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"East is red": a musical rarometer for cultural revolution politics and culture
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"East is red": a musical rarometer for cultural revolution politics and culture
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Content
“EAST IS RED”: A MUSICAL BAROMETER
FOR CULTURAL REVOLUTION POLITICS AND CULTURE
by
Natasha N. Huang
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES)
December 2008
Copyright 2008 Natasha N. Huang
ii
Dedication
This M.A. Thesis is dedicated to my parents:
To Mom, from whom I inherited my love for music and an interest in the
humanities
And to Dad, who encouraged me to pursue this degree and offered to pay my
tuition.
Thank you for putting up with me during those frustrating days of writer’s block
and for encouraging me to persevere.
I love you both!
iii
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to my wonderful thesis committee: To Professor Birge, for all
that you taught me about writing and thinking, for the wonderful books you
introduced me to during two semesters of challenging and interesting classes, and
for your valuable suggestions for this thesis. To Professor Cheung, for chairing my
committee so willingly, for working so graciously with me to get all the revisions
done—thank you for all those weekends that you spent reading my drafts—and for
helping me to appreciate Chinese literature and poetry. And to Professor
Goldstein, for all your helpful suggestions and comments along the way, for
piquing my interest in modern Chinese history during my last year as an undergrad,
and for writing the letter of recommendation that got me into this M.A. program. I
have learned so much from each of you.
I would also like to thank the individuals who allowed me to interview
them: Mr. Huang, Mr. Zhang, Mrs. Zhong, and Mrs. Chen. Thank you so much for
sharing your experiences with me. Hearing your stories made the subject of my
thesis come alive.
iv
Table of Contents
Dedication…………………………………………………………………ii
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………iii
Abstract…………………………………………………………………....v
Chapter 1: Looking at the Music of the Communist Revolution…………1
Chapter 2: The Development of Revolutionary Music……………………6
Chapter 3: China’s National Anthems…………………………………...24
Chapter 4: Voices from the Cultural Revolution…………………..…….54
References………………………………………………………………..76
v
Abstract
This thesis uses “East is Red” as a window through which to look at
Cultural Revolution politics and culture. By exploring the relationship between
politics and music, and by taking into account the history of revolutionary music in
China, it demonstrates how “East is Red” is both a textual and musical example of
how the Cultural Revolution was both a result of and a departure from the
Communist Revolution leading up to it. This approach stems from the author’s
background in music and her interest in how ideology is expressed and taught
through art and culture, as well as her curiosity towards the replacement of China’s
original national anthem with “East is Red” during the Cultural Revolution.
1
Chapter 1: Looking at the Music of the Communist Revolution
Introduction
The Chinese Cultural Revolution is often remembered as a decade of
violence, chaos, and unbridled human emotion that affected all levels of society and
deeply scarred the Chinese people. Unleashed by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966
in order to remove his rivals in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it has been
called “the biggest non-wartime, concentrated social upheaval in world history.”
1
By mobilizing young students to his cause, Mao sought to restore his reputation,
which had declined due to the failures of his economic and political policies during
the late 1950s. Consequently, Chinese traditions and societal practices were
destroyed, and political ideology dictated every aspect of life, to the point of
becoming a sort of religion that prevailed over a supposedly atheist society. Mao’s
charismatic leadership over the Communist party and over China reached a peak,
and he became the center of a political religion that dominated society and its
values.
Religions since ancient days have had some sort of ritualistic music as a
component, and the highly religious nature of Cultural Revolution devotion to Mao
certainly was no exception. Songs such as “Sailing the Seas Depends on the
Helmsman”, “A Long, Long Life to Chairman Mao”, “Long Live Chairman Mao!”
and “Battle Song of the Red Guards” are just a few examples of the musical
1
Clark, Paul. The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2008), p. 1.
2
homage that was paid to him. Many of his sayings were set to music and given
titles such as “The Force at the Core Leading Our Cause Forward”, “To Win
Victory”, and “Our Hope is Placed on You.”
2
Music was an important and prolific
vehicle for establishing expression of Mao Zedong Thought.
