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Noise & silence: underground music and resistance in the People's Republic of China

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Noise & silence: underground music and resistance in the People's Republic of China

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Content NOISE & SILENCE:
UNDERGROUND MUSIC AND RESISTANCE IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
by
Carolyn Lee
______________________________________________________________
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(EAST ASIAN AREA STUDIES)
December 2012
Copyright 2012 Carolyn Lee
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements iii
List of Figures iv
Abstract v
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Music & Politics in China 6
The Western Gaze 18
Chapter 2: Importance of Symbolism & Ambiguity 31
Chapter 3: “Do It Yourself” (DIY) in China 36
Chapter 4: Zaoyin ( ) & the Experimental 41
Conclusion 47
References 48
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my wonderful thesis committee: Meiling Cheng for agreeing to serve as chair. Your
enthusiasm for the edge, guidance, and patience have helped me realize and develop both my
academic and personal interests. Brian Bernards for allowing me to audit his enlightening course
“Theorizing Race in the Asia Pacific” and for allowing me to share some of the music discussed
in this paper with the rest of the class. Also, much thanks to Joanna Demers for taking an interest
in this project and providing incredibly helpful feedback and knowledge, especially on
experimental music. In addition, this paper would not have been possible without the help and
resources from Nevin Domer (Genjing Records and Maybe Mars) and Shaun Hemsley
(tenzenmen). Also, Jessica Egyud and Xiaojun Yan who are both in my cohort and provided an
awesome support network these past two years. Finally Jennifer Gutierrez, for her friendship and
support, and also for reading and commenting on this paper in its various stages.
Last but not least, much appreciation goes to my parents who helped instill the curiosity and
interest I have for Chinese culture and for all their encouragement and love.
iii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Hang on the Box 16
Figure 2: Pangu 29
Figure 3: Sub Jam 1998 38
Figure 4: Torturing Nurse 44
Figure 5: Red Syndrome Act. 1 1966-1976 46
iv
ABSTRACT
This paper seeks to explore the development of alternative forms of music in China, their
political connections, and the ways in which music is perceived (especially from a Western
perspective). Since much of Chinese alternative music developed based on "rebellious" Western
music genres, such as rock and punk, the general Western perception of alternative Chinese
music is that it is also inherently resistant to Chinese political hegemonies. I argue though, that
resistance comes in many forms, and not just through overt expression by way of lyrics or
behavior as is the usual case with Western music. Through "silence," Chinese musicians
manipulate the grey areas of the system vis-à-vis creative and musical expression. In the case of
non-mainstream "underground" Chinese music, musicians complicate the relationship between
music and politics through the utilization of symbolism and ambiguity, appropriation of DIY
ethics, and experimental aesthetics. Together they form distinct communities and music scenes
that provide alternative spaces to more dominant cultural trends in modern day China.
v
INTRODUCTION
“The time was right, the entire country was busy making money and we were
busy making noise.”
1
-- Yang Haisong (P.K.14)
My introduction of underground Chinese music came about when brainstorming
ideas for a presentation during the summer of 2010 during my intensive Chinese
language class. I decided to present on music because coincidentally, one of the prompts
my lecturer assigned was to compare Jay Chou, arguably one of the most popular music
artists in the East Asian region, to another singer or artist of our choice. Instead of
choosing another pop singer to compare Chou to for my five-minute presentation, I
decided to look into whether any sort of independent or underground music scene
existed in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). I had previous knowledge that Japan
had a diverse and eclectic independent music community, having listened to bands like
Boredoms, Acid Mothers Temple, Melt-Banana, and Afrirampo before. However I was
also aware that China and the rest of the East Asian region’s music charts are dominated
by extremely successful pop artists and groups who are groomed and trained by major
record labels. Therefore, I was surprised to find that China did indeed have a thriving
underground and independent music community. Several acts that I initially came upon
in my research were Hang on the Box (now disbanded), SUBS (or shabusi), and
Carsick Cars. One reason that it came as a shock to me that an independent music scene
1
1
Areti Sakellaris, "P.K. 14 Interview: SXSW 2010," Spinner, June 10, 2010, http://
www.spinner.com/2010/03/09/sxsw-2010-p-k-14/.
actually existed in China is because I falsely assumed that with the semi-authoritarian
Chinese Communist Party in power, music would be strictly and heavily monitored and
censored. Punk music in China? No way! Of course, punk music (pengke yinyue ) does exist in China and has existed for nearly two decades now. Along with more
conventional genres like rock (yaogun ) and punk, there is also a small but growing
experimental and sound art community concentrated in Beijing and Shanghai. While
elements of these types of music have been incorporated into Asian mainstream music
and thus, Chinese mainstream music as well, much of the so-called “alternative” genres
remain underground.
There have been several scholars who have written substantially on
contemporary Chinese music, especially the development of rock music, such as
Nimrod Baranovitch, Jeroen de Kloet, Jeroen Groenewegen, and Andrew Jones. Others,
such as Andreas Steen whose article “Sound, Protest and Business. Modern Sky Co. and
the New Ideology of Chinese Rock” reinterprets musical experimentation in China as a
new cultural movement characterized by increased focus on creative individuality.
2
Yet
there has been a lack of scholarship on China’s underground music scene (including
experimental music), most likely due to its very recent development. With Chinese
culture and society changing at such an immensely rapid pace, it is difficult to find
2
2
See Andreas Steen, "Sound, Protest and Business. Modern Sky Co. and the New Ideology of
Chinese Rock," Berliner China-Hefte, no. 19 (2000).
academic writing on the dynamic and ever-evolving Chinese underground and
experimental music scene. Furthermore, with a country as vast and expansive as China,
it is also difficult to pinpoint all the locations and spaces where such music is being
created. Western media tends to focus on China’s largest underground music scene in
Beijing although there are other sites that serve as the base for musical experimentation.
Lastly, there have been few writings directly analyzing the relationship between current
Chinese underground and experimental music to Chinese cultural politics.
The purpose of this thesis, therefore, is to explore the latter: the interconnections
between current underground Chinese music and cultural politics, in particular, the
musicians’ resistance in the face of Chinese cultural and political hegemonies. There are
two overlying themes presented in this paper: noise and silence. Noise, which can also
refer to a particular sect of experimental music, is generally defined as any type of
unwanted or undesirable sound. In specific contexts, rock music and political protests
are some examples of what could be perceived as “noise,” quite literally, by Chinese
authorities. It is through this definition that I base my exploration of contemporary
Chinese music and its relations with cultural politics. On the other hand, silence serves
as a contrast to noise, though silence (and silencing) too can often be undesirable. It is
through “silence,” however, that certain messages and ideas are still voiced; not through
language necessarily, but through the musicians’ presentations of themselves and their
work. Within the realm of current Chinese culture and politics, noise and silence
3
become a metaphor for the complex relationship between musical expression and the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The socio-political environment affects the way Chinese musicians have self-
identified and presented themselves throughout the years, often in opposition to the
status quo. From “yellow music” in the Chinese jazz age to Cui Jian’s exciting rock and
roll in the 1980s, music and politics are strongly related. In what ways do Chinese
musicians today navigate through the maze of restrictive government policies, foreign
influence, consumerism, and their own desires for creative expression? What does it
mean if a Chinese band self-identifies as punk but does not include overt political lyrics
or expression in their music? With the advent of globalization, cross-cultural exchange
of music also affects the way an existing audience perceives appropriation. This thesis
will look at how certain genres of music have been regarded and represented in Western
media, including the romanticization of “rebellious” music like rock and punk, and offer
possible alternative interpretations of resistance in contemporary experimental and
underground Chinese music. I argue and complicate the notion that “resistance” should
not be thought of as merely instances or actions of overt political rebellion but, in the
case of Chinese music, that ambiguity and symbolism, economical choices, and musical
experimentation selected by the artists’ agency, also provide important lenses in which
resistance can be reconsidered. My research approach to this topic relies mainly on
original and previously published interviews, audiovisual recordings, memoirs, popular
4
and academic publications. The first two sections will detail the history and
development of Chinese music and its connections with China’s various political
systems throughout the years, focusing mainly on musical development in the post-Mao
era. Finally, the last three sections discuss the various approaches in which resistance in
