrays the disparate ways in which China's state-run popular music industry and burgeoning underground rock music subculture represented by Cui Jian have been instrumental to the cultural and political struggles that culminated in the Tienanmen democracy movement of 1989. It also examines the links between popular music and contemporary debates about cultural identity and modernization, as well as the close connections between rock music, youth culture, and student protest.
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Andrew F. Jones is Associate Professor of Chinese at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age (Duke University Press, 2001), and translator of literary works by Yu Hua and Eileen Chang.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Brief & Not that Useful,
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This review is from: Like a Knife: Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music (Cornell East Asia, Vol. 57) (Cornell East Asia Series Number 57) (Paperback)
I recently finished reading this book for an East Asian Music History & Culture class and I didn't find it that useful. The author relies on theory to make his point. First, he employs Habermas to make this meandering point about the state of rock and punk as underground in China. Then, he continuously cites other scholars (principally anthropologists and sociologists) and makes cryptic generalizations about music. The final chapter is devoted almost entirely to Cui Jian whose music, while popular during the pro-democracy movements of the early 90s, doesn't seem that relevant today. He seems to play mainly for the middle class that can pay to get into uppity clubs; he doesn't play his old songs; and his censorship by the government prevents him from being outwardly political. Our class spoke with a technology professor living in Beijing and only 2/3 of her students knew who he was and maybe 1/3 had actually heard his music. The problem here is twofold: Jones leaves what constitutes "political" music incredibly unclear and it's already a vague definition to most Chinese (e.g. some see all music as political, some see very little music as being political). Second, Cui Jian is an out-of-date artist and, while interesting to (music) historians, I can't say that he's part of the culture of China as much as we'd like to believe that he's one of the last vestiges of the movement. Indeed, the CCP has basically created a culture that has no idea who he is unless you're 40+.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dated but generally relevant,
By Spyral "Its All Just A Ride" (Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Like a Knife: Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music (Cornell East Asia, Vol. 57) (Cornell East Asia Series Number 57) (Paperback)
"Like a Knife" is a great look into the relationship between Chinese popular music ("tongsu yinyue") and contemporary rock music in China. The author discusses the dichotomy in terms of both the genres themselves and their musical styles, influences, and histories, but also in terms of ideology and opposition to state repression and censorship (in the case of rock).The thesis that rock musicians, officially denied access to media by the state, and operating on the margins of the musical landscape, engage in both negotiated and oppositional social discourses, with the underlying ideology that rock music's purpose, as opposed to state sanctioned tongsu popular music, is that of providing an alternate public sphere in which fans and listeners are freed from the prohibitions of the mainstream Chinese society. I agree with most of this, as it is mainly so in Western nations as well, where rock music is usually seen as an "anti" to whatever the prevailing cultural or political environment is. It is the Contrarian. However, the book suffers from its dated perspective (early 1990s). Since the publishing of the book Chinese rock musicians have become less "underground" and there are state produced and disseminated rock songs as well. It would be interesting to do a revisit of the rock scene to see how these new situations fit into the old theoretical framework. Is it the state that is liberalizing, or the artists that are capitulating to state demands in order to gain popularity and access to the media?
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