Perhaps the most famous and long-lived song of praise to Mao is “East is
Red.” From its existence as a simple folk love song, to an anti-Japanese war
melody, and finally to the de facto national anthem of the Cultural Revolution, it
came to stand for many of the ideals and values of both the government and the
people during China’s development as a Communist nation. Meetings were opened
and closed with “East is Red,” and all Chinese knew how to sing it. It was also the
inspiration for a 1960s song-and-dance epic that blended drama, music, and history
into a spectacular performance promoting Communism (and especially Maoism).
“East is Red” even played a major role on April 24, 1970, when China launched its
first satellite. The name of the satellite, as well as the music it broadcast, was
“Dong Fang Hong”—“East is Red.” This important occasion marked the nation’s
entry into the “space age” and made it the fifth country to achieve independent
launch capability.
During the Cultural Revolution, “East is Red” became a replacement for
“The March of the Volunteers,” the national anthem that had been established
2
Revolutionary Songs of China: Supplement to China Reconstructs, 1968, p. 3.
3
along with the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
3
The political reason for this
replacement was the imprisonment of Tian Han, who had penned the lyrics of
“March of the Volunteers.” In 1978, after the Cultural Revolution, the National
People’s Congress restored “The March of the Volunteers” as the national anthem.
At first, committee-written words replaced Tian Han’s original lyrics; then in 1983,
the original lyrics were restored. In 2004, a provision was added to the Constitution
of the People’s Republic of China stating that “March of the Volunteers” is the
national anthem.
The change in national anthems during the Cultural Revolution was a result
of the politics of the time. It would not do to have as national anthem a song whose
lyricist had been labeled counterrevolutionary. Furthermore, I would propose that
“East is Red” and “March of the Volunteers” were indicative of certain political
and ideological currents that were prevalent during the respective time periods
during which they served as national anthem. In particular, “East is Red” is both a
textual and a musical example of how the Cultural Revolution was both a result of
and a departure from the Communist Revolution that had begun from the 1930s.
The Premise of My Approach
The premise of my approach is that culture is a product of history and that it
is a valuable lens through which to examine history. Paul Clark, in The Chinese
Cultural Revolution: A History,
4
addresses what was “cultural” about the Cultural
3
Kraus, Richard Kurt. Pianos and Politics in China: Middle-Class Ambitions and the Struggle over
Western Music. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 119
4
Ibid, p. 2
4
Revolution by bringing together “a wide range of cultural practices, from opera and
dance to writing, reading, fine arts, and even architecture” to show “the
interconnectedness of cultural production and consumption in these years.”
5
He
stresses the importance of looking beyond factional politics to understanding the
“cultural dimension of the Cultural Revolution.”
6
Running throughout my paper is
also the assumption that studying culture—and specifically music—is key to
understanding the way in which the Cultural Revolution affected society.
Researchers of human societies have found that “music is an essential and
necessary function of man. It influences his behavior and condition and has done
so for thousands of years.”
7
In other words, music is not a mere cultural appendage
to human society—it is a fundamental aspect of a functional human condition. E.
Thayer Gaston, in an essay entitled “Man and Music”, states that “Music came into
being because of man’s interdependence, his need for expression and
communication.”
8
According to this paradigm, then, human beings find in music
an appropriate outlet for their innate need for expression and communication. It
would follow, then, that studying the music of a decade whose very title refers to a
revolution in culture—and therefore music—will give a unique perspective that
points to specific aspects of a culture that are worth studying.
5
Ibid
6
Ibid
7
Gaston, E. Thayer. “Man and Music”, from Music in Therapy. (New York: Macmillan Publishing
Co., 1968), p. 15
8
Ibid
5
Equally important to the examination of Cultural Revolution music is the
history of music leading up to the Cultural Revolution and its relationship to the
state. In a sense, the Cultural Revolution was a culmination of the development of
the CCP and its effects upon Chinese society rather than an aberration from the
norm. The mobilization of millions of students reflected the manner in which the
Communist leadership was able to wield influence over the masses. Therefore,
understanding the manner in which the CCP first attracted its followers is essential
to an understanding of the political atmosphere of the Cultural Revolution. Chapter
2 gives a brief history of the development of revolutionary music in the context of
China’s growing nationalism that came about as a result of contact with the West
and with war. In Chapter 3, I look at “The March of the Volunteers” and “East is
Red”, analyzing both music and lyrics. And in Chapter 4, I use the stories of
Chinese individuals who were affected by the Cultural Revolution to tie together
music-related issues of agency, religion, and psychological impact.