contemporary Chinese music can be contextualized.
5
MUSIC & POLITICS IN CHINA
Music in China, as in many other places, has always been linked to the political
in some form. Quoted in China’ s New Voices by Nimrod Baranovitch, the Book of
Music is a classical Confucian text, which discusses the “unnatural” quality of music:
Music is … the production of the modulations of the voice, and its source is in
the affections of the mind as it is influenced by (external) things … [The] six
peculiarities of sound are not natural; they indicate the impressions produced by
(external) things. On this account the ancient kings were watchful in regard to
the things by which the mind was affected. And so (they instituted) ceremonies
to direct men’s aims aright; music to give harmony to their voices; laws to unify
their conduct; and punishments to guard against their tendencies to evil. The end
to which ceremonies, music, punishments, and laws conduct is one: they are the
instruments by which the minds of people are assimilated, and good order in
government is made to appear.
3
The author of this text understood that music itself was used to create order and
structure using sound. As suggested, music is a product and reflection of the mind,
which in turn is influenced by external factors. Through this observation, music became
a tool of control. This way of organizing and structuring natural sounds reflected the
order of society and government, as mentioned above. Another example of music
creating order is, during times of political unrest, social disorder and war, many ancient
Chinese poet-scholars, such as the “Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove,” would take
refuge in nature, write poems, play music, and drink wine. According to Wu-chi Liu’s
6
3
Chu Chai and Winberg Chai, Li Chi: Book of Rites: An Encyclopedia of Ancient Ceremonial
Usages, Religious Creeds, and Social Institutions, 1967, quoted in Nimrod Baranovitch, China's
New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender and Politics 1978-1997 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2003), 193.
An Introduction to Chinese Literature, music was able to “create a state of happy
illusion” for these sages who were trying to escape the “noise” of everyday life.
4
In the modern era, Western imports (particularly jazz) influenced the
development of modern Chinese music during China’s semi-colonial and Republican
eras in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of the most influential
musicians of this era was Li Jinhui, who is sometimes referred to as the “Father of
Chinese Popular Music.” He worked closely with Buck Clayton, an African American
jazz musician from Los Angeles who spent several years in Shanghai in the 1930s.
Andrew Jones states in Yellow Music that during this time and for many decades after,
Li’s music and the genre that resulted was ridiculed and described as “decadent” and
“pornographic” or “yellow.” Musical reformers of the anti-imperialist and anti-
colonialist May Fourth Movement frowned upon this “yellow music,” a hybrid/fusion
form of jazz and traditional Chinese folk songs.
5
Musicians like Xiao Youmei perceived
European music to be superior and more advanced than traditional Chinese music and
advocated for a “sonic regime” in which “good music” should be utilized for political
and nationalistic purposes.
6
Some of these attitudes toward music and other cultural
productions were later adopted by the Communists when they took over in 1949. Mao
7
4
Wu-Chi Liu, An Introduction to Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1966), 60.
5
Andrew F. Jones, Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz
Age (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 16.
6
Ibid., 27.
Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party believed that cultural productions
such as music and art should be utilized as tools to promote revolution. For example,
the song “The East is Red” (dongfanghong ) was originally a popular folk song
among Shanxi farmers but went through multiple transformations. Its original lyrics are
as follows:
Sesame oil, cabbage hearts,
Wanna eat string beans, break off
the tips,
Get really lovesick if I don’t see
you for 3 days
Hu-er-hai-yo,
7
Oh dear, Third Brother mine.
When Japan invaded China in 1938 during the Pacific War, “The East is Red” was
rewritten to a new set of lyrics:
Riding a white horse, carrying a rifle,
Third brother is with the Eighth
Route Army.
Wanna go home to see my girl,
Hu-er-hai-yo,
But fighting the Japs I don’t have
the time.
Finally, a third version and probably the most well known was written by a Yan’an
school teacher to glorify Mao. It eventually became the Red Guards’ anthem during the
Cultural Revolution:
The East is red, the sun has risen.
Mao Zedong has appeared in China.
8
7
A Chinese interjection. Sometimes translated in English as “hurrah.”
He is devoted to the people’s
welfare,
Hu-er-hai-yo,
He is the people’s great savior.
8
During the tumultuous Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) which Mao initiated,
the only forms of music permitted were nationalistic songs and lyrics such as the one
above. It was also during this period that Li Jinhui, “The Father of Chinese Popular
Music,” was persecuted for his role as “the progenitor of yellow music” and died as a
result in 1967.
9
According to Jonathan Matusitz, the CCP exploited music and other art
forms as a means to suppress whatever was not approved by the Party. Matusitz states,
“Chinese music was now made of semiotic, ideological, and mythical constructs that
were implicated not just with the establishment of the nation, but also the development
and fortification of the Chinese Communist Party.”
10
Chinese music fundamentally
became limited to a single function: the CCP’s tool for promoting and reinforcing its
ideologies. Needless to say, Chinese music experienced very little development during
the mid-twentieth century, while in Europe and America, music underwent a period of
significant avant-garde and experimental growth.
In the post-Mao era, Deng Xiaoping took over leadership and initiated economic
reforms beginning in 1979, commonly known as the Reform and Opening (gaige
9
8
"The East is Red," Morning Sun, http://www.morningsun.org/east/index.html.
9
Jones, Yellow Music, 74.
10
Jonathan Matusitz, "Chinese rock and pop music: a semiotic perspective," Asia Europe
Journal 7(2009): 484.
kaifang ), that consequently led to China’s rapid economic transformation and
development in the past several decades. During this period, rock music and other forms
of non-traditional Chinese music (such as pop and electronic music) were imported into
China through what was essentially a black market. While the PRC gradually shifted to
a more liberal capitalist-based economy, or according to Deng “Socialism with Chinese
Characteristics,” social and cultural politics were still extremely restrictive. In addition,
following the opening up, Sino-Taiwanese relations improved and there have been
significant cultural exchanges and transmission between these two territories. This
important relationship is also linked to the music culture within the East Asian region.
Specifically, the history of Chinese rock and popular music is intertwined with imported
pop music from both Taiwan and Hong Kong. The most well-known pop artist of this
generation is Teresa Teng (Deng Lijun), who almost single-handedly spearheaded
Chinese pop music on the mainland, while at the same time being labeled as “decadent”
and “yellow.” Pop music from both Taiwan and Hong Kong (gangtai ) were placed
into three categories by officials: “low class and filthy,” “love songs,” and “songs about
ordinary life and homesickness for the mainland.”
11
The latter category was the only
approved category of gangtai songs by the Ministry of Culture in 1982. Moreover,
gangtai music and Teresa Teng’s influence, which is captured in the popular saying “By
day Deng Xiaoping rules, but by night Teresa Teng rules” led to the creation of
mainland China’s own brand of pop music known as tongsu ( ). Baranovitch points
10
11
Baranovitch, China’ s New Voices, 15.
out that scholars tend to unfairly ignore popular music in favor of rock music in their
analyses of subversion in music, though it is clear that popular music played an
important role in challenging the socio-political status quo during late twentieth century
China. Popular music is frequently perceived as non-subversive and “easy listening,”
but in this case, many conservatives in the 1980s saw imported popular music like
Teresa Teng’s music as “decadent” and in conflict with CCP ideology. Nonetheless, as
Teng’s popularity and the popularity of gangtai music grew, the State felt more inclined
to accept this kind of music and create its own industry due to its weakening control
over cultural media. Technology, such as the cassette tape and tape recorders, helped to
“decentralize” and “democratize” the Chinese music industry.
12
Due to new technology,
the general public no longer had to rely on official State media for music and other
forms of entertainment. These advances allowed people to record, copy, and distribute
the music they wanted to listen to among themselves.
Today pop music in China has become widely accepted by the public, due in part
to the 80s gangtai pop stars. For instance, in 2005 the singing contest television show
Super Girl, based on the UK show Pop Idol, became one of the most watched shows in
Chinese broadcasting history. The show allowed the audience to select the winner
through democratic votes via mobile phone text messages. While Super Girl was
popular with the public, the show faced many criticisms from Chinese political officials
11
12
Baranovitch, China’ s New Voices, 13.
and also Chinese Central Television (CCTV), leading to its suspension by China’s State
Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) under the premise that it
corrupted Chinese youth.
13
Similarly in the post-Tiananmen period whenever cultural
productions threatened political ideology, criticisms arose. A member of the Shanghai
Philharmonic stated in 1990:
The bourgeoisie of the West use pop songs to propagate their view of life and
value system. We should never underestimate [the danger] of this. Our foreign
enemies have not for an instant forgotten that music can change the way people
think.
14