This paper is about the anthem that in many respects represents the Cultural
Revolution. As such, it explores the relationship between politics and music how
each one affects the other. My approach stems from and is a blend of my
background as a musician and my interest in the shaping of culture through
ideology. It is my opinion that inasmuch as the “East is Red”, the music has
spoken and is an effective tool through which politics can shape people’s minds
and express the ideals of a nation.
6
Chapter 2: The Development of Revolutionary Music
“East is Red” and “The March of the Volunteers” were both products of the
political and cultural developments of the decades leading up to the Cultural
Revolution. They came from a history of using music in not only the Communist
Revolution, but also Chinese nation-building of the twentieth century. Before I go
into an analysis of the two songs, I will first lay out the foundation for my analysis
by sketching out the development of revolutionary music in China.
Ever since China’s humiliating dealings with foreign powers in the late
1800s, there had been a growing need to make the nation stronger and more
modern. Men like Liang Qichao and Lu Xun cast a vision for a more progressive
society through literature, and other aspects of culture were soon addressed and
harnessed for the effort of nation-building. The first large-scale didactic use of
group singing came about in the modern Chinese school system that was
established after the 1911 revolution. Under the direction of Cai Yuanpei, the first
Minister of Education of the Chinese Republic, “classroom music was formally
incorporated into the Chinese school curriculum.”
9
Songs were “intended to
promote social and political change, [and] their texts naturally reflect the general
national concerns of the time, such as patriotism, self-discipline, self-reliance,
morality, [and] social reform.” Before long they were sung in civic gatherings in
9
Wong, Isabel K.F. “Geming Gequ: Songs for the Education of the Masses”. Popular Chinese
Literature and Performing Arts in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979. Ed. Bonnie S.
McDougall. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 115
7
addition to in the classroom and “had become a genuine form of Chinese music
suitable for the expression of modern China’s national aspirations.”
10
By the time of the May Fourth movement in 1919, songs were also being
used as vehicles of protest against political issues and events. After the signing of
the Treaty of Versailles, which gave Shandong province to Japan, songs that
attacked the decision or called for a boycott on Japanese goods circulated orally
and in some newspapers.
11
By 1921, due to growing disillusionment with national
and international events, intellectuals had begun to turn to Marxism-Leninism as a
solution to China’s problems and established an adult school in such thought for
railroad workers. These activists “had learned from Lenin’s writings that the arts
could serve a political function in a socialist state and from their own participation
in demonstrations that songs could effectively unite a body of people,” so they
“made a practice of teaching the workers some of the protest songs and also created
new political songs for them to sing.” It was from these early efforts, then, that
“the modern Chinese song for the masses was born.”
12
During this time, another development in the use of songs was also
underway. Launched in 1918 at National Beijing University by a group of gifted
scholars, the National Folk Literature movement encompassed a growing interest in
folk songs. In Going to the People: Chinese Intellectuals and Folk Literature
10
Ibid, p. 116
11
Ibid, p. 118
12
Ibid
8
1918-1937, Chang-tai Hung states that the initiation of this movement “constituted
one of the most monumental events in modern Chinese intellectual history”
because it “changed the basic attitudes of Chinese intellectuals not only towards
literature, but, more important, towards the common people.”
13
This brought about
a significant turn in thinking, for folk literature had been long regarded by Chinese
literati as inelegant, although Chinese folklorists such as Gu Jiegang and Zhou
Zuoren discovered that some traditional scholars—for example Li Taoyuan of the
Qing Dynasty and Feng Menglong of the Ming Dynasty—had done some work on
the subject even during times when folk literature was considered insignificant.