The government’s attitudes toward pop music are reminiscent of the attitudes towards
the previously discussed “yellow music,” a combination of jazz and traditional Chinese
music, which was thought of as decadent. Against the backdrop of an authoritarian state
and social and political turmoil, Chinese pop music’s influence on contemporary
Chinese society and culture is also important in the consideration of music’s
relationship with politics.
In terms of rock music, Jonathan Campbell’s insightful book Red Rock: the
Long, Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll chronicles the development of rock and
roll in China. He emphasizes Chinese rock as being a unique appropriation of rock
12
13
Joel Martinsen, "CPPCC: Exterminate the Super Girls," Danwei, July 29, 2006, http://
www.danwei.org/trends_and_buzz/cppcc_exterminate_the_super_girls.php.
14
quoted in Jonathan Campbell, Red Rock: the Long, Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll
(Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books, 2011), 32.
music through the usage of the term yaogun, the Mandarin term for rock music.
Additionally he states:
The emergence of rock and roll defined the way in which yaogun developed,
and continues to develop. Because there was no way that rock in China could be
like rock in America or England or Russia or Japan - not, that is, until the new
millennium, when societal and technological developments truly freed Chinese
citizens from constraints that may not have been physically preventing contact
with and absorption of foreign culture, but might as well have been.
15

The way in which Chinese rock music developed fundamentally distinguishes it from
other sites’ rock music. China’s socio-political situation created an environment in
which the development of rock music could not be exactly the same as rock in Western
countries. Furthermore, while rock music has already been established for several
decades in the West and subsumed into mainstream music, yaogun has only been around
for approximately three decades. The development of rock music in the West was a
steady and more organic progression from blues and country genres, coinciding also
with the invention of the electric guitar and other electronic instruments. Conversely,
rock music was introduced into China as an already well-established Western genre.
Again, technology played an important role in the development of Chinese rock music,
as it did for pop music. It was during this time that old and/or unwanted stock of
Western music cassette tapes and CDs made their way into the country (usually
smuggled) and eventually picked up by people who were eager to get their hands on
non-Communist Party related music after many decades of a closed-door policy. These
13
15
Campbell, Red Rock, 14-5.
discarded tapes and CDs, physically marked by a hole or cut in the tape or CD which
also rendered parts of them unlistenable, became known in Mandarin as dakou ( ).
This term, meaning “to make a hole,” also eventually came to signify the generation of
youth who grew up accessing these formats of foreign music.
16
It is with this unusual
introduction of foreign music into a country that was long isolated from the rest of the
world, that music itself became one way China was initiated into the international
community.
Even though the economic reforms have greatly liberalized many of the CCP’s
politics, many observers still perceive China to be a repressive state both politically and
socially. Even today, when it comes to music, the most common question a Chinese
band will be asked is how their music is related to Chinese politics. Nevin Domer, who
runs an underground punk and hardcore vinyl record label based in Beijing called
Genjing Records and also works for Maybe Mars one of the most prominent
independent record labels in China, stated:
…our bands are often being questioned about their music and politics in China
which they (the bands) feel is a very unfair question. The first question people
ask bands in the US is usually not about politics so why should that be the case
for a Chinese band? When we are asked what our bands sing about we respond
that they are like bands everywhere; they sing about a wide range of issues from
getting drunk, to girls, to their daily lives. Yes, some bands do sing about politics
but in general even those bands feel that they should be first judged on the
strength of their music.
14
16
Jeroen de Kloet, China with a Cut: Globalisation, Urban Youth and Popular Music
(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), 19-20.
From the perspective of Westerners looking in to the Chinese scene I don't feel
it's helpful to impose our ideas of politics on to their music especially when we
may not even have a firm grasp of the situation in which they live.
17
Westerners who travel to China to follow or document the music scene often try to
relate certain performances of rebellion and/or counterculture, such as a rock concert, as
evidence of China’s political and social problems.
18
According to Liu Kang in the article
“Popular Culture and the Culture of the Masses in Contemporary China,” China’s
politics are often portrayed by mainstream Western media through the “age-old”
ideological and political narrative of dissent and suppression. Liu asserts,
It becomes clear that tales of China’s political repression and terror have more to
do with the political, ideological, and commercial objectives of the Western
media (and the national interests that lurk behind) than with what is really
happening in China today.
19
In relation to music, Chinese rock and punk, which traditionally symbolized rebellion
and counterculture in the West, is sensationalized by Western media. One example can
be seen on the cover of a 1999 issue of Newsweek magazine that featured “riot grrrl”
band Hang on the Box. The headline reads “China: The Limits of Freedom” and the
accompanying photograph depicted Wang Yue, the lead singer, with a short punkish
dyed haircut and wearing a spiked choker necklace. The juxtaposition of the band’s
youthful punk style and the headline, which implies China’s socio-political limitations,
15
17
Nevin Domer, e-mail message to author, May 15, 2012.
18
Campbell, Red Rock, 185.
19
Liu Kang, "Popular Culture and the Culture of the Masses in Contemporary China," in
Postmodernism and China, ed. Arif Dirlik and Xudong Zhang (Durham: Duke University Press,
2000), 127.
exacerbates the notion that countercultural practices are inherently tied to the political.
Meiling Cheng, in her article “Dappled China: ‘Untamed Histories’ Surround the China
Brand” asks, “why should these artists choose only one position - either for or against
the China brand, for or against rampant commercialism, for or against the orthodox
history - when they can play with multiple positions at various moments?”
20
The
tendency for Western media to ignore the complex relationship between Chinese
citizens, the CCP, and the international community often results in oversimplification
and a one-dimensional interpretation of cultural practices happening within China.