14
Beginning in the May Fourth era, the status of the common people was
“elevated…to a level unprecedented in Chinese history.”
15
This was tied to a surge
of growing nationalism as China suffered political chaos on both national and
international fronts.
Along with attacks on traditional Confucian culture came a call for a new
national language, known as the baihua (vernacular-language) movement.
16
The
biggest proponent of the baihua movement was Hu Shi, whose interest in folk
literature came from the Confucian Book of Odes.
17
His suggestions for the use of
13
Hung, Chang-tai. Going to the People: Chinese Intellectuals and Folk Literature, 1918- 1937.
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. xi
14
Ibid, p. 22
15
Ibid, p. xii
16
Ibid, p. 17
17
Ibid, p. 60
9
language included: saying “something of substance… if you must say something”;
not patterning one’s style “on antique models”; writing clearly; not pretending to
“emotions you don’t genuinely feel”; ridding ones’ style of “archaisms”; avoiding
classical allusions; not relying on literary devices and clichés; and not avoiding
classical allusions.
18
Within the folk literature movement, the study of folksong occupied a
special place, for “it was the Folksong Research Society that first sparked an
unprecedented interest in the literature of the common people.”
19
Folksong was the
most popular genre of folk literature, and in the words of one student, “’Folk
literature is the source of all literature, but folksong is the backbone of folk
literature.”
20
Hu Shi regarded folksong as “a new-found literary medium,”
21
and
he wrote, “’I believe that the greatest aim of collecting and preserving folksongs is
to enlarge the field of Chinese literature and to add additional models to it.”
22
The
characteristics that defined folksong were its simplicity, genuineness, and
colloquialism, and these matched up nicely with Hu Shi’s principles for literary
reform.
18
Grieder, Jerome B. Intellectuals and the State in Modern China: A Narrative History. (London:
Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1981), p. 230
19
Hung, Chang-tai. Going to the People, p. 58
20
Ibid, p. 58
21
Ibid, p. 59
22
Ibid
10
The folksong-collecting movement began as a literary rather than a political
movement,
23
but it laid the foundation for the subsequent trend of politicizing
folksongs by the Chinese Communist Party. In response to the growing attention to
folksongs and the perceived need for original and contemporary Chinese music in
light of impending conflict with Japan, the National Salvation Song Movement was
launched in Shanghai in the 1930s. Under the encouragement of foreign musicians
like Aaron Avshalomov and Alexander Tcherepnin, young Chinese composers
began an indigenous movement devoted to developing and promoting China’s own
modern music in order “to awaken the masses to action.”
24
Using Western tonality
and generally written in major keys, much of this music was “unaccompanied song
intended to be sung in the streets by thousands of people” to “motivate resistance to
Japan or sympathy with the plight of common Chinese people.”
25
The most
representative member of this movement was Nie Er, the composer of “The March
of the Volunteers.”
26
With the onset of the Sino-Japanese War, the popularization of political
culture in the cities gathered force. Because of the war, there was an unprecedented
need for art and literature to be systematically used for a single cause–and to be
aimed at the entire population. Before the war, modern drama, which was
23
Ibid, p. 79
24
Melvin, Sheila, and Jindong Cai. Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became
Chinese. (New York: Algora Publishing, 2004), p. 126
25
Ibid
26
Ibid
11
influenced by the West, had been confined to urban centers and the educated
minority. There had been a heavy reliance on translations of foreign plays, and old-
style (Chinese) opera was still popular. Because of the need to mobilize the masses
during the war, spoken drama was, for the first time, used to convey patriotic
messages to all levels of society, including the illiterate. During this time, urban
drama developed into a variety of forms, including teahouse plays, parade plays
(during festivals), puppet plays, commemoration plays (in memory of significant
people or events), newspaper plays (which highlighted important news items of the
day), and street plays (which encouraged audience response).
27
These all served
the purpose of reaching a broad audience in order to inform them of the progress of
the war and boost national morale.
The use of drama to build patriotic spirit soon spread to the countryside, by
way of traveling troupes that brought performances to various villages.
28
It was
especially important to present information there in a simple, straightforward
manner, for illiteracy and the scarcity of newspapers often prevented peasants from
receiving information about the war.
29
One of the primary tools used by the CCP
to establish power and influence over the masses during the war was the
27
Hung, Chang-tai. War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937-1945.
(Berkeley:University of California Press, 1994), p. 76
28
Ibid, p. 92
29
Ibid, p. 174
12
popularization of peasant culture
30
--the CCP communicated with peasants through
storytelling, music, and drama in forms that were familiar to them. By establishing
connections with an illiterate population in ways understandable to them, the CCP
gained their trust and could assert dominance over them. During its time in
Yan’an, the CCP poured “new wine into old bottles”
31
by taking folk forms of
entertainment and rejuvenating them with Communist ideology. It created a new
peasant culture through the village drama movement in which peasant life and
character were idealized. The song form used in these village plays was yangge,
traditionally sung by laborers in the rice fields. The words were changed, but the
melodies remained the same. The use of familiar folk songs and the projection of
peasants onto a performing stage allowed the Communists to infuse their political
agenda into the countryside in a friendly and non-threatening manner. Thus,
according to Hung, wartime activity was not simply a military confrontation
between China and Japan but a movement from which a new political culture
emerged, one that set the stage for the Communist era to come.
This popularization of entertainment on such a massive scale paved the
way for the effective spread of Communist ideology in the countryside, and it was
in China’s rural northwest that the CCP laid the foundations for its rule during
wartime, both during the Anti-Japanese War, from1937 to 1945, and China’s War
of Liberation against the Nationalists, from 1945 to 1949. During this crucial time,
30
Ibid
31
Ibid, p. 204
13
the Central Committee of the CCP was based in Yan’an, in China’s Shaanxi
Province. Many artists and writers came to Yan’an from the cities and were given
Communist ideology and inspiration in how to use their talents for the
revolutionary cause.
In his “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art”, presented as two
lectures to party cadres in May 1942, Mao Zedong (leader of the Party), stated, “in
our struggle for the liberation of the Chinese people there are various fronts, among
which there are the fronts of the pen and of the gun, the cultural and military
fronts.”
32
Early on in his lectures, Mao established a parallel between a nation’s
culture and its military spirit and highlighted these two factors as important
battlefronts. Because the CCP was consolidating and expanding its power in order
to fight the Japanese and the Nationalists, it was crucial that it spell out its
ideology. Mao’s purpose in giving his talks was “precisely to ensure that literature
and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part, that they
operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking
and destroying the enemy.”
33
Mao targeted literature and art as important
components of national identity and sought to harness them into his wartime
military mission. It was thus that, during this concentrated span of time in Yan’an,
the CCP built up a revolutionary national identity by using wartime rhetoric and
32
Mao, Zedong. “Talks at the Yan’an forum on Literature and Art.” Modern Chinese
Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893-1945. Ed. Kirk Denton. (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1996), p.459
33
Ibid
14
rallying the people to a military cause through nationalistic and revolutionary art
and literature.
Sovereignty and Authenticity
Prasenjit Duara explores the importance of the ideas of sovereignty and
authenticity in helping a government to gain control over society in his book
Sovereignty and Authenticity.
34
His analysis focuses on the way the Japanese used
concepts of nationalism, historical origins, culture, and land to justify their
occupation and establish their sovereignty over Manchuria from 1932 to 1945. The
circumstances surrounding the Japanese occupation of Manchuria differ from the
Communist era in Yan’an, but Duara’s framework can be applied to the general
means by which the latter gained control in China’s countryside.
According to Duara, one of the first priorities of the Japanese was to
establish a legitimate claim to sovereignty over Manchuria. In the rhetoric they
used, “imperialism came to be justified by nationalism and the power of the nation-
state came to be authorized by the symbolic regime of nationalism.”
35
The Japanese
sought to develop the region they occupied, for building up a nation for its own
sake and not as a colony could justify their occupation. Once they established a
regime that touted nationalism, the Japanese government could push forward with
its power and agenda.