Additionally, Richard Kraus discusses that although the CCP is clearly more
directly involved in censorship, censorship mechanisms such as the “Great Firewall” are
“erratic and porous.” Internet censorship is effective against the general population, but
Fig 1. Hang on the Box on the cover of Newsweek
(source: http://www.myspace.com/beijinghangonthebox)
16
20
Meiling Cheng, "Dappled China: 'Untamed Histories' Surrounding the China Brand," Yishu
11, no. 4 (2012): 55.
applies less to the educated and politically connected elites. Many restrictions are very
easily circumvented by netizens and bloggers who know how to bypass the firewall and
and censorship software. Conversely, Kraus makes the point that censorship is also
prevalent in the West, though admittedly less stringent. He contends censorship is
usually enforced through intellectual property lawsuits and that it usually comes in
forms of restrictions against pornography, terrorist information, and criminal access to
computers. In light of Westerners’ perceived notions of Chinese censorship and other
restrictions, many Chinese artists have “boosted their celebrity by playing the system,”
assuming the identity and role of a dissident. For example, Kraus discusses Chinese
artists selling “dissident” paintings that satirize Mao Zedong to foreign collectors,
though poking fun of Mao is no longer very controversial. In Kraus’ words, “Westerners
… imagine China to be much more repressive toward its artists than is the case. As
China has become more prosperous, less Maoist, and more like ‘ordinary’ countries, its
censorship issues have also become more ordinary.”
21
It is doubtless that political
suppression and strict forms of censorship exist in China to this date, especially when it
comes to politically sensitive issues like the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Yet,
censorship and suppression also lead to increased interest in certain censored
publications, recordings, or artworks, both in the West and in China.
17
21
Richard Kraus, "Policy Case Study: The Arts," in Politics in China, ed. William A. Joseph
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 274-5.
The Western Gaze
Discourse surrounding the ways in which the West perceives China, both
historically and currently, often circle around Edward Said’s theories and derivatives of
Orientalism. In relation to Chinese music, some scholars have attempted to dismantle
the “Western Gaze,” or how the West views the Other, through the prism of Orientalist
desire. According to David Stokes’ essay “Popping the myth of Chinese Rock,”
… the search for ‘authentic’ rock in China as an updated version of this search in
the ‘other’ for what we now lack. Not only do we scour other cultures for the
‘authentic’, if quaint, folk music, handicrafts, and religious beliefs we have lost
in the West, we can now find ‘authentic’ rock-as-rebellion, long after its
supposed ‘death’ in the West. It is even possible, in this age of ‘bubble-gum
punk’ such as Green Day and the ‘inauthenticity’ of the reformed Sex Pistols, to
find ‘authentic’ punk music in China.
22
His argument is further supported by using Rey Chow’s construct of “the Maoist” in
conjunction with Chinese rock music, providing an enlightening analysis of why so
many Westerners insist on relating several forms of contemporary Chinese music to
modern Chinese politics. According to Chow in Writing Diaspora, the Maoist (related
to the Orientalist, as termed by Said) constructs a “Third Worldist fantasy” in which
Mao is essentially a reincarnated Marx who gives hope to Westerners disillusioned by
capitalism. Chow notes the problem of Maoists romanticizing the Cultural Revolution, a
political and social disaster that destroyed millions of lives, and even poverty in China.
This type of romanticization and “admiration” of a poverty-stricken China in the 1970s
18
22
David Stokes, "Popping the myth of Chinese rock," in Refashioning Pop Music in Asia:
Cosmopolitan flows, political tempos and aesthetic industries, ed. Allen Chun, Ned Rossiter,
and Brian Shoesmith (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 36.
equates to what Chow says is “excessive denigration of China.” Finally, she writes that
the Maoist “is thus a supreme example of the way desire works: What [the Maoist]
wants is always located in the other, resulting in an identification with and valorization
of that which [the Maoist] is not/does not have.”
23
Comparatively, David Stokes states,
“Perhaps what we are dealing with now is the hedonistic offspring of the Maoist: with
the death of rock and failure of the ‘rock’n’roll dream’ in the West, they locate what
they lack in the other: rock’n’roll is alive and well, and living in Beijing.”
24
As
previously stated, when interviewing Chinese bands, reporters often ask how the bands’
music relate to politics, in an attempt to tie certain genres of music to overt political
expression. Stokes’ essay and the connection between Rey Chow’s idea of Orientalist
desire and music provides a framework in which to view the criticism that many
contemporary Chinese artists and musicians face in Western media.
One particular example of this “desire” concerns a documentary directed by
Guy-Marc Hinant and Dominique Lohlé called Fuck You: Fucking Noise in China Now.
Released by Sub Rosa in 2010, the directors film and interview several experimental
“noise” artists around Beijing and Shanghai, observing and questioning the relation
between noise music and contemporary Chinese society. The directors’ objective was
framed around the question: “Is noise political?” At the end of the documentary,
19
23
Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 10.
24
Stokes, “Popping the Myth…,” 36-7.
Zbigniew Karkowski, a prominent international sound artist and noise musician from
Poland, who participated heavily in this documentary, criticizes the Chinese artists
interviewed for being reluctant to admit that the music is political. He claims that they
are “brainwashed” by the CCP and that many of the experimental “noise” bands and
artists, such as Torturing Nurse, are merely mimics of other more internationally
established noise acts like Hijokaidan from Japan.
25
Comparatively, Jeroen de Kloet
also writes in “Sonic Sturdiness: The Globalization of ‘Chinese Rock and Pop’” that
Western audiences and music critics’ denunciation of Chinese (rock) music and
musicians as mimicry or mimics is a byproduct of hegemonic colonial attitudes.
26

Stokes’ reading of Chinese rock music applies here as well to experimental forms of
music such as noise. Perhaps with the disappointment of the avant-garde being
institutionalized in the West, critics turn to “third world” and industrializing countries
for evidence that true avant-gardism is still alive. When they find that the art or music is
not subversive enough (some have even labeled it “pseudo-subversive”
27
), and does not
comply with the fantasy they have constructed, questions of the “authenticity” of the
subversion (or the representation of) and mimicry arise.
20
25
Fuck You: Fucking Noise in China Now!, directed by Guy-Marc Hinant and Dominique Lohlé
(Brussels:OME/Sub Rosa, 2010), DVD.
26
Jeroen de Kloet, "Sonic Sturdiness: The Globalization of 'Chinese' Rock and Pop," Critical
Studies in Media Communication 22, no. 4 (2005): 325.
27
See Maya Kóvskaya, “The Visual Roots of a Public Intellectual’s Social Conscience: Ai
Weiwei’s New York Photographs,” Yishu 8, no. 5 (2009).
Additional issues of “authenticity” are brought to light in the globalization of
contemporary Chinese music. In Issue 3 of Jingweir, a short zine that provides updates
on the underground and alternative music scene in Beijing, the authors discuss the
difficulties that Chinese bands have in entering the global market. Not only are there
touring costs and the challenge of obtaining visas to travel abroad, there are also already
established and “ingrained” views of what a “Chinese” band should look and sound
like. For example, they write “I’m guessing the panda to gig poster ratio for those tours
is pretty high (imagine if every Australian band had a kangaroo put in their gig
posters?!)” Moreover, they point out that previously established notions of what
constitutes an “authentic” “Chinese” band are probably to blame for why some ethnic
folk bands like Hanggai have received more international and Western media attention
than rock-type bands like P.K.14 or Carsick Cars.
28
Hanggai, a Mongolian folk band
based in Beijing, have been covered by NPR, Pitchfork, the BBC, and the New York
Times to name a few. According to one New York Times article on Chinese alternative
folk music (sometimes termed “Chinagrass”), the bands’ ethnic identities are
immediately brought into relation to CCP politics and their policies concerning the fifty-
five officially recognized ethnic minority groups. The CCP’s dominant narrative of
multiculturalism includes exoticizing many of China’s minority groups, but
concurrently, ethnic minorities are also required to help maintain the state’s hegemony.
For instance, songs that challenge the state’s promotion of positive multiculturalism and
21
28
Mike Cupoli et al., "The Internationale," Jingweir 2012.
“ethnic harmony,” such as songs that describe minority hardships and challenges, are
deemed politically sensitive. Aojie a Ge, a Yi minority from the pop-folk band
Mountain Eagle said, “About 80 percent of my songs are about hardship, but can I
perform these songs? Of course not. I still need to survive.” Additionally, Jonathan
Kaiman and Andrew Jacobs write in the article that “flourishes” of ethnic minority pride
are often “counterbalanced by moments of uncertainty.” Police shut down a Hanggai
show in Shanghai due to noise complaints even though the previous evening another
rock-folk band, Shanren (of Yunnan origin), had played to a sold-out audience.
29
As the
Chinese underground becomes more “mainstream,”
30
musicians must learn to deal with
not only domestic challenges posed by the government but also the challenges that a
global audience and market present.
According to de Kloet, it was in the post-Tiananmen era that China’s
consumerist and commercial culture began to escalate. As China’s economy continues
to liberalize, China has also became more depoliticized, which he states as the “certain
withdrawal of the state from the public sphere,” though he explains that Chinese people
still face restrictions when discussing societal change in the public sphere. Moreover, de
Kloet writes,
As Foucault reminds us, power is everywhere (this seemingly hollow statement
points to the impossibility of clearly separating the political from the
22
29
Jonathan Kaiman and Andrew Jacobs, "Ethnic Music Tests Limits in China," The New York
Times, July 16, 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/world/asia/17music.html.
30
In the sense of becoming more known outside of their own immediate communities.
nonpolitical), and rather than localizing spaces that are presumably far removed
from Chinese political realities, we might do better to rethink the complex
relationships among politics, popular culture, and the everyday life.
31
In a similar vein to what Meiling Cheng asks in “Dappled China,” de Kloet interrogates
the complexity between the political and everyday. Rather than positioning musicians
and bands as complicit or defiant, his essay, which focuses on Chinese rock music,
provides a critical analysis of the intricate relationship between politics and cultural
productions. He argues against romanticizing rock music as a subversive or
countercultural practice because while rock music does have a tendency to appear
subversive, there are some instances in which rock is also “compliant” with hegemonic
standards and practices. De Kloet also suggests that the “aesthetics of rock” help to
connect bands together with the audiences. As a result, a community and “shared sense
of being” is created within genre-specific practices. He says that analysis of rock
focusing on the audience and performer relationship destabilizes the problematic “rock
mythology”, which often sees “rock culture” as a monolithic entity of countercultural
expression and patriarchal bias.
32
Instances of contradictions, such as how rock can
accommodate and resist hegemonic culture, are ignored in these types of analyses.
Genre-specific practices, like rock music or noise music, should also be considered a
cultural space in which audiences fluidly pass in and out of.
33
It is within these cultural
23
31
Jeroen de Kloet, "'Let Him Fucking See the Green Smoke Beneath My Groin': The
Mythology of Chinese Rock," in Postmodernism and China, ed. Arif Dirlik and Xudong Zhang
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 240.
32
Ibid., 243.
33
Ibid., 266.
spheres, de Kloet states, that struggles of cultural memory, the contradictory present,
and the undetermined future, provide the most significant “battleground” for which
these struggles are contested and negotiated, and not within intellectual or political
spheres.
34
The result is a complex and multifaceted cultural experience in which the
both performers and audiences contribute to an “imagined community” of new Chinese
cultural identities and ways of expression. Today’s Chinese underground music scene,
for example, provides a space for the post-Tiananmen generations to assert alternative
identities, separate from popular cultural conventions.
As stated previously, Chinese bands face difficulties both locally and
internationally. Issues of authenticity are always present in Western media coverage of
the burgeoning Chinese music scene. Typically, Chinese bands that incorporate
traditional Chinese instruments are viewed as more “authentically” Chinese than a band
that relies solely on electronic instruments. There are also certain genres in which some
works may be more “authentically” representative than others. In regards to yaogun,
Campbell says:
These guys weren’t playing rock, they were living it, even before they go on a
stage- or whether they got on a stage at all. Not only does this produce a very
different product, it is also a shocking thing to behold for a child of rock’s
motherland. It’s what happens when one is faced with one’s own culture as
processed, reconsidered and transformed by an Other. The choice to rock
signaled much more than a simple preference for a particular kind of music that
sounded like a good time, but also something slightly less than a conscious
24
34
Ibid, 240.
decision to overthrow the shackles of oppression.
35
Campbell explains that the choice of choosing rock as a medium of musical expression
is much more complex than simply a choice of musical taste, but at the same time is
wary of interpreting that choice completely as a sign of political resistance or rebellion.
It also has to be taken into account that like many other perceived subcultural and
countercultural movements and styles rock, and its various sub-genres such as punk, in
China has been commodified to a certain extent. For example, many see punk as merely
a fashion statement or an adolescent phase and who do not have any desire of igniting
or calling for social or political change in China. While it may just be a fashion
statement or youth trend, punk in China caught the attention of West. According to
Campbell, news of the Chinese punk scene spread internationally in the late 1990s and
Western media, especially, “flocked” to Beijing to break the story:
Journalists flocked to the Scream Club, where they met kids with leather, chains,
tattoos, and Mohawks; kids that quickly learned what the visitors were looking
for. And thus, the balancing act between novelty and news: punk as both wacky
fashion statement and the seeds of revolution against the Commies.
36
Comparatively in the West, punk fashions and identity have also been co-opted by
commercial youth brands and mainstream culture. Bands lamenting about adolescent
boredom, love, and partying are all relatively “safe,” neutral topics and appealing to the
masses. On the other hand, many of the early Chinese punk musicians, such as the band
Underground Baby or Underbaby, that initally formed the punk community either left,
25
35
Campbell, Red Rock, 44-5.
36
Ibid., 183.
got jobs, or moved onto other musical ventures.
37
There are exceptions of course that
must be addressed. Like in the West, China also has politically fueled punk bands, who
overtly display politically subversive attitudes. Pangu, a band discussed in Campbell’s
book Red Rock, is one particular example of a Chinese punk band that openly sang
about politically sensitive issues and as a result, were exiled.
Pangu ( ), the name which derives from the creator of the universe in Chinese
mythology, formed in 1995 in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. They are also sometimes
known as or referred to as “Punk God,” a play on their Chinese name. As detailed in
Red Rock, Ao Bo, Pangu’s leader, borrowed about six US dollars from a coworker and
the drummer’s dowry to acquire the necessary gear to start a band. Like many other
punks, they never formally learned how to play their instruments. Intent was more
important. They were able to get into contact with Yan Jun, one of China’s most prolific
music critics and participant in the underground music scene, who was able to get
Pangu in contact with Wang Lei in Guangzhou and head of the now defunct record label
Longmin and club Unplugged. Pangu began their ‘professional’ career playing at
Unplugged and releasing albums through Wang Lei. They were also featured in Yan
Jun’s zine Sub Jam, released in 1998 showcasing new Chinese music. However, after
their 2001 release through Scream Records, one of the major independent labels in
26
37
David O'Dell, Inseparable: the Memoirs of an American and the Story of Chinese Punk Rock
(2011), 197.
China, their presence caught the attention of police and other authorities.
38
In 2004,
Pangu was invited to participate in Taipei’s “Say Yes to Taiwan” festival, which they
agreed to. The festival also symbolically took place on February 28, marking the
anniversary of the “228 Incident” in 1947 when the Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang)
brutally cracked down on Taiwanese demonstrators, resulting in an estimated 10,000
deaths. The tenuous relations between China and Taiwan during 2004, as Chen Shui-
bian’s (of Taiwan’s pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party) re-election
campaign was ramping up, were at their lowest in recent years. Furthermore, during the
festival Pangu exclaimed “Protect Taiwan!” and showed their support for Taiwanese
independence. As a result, they received word when preparing to return home that upon
arrival in China they would be arrested and jailed. Pangu, contacted the United Nations
Refugee Agency seeking asylum, and since then, have been living in exile in Sweden.
39
Besides their bold and open support of Taiwanese independence, Pangu is also
one of the only Chinese punk bands to sing about current events.
40
They sang about the
Beijing Olympics in a 2007 song called “BeijingFuckingOlympia” and also wrote
several tribute songs to Yang Jia, a man who stabbed six Shanghai police officers to
death on July 1, 2008 after he was previously arrested and beaten during an
interrogation for riding an unlicensed bicycle (which was assumed to be stolen by the
27
38
Campbell, Red Rock, 195-6.
39
Ibid., 194.
40
Ibid., 197.
police). Yang was eventually executed in November 2008. Before authorities increased
the censors surrounding the incident, media portrayal of Yang was sympathetic. Many
bloggers likened him to the Chinese folk hero Wu Song, from the classic Chinese novel
Water Margin ( shuihuzhuan) and he became an icon against police brutality and
injustice. During his trial a group of protestors gathered in front of Shanghai’s Higher
People’s Court to show support, some even wearing T-shirts with Yang’s image.
41
In
addition to these events, Pangu has also written songs set to poems by Zhang Lin, a
Chinese blogger and dissident from Anhui who was arrested in 2005 for subversion for
posting Pangu’s lyrics on his blog. A press release by the organization Human Rights in
China, describes one of Zhang’s essays, titled “Pangu - The Hysterical Ravings of the
Chinese People,” and refers to a song by Pangu in which they call for Chinese society
and the system to collapse. The lyrics included: “The Yellow River should run dry, this
society should collapse, this system should be destroyed, this race should become
extinct, this country should perish.”
42
28
41
David Barboza, "China 'little guy' hero executed for 6 killings; Battle with police triggered
sympathy," The International Herald Tribune, November 27, 2008, LexisNexis® Academic
(http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic).
42
"Dissident Writer Zhang Lin to be Tried Next Week," Human Rights In China, June 15, 2005,
http://www.hrichina.org/content/1602.
This relatively short discussion on Pangu gives evidence that there have been instances
of overt anti-government displays in contemporary Chinese music. Pangu uses punk
music as a means to bluntly express discontentment with the government and society,
but that does not mean that other artists and musicians who are not as politically overt
as Pangu are brainwashed or do not have the ability to be critical about the society that
they live in and the governmental body that presides over it. Besides straightforward
lyrics and proclamations, there are other ways to express discontentment. To relate back
to the Hinant and Lohlé documentary, one promising aspect of their film is that they
begin to question the difference between “feelings of revolt with revolt itself,” but do
not explore the question further. While revolt such as protests and demonstrations may
be more effective means (though not always) of displaying political and social
discontentment in the West, we have seen that China still highly restricts overt
demonstrations or displays of political resistance, such as in the case with the band
Fig 2. Pangu
(source: http://www.islandofsound.org/friends_of_taiwan/punkgod.html)
29
Pangu. Within China, forms of expression are tolerated by the government as long as
they do not challenge the authority of the CCP, political and social stability. Self-
expression may seem trivial and insignificant based on Western perceptions, sometimes
even taken for granted, but it is also with the exploration and experimentation of
expression and individuality that the process of social change in China will become
possible. If the CCP is most concerned with maintaining the status-quo and peace of the
people and region, it is unsurprising as well that they would encourage conformity and
consumerism. I would not be so quick to discredit Chinese musicians and artists simply
because they are not jumping at the chance to contest and oppose the government.
Instead, seeking meaning in ambiguity and subtlety of their works becomes more
important. How are musicians utilizing their agency to resist conventions? To overtly
revolt against the government, such as Pangu, leads to immediate and harsh
consequences. How effective are their calls for change now that they exiled? Currently,
the only way for political and social change to happen in China is through gradual and
subtle means.
30
IMPORTANCE OF SYMBOLISM & AMBIGUITY
The events of June 4, 1989 are likely one of the most traumatic in recent
Chinese cultural memory. Protests for democracy, which began in May, were quickly
silenced through a military crackdown in the streets of Beijing. The “Tiananmen Square
Massacre” also happened to be covered and reported on extensively by foreign press
and has left a lasting imprint of Chinese communist authoritarian rule in Westerners’
minds. The June 4
th
Incident, of course, remains a censored topic within China. Many
rockers such as Cui Jian were involved with the democratic movement, which was
mainly led by university students. Cui Jian’s song “Nothing to my Name” (
yiwusuoyou) became the anthem of the movement. After the protests were brutally and
violently suppressed by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), many leaders of the
movement were exiled or had to go underground. In addition, because of rock music’s
role during the protests, the genre was prone to strict censorship in the aftermath.
Interestingly, Cui Jian has for the most part remained unscathed though he has had his
share of struggles since 1989. According to “Yaogun Yinyue: rethinking mainland
Chinese rock ‘n’ roll” by Hao Huang, “Cui Jian has continued to survive because he has
successfully manipulated shades of ambiguous meaning.”
43
Huang also provides an
example related to Cui’s the song “He zi” or “The Box” on the 1992 album Balls under
a Red Flag:
31
43
Hao Huang, "Yaogun Yinyue: rethinking mainland Chinese rock 'n' roll," Popular Music 20,
no. 1 (2001): 5.
The lyrics of the song are not printed in the liner notes; rather an image of a Red
Guard girl in pigtails is presented with the ironic words, ‘The Ideal,’ in the
background. This visual symbol violently clashes with the pictures of the long-
haired, unkempt rock musicians of Cui Jian’s band on the CD cover and liner
back. A challenge to a Chinese Communist Party icon is suggested by Cui’s
appropriation of an old socialist anthem in the song, recontextualixing it as part
of an oppositional call to resist ‘The Box’ of Chinese socialist ideals. The
implication is, just who will hatch from those cryptic eggs of the album title?
44
In this case, ambiguity and symbolism are particularly important in his identification
with political and cultural resistance. While the use of symbols allows for open
interpretation of Cui’s intent, since he does not clearly state what the song is about, the
semiotic juxtaposition of a Red Guard girl and the words “Ideal,” combined with the
images of Cui’s band, creates an ironic, tongue-in-cheek prod at the Communist Party.
Zhang Shouwang from the Beijing-based band Carsick Cars said in an interview
about the song “Guangchang” ( ) which means “plaza” or “square,” from their self-
eponymous album:
Once I finish the song, the lyrics don’t belong to me anymore, and people can
think whatever they want. An Austrian friend told me that when he heard No
Future Square
45
he thought it was about a park in Vienna in which many young
people were killed during the war, and it moved him deeply. I am happy that he
felt that, because it means that the song felt true to him.
46
32
44
Huang, “Yaogun Yinyue,” 5-6.
45
A variation of an English title for this song is “No Future Square” which is derived from the
chorus “This is a square without hope” / “ ”
46
Alice Liu, "China's rockers too pampered for politics," Asia Times Online, October 14, 2009,
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KJ14Ad02.html.
Zhang stated that the song was written after he and his friend visited Tiananmen Square
one morning where they lingered for a while. Eventually, police took notice of them and
put them in a police van where, as they were driving away, Zhang said he could see the
square “in the rising morning light.” In the song itself, he sings “This is a square
without hope,” thus the translation, “No Future Square.”
47
While the music has hints of
politics, such as the mention of Tiananmen Square in a critical context, some have
dismissed these kinds of references as “knee-jerk reaction to daily stresses” rather than
“true” desire for social and political change.
48
Furthermore, Zhang and many other
musicians have stated in interviews that they are not interested in politics, however if
this is the case, why then do they keep hinting at their discontentment with China’s
political and social systems?
In another Carsick Cars song called “You Can Listen, You Can Talk,” Zhang
sings in English:
Nothing ever said or written
Lu Xun says he lives too far away
All the songs die in early summer
All the songs die in early summer
We all live in the metal cage
Just like the writer says
Welcome back to the free nation
Welcome back to the free nation
49
33
47
Carsick Cars. Carsick Cars. Maybe Mars MAYBE 2.3, 2008, compact disc.
48
Liu, “China’s rockers…,” http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KJ14Ad02.html.
49
Carsick Cars. You Can Listen You Can Talk. Maybe Mars Maybe 16.1, 2009, compact disc.
This song also corresponds to “No Future Square” in that there is a implication of
restrictions - a square, a cage. And like “No Future Square” there is a subtle hint of the
political in the brief nod to Lu Xun
50
and the statement “Welcome back to the free
nation,” which is repeated twice. The implication behind the repetitive chant at the end
of the song “You can listen, you can talk” is perhaps a call for listeners to create and
maintain dialogue and to realize that one does not need to keep silent in this new
cultural era. Zhang’s lyrics are purposefully ambiguous, allowing Carsick Cars’ music
to be published. However, the ambiguity is significant because Zhang plants allusions
and subtle hints throughout the songs that create room for interpretation.
Yan Jun, a prolific Chinese sound artist and music critic, provides an
enlightening perspective on the “paradox” of Chinese state power in an interview:
Well, we always say the government has a way to control everything in China,
but there is something that will get in the way of that control, like bureaucracy,
or the grey areas of the system. You can’t fight with the law, but you can go
through and around that. This is the system, the paradox of the system – it’s
against itself. It’s the paradox of power in China.
51
Yan describes that while the CCP has strict regulations and a way to monitor everything
going on, there are grey areas as well that can be manipulated in order to fuel
possibilities. Many of China’s contemporary musicians are doing just that by simply
putting on gigs and performing, releasing their own music, or “signing” to an
34
50
One of the most influential contemporary Chinese writers. Lu is known for his social critique
and politically leftist leanings during the twentieth century.
51
Jun Yan, interview by Christen Cornell, "Lost in the Supermarket: Interview with Yan Jun,"
Artspace China, August 27, 2011, http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/artspacechina/2011/08/post_3.html.
independent record label. Chinese musicians must constantly negotiate their way
through the system because they are always subject to suppression, should authorities
choose to enforce the laws. In addition, Zhang has stated that because the audience for
“non-commercial art and music” in China is small compared to other countries, artists
and musicians actually benefit from the lack of attention. If the CCP were to take
special notice or interest of underground artists and musicians, and to support them
financially, Zhang says that would “end up hurting the strength and variety of the
Beijing art and music scene.” Essentially, these artists and musicians have freedom as
long as the government continues to ignore them.
52
35
52
Liu, “China’s Rockers…,” http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KJ14Ad02.html.
“DO IT YOURSELF” (DIY) IN CHINA
The development of small independent record labels and self-releasing and
distributing music is another important factor in the consideration of contemporary
Chinese music and its implications of cultural and political resistance. Matthew
Niederhauser writes in Sound Kapital: Beijing’ s Music Underground,
It would be presumptuous and misleading to label the motley crew of dropouts,
hipsters, vagrants, bumpkins, intellectuals, and nighttime rockers as a whole.
But if one thing binds many in the underground, it is a dissatisfaction with the
rise of a rabid, vapid, and often unsustainable consumer culture.
53
Self-release and self-distribution and following the DIY (“do it yourself”) model, which
originated out of the punk and hardcore punk communities in the West, openly subverts
the flourishing Chinese consumerist culture. The advent of DIY culture in China also
challenges the process of mass production, marketing, and most importantly, state-
controlled media. Instead of embracing a model of maximum profitability and
commercialization many small record labels and artists seem to be content with doing
things independently and releasing in small quantities. One of the most important
aspects of DIY music production, at least in regards to this paper, is that it is technically
illegal. By law, publications including records, should be registered with the
government. It is illegal for publishers to publish material unless an ISBN or ISRC
number and proper paperwork are assigned. Musicians who sell CDrs
54
and other self-
36
53
Matthew Niederhauser, Sound Kapital: Beijing's Music Underground (Brooklyn, NY:
PowerHouse Books, 2009), 3.
54
Compact Disc-Recordables
published materials are doing so without official authorization. Additionally, stores that
sell CDrs are at risk of getting fined or shut down as these are not licensed (approved)
for sale by authorities. In actual practice, the government only selectively chooses to
enforce these laws and as a result, there are many record labels and stores today in
China that produce their own music without going through the proper channels.
Because of this, musicians, record labels, record stores, and music venues
55
are
constantly in “a grey zone” where they could be fined or shut down for violating laws if
the government decides that what they are doing is a problem.
56
Another interesting
issue concerning the politics of music in China is that since 1992, the CCP has shifted
from trying to censor all dissidents and instead reward those who cooperate with the
system. According to Alex Ross’ Listen to This, musicians who work with the system
will be allowed to achieve financial success and prizes. The result is a pattern of self-
censorship among artists and musicians.
57
While this is the reality for many Chinese
musicians, as we saw previously, utilization of symbolism and ambiguity are important
in expressions of creativity and resistance. Conversely, the DIY model allows musicians
to completely circumvent the “official” routes of publishing music, therefore also
bypassing censorship issues.
Nevin Domer, who runs Genjing Records (genjing changpian ) in
37
55
All performances in China technically have to be registered beforehand and performers must
carry a performance license (yanyunzheng). Music venues, typically nightclubs and bars, can be
fined and/or shut down if they allow a non-licensed musician or band to perform.
56
Nevin Domer, email to author, May 14, 2012.
57
Alex Ross, Listen to This (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 164.
Beijing, says in an interview with Wooozy.cn that DIY labels are “more like a mutual
support network than a business.” He also says,
If I can sell 100 copies of each release then I am happy and I want those to go to
true collectors and fans who care about the bands. So for this reason I am not
trying to get my releases into every store across the country but instead focusing
on places that already draw the right kind of audience.
58

Genjing is one of China’s first vinyl record labels and also aims to promote DIY culture
in China.
59
They have released several records for Chinese punk and hardcore bands
including Gum Bleed, The Flyx, Fanzui Xiangfa, and Demerit.

38
58
Nevin Domer, interview by fanmu, "Wooozy Interviews Genjing," May 5, 2012, http://
genjingrecords.com/archives/4312.
59
"About," Genjing, http://genjingrecords.com/about.
Fig 3. Sub Jam 1998 zine cover
Similarly, Sub Jam and Kwanyin Records, founded by Yan Jun after he published
a short zine in 1998 (see figure 3), is self-described on their website at Subjam.org as a
“guerrilla organization, non-profit, self-founded and loose[ly]-structure[d].”
60
Sub Jam’s
model has been described as “anarchistic” in that there are no contracts signed and
artists retain complete control of copyrights.
61
While Genjing Records focuses more on
punk and hardcore music, Sub Jam caters towards the experimental and sound art scene.
Another example is Pangbianr, which is run by Josh Feola. In an interview with
Christen Cornell, the idea that DIY is about community and not capitalism is implied
again, “just in terms of the community … seeing the same people at events, working
together on these releases, helping promote each others' music and shows – that’s really
the essential core feature and reason for Pangbianr.”
62
Steven Blush and George Petros,
the authors of American Hardcore, makes a statement that reflects this very notion as
well,
Hardcore established a new definition of musical success: in non-economic
terms. Sociologists might see this as an example of ‘tribal syndicalism’: unlike
money-oriented economies, Hardcore was an objective-oriented, community-
based culture - like a commune or an armed fortress.
63
DIY provides a counter and alternative to China’s new consumer-oriented culture and
39
60
"About and Chronicle," Sub Jam, http://www.subjam.org/history.
61
Jonathan Campbell, Red Rock, 147.
62
Josh Feola, interview by Christen Cornell, "The Fringes of the Fringe: Pangbianr and DIY
Beijing," Artspace China, April 29, 2011, http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/artspacechina/2011/04/
diy_beijing_interview_with_jos.html.
63
Steven Blush and George Petros, American Hardcore: a Tribal History (Los Angeles: Feral
House, 2001), 275.
growing capitalist-based economy. Chinese artists seeking to release their work do not
have to rely on State media to make their work and products available to the rest of the
community. The quote by Yang Haisong, of the band P.K.14, at the beginning of this
paper speaks specifically to this issue. While the majority of the Chinese population is
concerned with consumerism and “making money,”
64
these artists and musicians openly
choose an alternative lifestyle in which success does not necessarily translate to capital
wealth. By continuing their involvement and participation with the underground and
DIY music scene, Chinese musicians resist against the CCP’s hegemony over the music
industry.
40
64
Deng Xiaoping is widely said to have exclaimed “To get rich is glorious!”
ZAOYIN ( ) & THE EXPERIMENTAL
When it comes to musical form and genres, resistance is expressed through non-
conformity with dominant forms of musical expression. According to Baranovitch, “the
most obvious traces of resistance in many hegemonic expressions are musical.”
65
In a sense, noise music ( zaoyin) is similar to hardcore punk music in its initial
developments. Many saw hardcore as too extreme and unmarketable. Fundamentally,
noise music resists many similar factors that hardcore punk sought to or did negate.
While Chinese noise artists are not opposing the government directly, their works
challenge popular mainstream music and production, including the government’s
hegemony over the Chinese music industry, by providing alternative multifaceted works
and spaces for listeners. As stated by Jacques Attali, creating noise:
… takes the route of the permanent affirmation of the right to be different, an
obstinate refusal of the stockpiling of use-time and exchange-time; it is the
conquest of the right to make noise, in other words, to create one’s own code
and work, without advertising its goal in advance; it is the conquest of the right
to make the free and revocable choice to interlink with another’s code - that is,
the right to compose one’s own life.
66
In the case of Chinese zaoyin, artists’ decisions to create noise music, a “genre” with a
limited audience and which opposes conventional notions of what music constitutes,
gives them a form of power and agency over their lives and work.
41
65
Baranovitch, China’ s New Voices, 225.
66
Jacques Attali, Noise: the Political Economy of Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1985), 132.

Noise music traces its origins to the Italian Futurists, primarily Luigi Russolo and
Filippo Marinetti, and has a growing community in China that is mainly concentrated in
Shanghai.
67
In one of the most important works on noise, Paul Hegarty writes in Noise/
Music about the otherness and unconventionality of noise:
Noise is negative: it is unwanted, other, not something ordered. It is negatively
defined - i.e. by what it is not (not acceptable sound, not music, not valid, not a
message or a meaning), but it is also a negativity. In other words, it does not
exist independently, as it exists only in relation to what it is not. In turn, it helps
structure and define its opposite (the world of meaning, law, regulation,
goodness, beauty, and so on). Noise is something like a process, and whether it
creates a result (positive in the form of avant-garde transformation, negative in
the form of social restrictions) or remains process is one of the major issues in
how music and noise relate.
68
Therefore, noise only exists when there is something to oppose it. If there is a
mainstream, whatever is not mainstream may be considered “noise.” Noise also
reinforces and gives definition to whatever it is not. The term “noise music” becomes a
paradox and Hegarty is right to illustrate the dependency and separation of “noise” and
“music” in his book title. Music refers to structured, consciously organized sounds. At
least in the European music tradition, the process of composing music is also about
refinement and perfection. Anything that a composer did not see fit to belong in a
composition, he or she threw out and discarded as noise (the unwanted). What noise
42
67
Barclay Brown states that “If music is sound, why does not music employ all the varieties of
sound? Why cannot music embrace sounds like those made by people and animals, the sounds
of nature, the sounds of a modern industrial society?” in the introduction to The Art of Noises,
by Luigi Russolo (New York: Pendragon Press, 1986), 17.
68
Paul Hegarty, Noise/Music: a History (New York: Continuum, 2007), 5.
implies then, is unintentional and indeterminate sound. Joanna Demers discusses the
relation between indeterminacy and music in her book Listening Through the Noise. She
writes that the indeterminacy movement in the mid-twentieth century, popularized by
John Cage and Fluxus, helped pave the way for experimental music, which also
developed as a reaction against the institutionalization of the avant-garde.
69

Other scholars, such as Matthew Mullane, in his essay “Hurt Now, Feel Later:
Noise Body and Capital in the Japanese Bubble,” states that noise music, especially its
ability to amplify and isolate noise and volume, cements oneself to the present. The
overload of sonic input and distortion negates conceptions of the past and future by
“asserting a streaming succession of painful present instances.” His essay, which
discusses the ways in which Japanese noise music reflected the social and political
context of Japan in the 1990s during the economic bubble burst, is applicable also to the
situation in China. Though the contexts are different, Mullane’s analysis of noise music
focuses not on noise music’s dominance over social subjugation, but as “analogous to
portions of the contemporaneous socio-political schema.”
70
It is within this lens that
Chinese noise music can also be analyzed.
43
69
Joanna Demers, Listening Through the Noise: the Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic
Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 7.
70
Matthew Mullane, "Hurt Now, Feel Later: Noise, Body and Capital in the Japanese Bubble,"
Art & Education, http://www.artandeducation.net/paper/hurt-now-feel-later-noise-body-and-
capital-in-the-japanese-bubble/.
As mentioned previously, Torturing Nurse is a Chinese noise band based in
Shanghai. Their enormous discography covers a wide range of compilations,
international collaborations and releases, self-releases, documentaries, and they also
release in a wide variety of formats including vinyl and cassette tapes. According to an
interview with Torturing Nurse’s head Junky, whose real name is Cao Jian Jun, their
work, including live performances and recordings, is “100% improvisational.”
71
This is
significant because improvisation creates room for indeterminacy, which also renders
each performance or work unique. Another aspect of Torturing Nurse’s work, and other
noise artists’ works, is the aggression and violence that the noise and performances
convey. Junky states that for him “noise isn’t art, but a vehicle through which I can
freely express my emotions.”
72
Noise, in this case, is the process of transmitting and
expressing emotions. It does not directly seek to transform or change anything.
Fig 4. Torturing Nurse at Shanghai’s Live Bar
(source: http://www.arts-electric.org/stories/080818_rolnick.html)
44
71
Junky, email to author, April 29, 2012.
72
Ibid.
However, the importance of self-expression and self-liberation cannot be overlooked.
Deaf Sparrow, an underground and independent music website interviewed Junky
in 2011. In this interview, Junky states “Torturing Nurse is about playing noise for
noise, we like to do it because we feel it makes our lives meaningful.” When the
inevitable question of politics comes up, he responds,
The Chinese government hasn’t taken any notice at all and I don’t think they
really care. We have a lot of shows with our Shanghai noise collective and post
everywhere about them, but they never do anything about it. I don’t think we’ll
ever have any problems, it’s just music and performance.
73
Junky’s response suggests, individual liberation is a far more relevant matter -
confronting the self rather than the State. As aforementioned in the quote by Attali, the
“conquest of the right to make noise” gives one’s self agency in the manner of writing
their own “code.” Furthermore Attali argues that creating and making noise is
revolutionary because it disrupts the everyday system. Structured music reflects the
“harmony of the world,” reminding people that “there is order in exchange and
legitimacy in commercial power.” He also says that it serves to “make people forget the
general violence [of the world]” and “serves to silence.”
74
Therefore, non-music (i.e.
non-structured sounds such as noise) can create a state of anarchy in which the power of
music, and the illusion of society, is dismantled within the moment. Works by noise
artists like Torturing Nurse in China also can reflect the violence of the rapidly
45
73
Junky, interview by Arkus, "Interview With Chinese Noise Terrorists Torturing Nurse," Deaf
Sparrow Zine, February 19, 2011, http://www.deafsparrow.com/torturing-nurse-
interview-2011.html.
74
Attali, Noise, 19.
changing pace of Chinese society.
Fig 5. Red Syndrome Act. 1 1966-1976 album
cover
(source: http://www.midnight-prod.com)
One compilation produced by Midnight Records, based in Jianxi Province, called
Red Syndrome Act. 1 1966-1976 remembers the Cultural Revolution through a series of
tracks by various noise and industrial artists. Torturing Nurse’s track “The Memory of
Tear” is a cacophonous explosion of noise and static that envelops mutilated Cultural
Revolution-style music. It is an interesting piece of work because the discordant sounds
combined with the subtle track of Cultural Revolution music brings the memory of the
Cultural Revolution to the present. The noise reflects the chaos of the period and also
implies the violence of the past and present. Additionally, the track title can be
suggestive of several things: 1) memory of something traumatic and sorrowful, or 2)
memory of a tear or rip, such as families or the country being torn apart. The
experimental use of past “official” music in conjunction with a monotonous stream of
noise and static creates an abstract critique of the past and present by insinuating that
the Cultural Revolution is something that should be remembered.
46
CONCLUSION
I have discussed the relationship between politics and contemporary Chinese
music, while also complicating this relationship by challenging Eurocentric perspectives
of Chinese Communist rule. Traditionally, music is a reflection of harmony and order,
but with the developments of new genres and technologies of music, that harmony and
order is dismantled. Additionally, contemporary Chinese music is subject to CCP
censorship policies, but as I have shown the regulations are not fixed and difficult to
enforce. Rather artists are able to circumvent these regulations by taking advantage of
the grey areas of state control. Specifically, reliance on a DIY model, self-publication,
and releases in limited quantities become essential to the production aspect of
underground music. Furthermore, symbolism and ambiguity of lyrics, music, and
artwork become highly significant in the messages of these works.
Together these contexts provide a prism in which certain elements of political and
cultural resistance can be read in underground and alternative forms of contemporary
Chinese music. Finally, the relationship between music and politics is also a relationship
between noise and silence. China’s socio-political climate necessitates a constant
negotiation between the two.
47
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51

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This paper seeks to explore the development of alternative forms of music in China, their political connections, and the ways in which music is perceived (especially from a Western perspective). Since much of Chinese alternative music developed based on ""rebellious"" Western music genres, such as rock and punk, the general Western perception of alternative Chinese music is that it is also inherently resistant to Chinese political hegemonies. I argue though, that resistance comes in many forms, and not just through overt expression by way of lyrics or behavior as is the usual case with Western music. Through ""silence,"" Chinese musicians manipulate the grey areas of the system vis-à-vis creative and musical expression. In the case of non-mainstream ""underground"" Chinese music, musicians complicate the relationship between music and politics through the utilization of symbolism and ambiguity, appropriation of DIY ethics, and experimental aesthetics. Together they form distinct communities and music scenes that provide alternative spaces to more dominant cultural trends in modern day China.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Lee, Carolyn (author)

Core Title Noise & silence: underground music and resistance in the People's Republic of China

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program East Asian Area Studies

Publication Date 09/26/2012

Defense Date 09/01/2012

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag China,Music,OAI-PMH Harvest,People's Republic of China,resistance

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Cheng, Meiling (committee chair), Bernards, Brian (committee member), Demers, Joanna T. (committee member)

Creator Email leecarol@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-99352

Unique identifier UC11288996

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Legacy Identifier etd-LeeCarolyn-1210.pdf

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Rights Lee, Carolyn

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Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

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