34
Duara, Prasenjit. Sovereignty and Authenticity. (Lanham: Rowman & Littleman Publishing
Group, Inc. 2003)
35
Ibid, p. 19
15
One of the ways of making possible this “imperialist nationalism” was by
establishing what Duara calls a “symbolic regime of authenticity.”
36
The Japanese
reached back into history and highlighted an original language and culture shared
by China and Japan, using that as a means to portray Manchuria as a meeting
ground of two nations with the same beginnings. They could mask the differences
between the two nations and thus attempt to bridge any gaps between occupier and
occupied. Not only was Manchuria a place of shared interests and common history,
it could represent a modern Asian nation. According to the Japanese, then, it was
in the hands of an authentic and nationalistic regime.
This assertion of authenticity and nationalism required finding important
components of society through which to spread political influence, and the
Japanese targeted women and religious organizations of Manchuria. They made
efforts to co-opt popular Chinese redemptive societies into political projects, and
because of women’s traditional roles in influencing households and the domestic
life of a nation, the Japanese appealed to them to gain influence over Manchuria.
The fact that the Japanese would take into account the place of redemptive societies
and women in this nation-state shows how important culture was in the quest for
identity, authenticity, and custodianship. It also shows their strategy of infusing
their agenda into already-existing societal structures.
Finally, the Japanese gave anthropological importance to a relatively small
hunting tribe in Manchuria, and, by cultivating a distinct identity of Manchuria in
36
Ibid, p. 33
16
respect to its land and people, the Japanese granted themselves a “charge to protect
and preserve” this region. As a result, Manchuria’s “status” evolved from a
peripheral borderland that was insignificant and looked down upon to “a deeply
sentimentalized space of authenticity.”
37
The Japanese brought this previously
neglected land into an important place in Chinese identity and history, giving it a
significance that evoked nostalgia in the Chinese people. Thus, by first asserting
sovereignty by manipulating historical and cultural elements of Manchuria to their
favor, the Japanese created an identity for Manchuria and justified their nation-
building occupation of the region.
Many of Duara’s observations of the Japanese treatment of Manchukuo
would appear to hold true for the Chinese Communist Party’s mobilization of the
masses. Both the Japanese and the CCP stressed nationalism in a military context:
while the Japanese were interested in making imperialism seem nationalistic, the
CCP’s concept of nationalism was very militaristic. The tactics used by the CCP in
Yan’an allowed them to validate their ideas and power among the peasants, just as
the Japanese asserted their sovereignty by searching for claims to authenticity in
Manchuria. And just as the Japanese used religion and women, two important
elements of society, in their “top-down reconstruction of tradition,”
38
the
Communists imposed their moral, cultural, and political values upon the masses by
first meeting them at their level and popularizing ideas from the bottom up. The
37
Ibid, p. 6
38
Ibid, p. 121
17
pouring of new wine into old bottles was not simply a convenient way of spreading
ideas—the Communists depended upon it in their successful takeover of the nation.
It was through the use of folk culture that Mao and his associates “validated their
ideas from below (or at least gave the appearance of doing so) to open up a
legitimized field of action for themselves in the CCP so that the party eventually
came to serve as the collateral agent of the peasantry in the absence of a genuine
revolutionary proletariat.”
39
In other words, Mao and the other Party leaders were
successful in convincing the peasants and masses that they had their best interests
in mind by including them as important figures in the national revolution. Once
they had won them over, they were able to accomplish their goals with their
participation and cooperation.
Yan’an became the moral center of the revolution from its origins as a
remote military base, just as Manchuria moved from its peripheral place in Chinese
consciousness to a sort of “heartland.” The effective means through which the CCP
built a national identity and agenda through popular entertainment in Yan’an
eventually gave it a significant and sentimentalized place in Communist
revolutionary history. Mao created a “master narrative” of the revolution through
the reenactment and unification of historical memories and individual experiences
by creating a “collective mythology” and a “collective individualism.”
40
Yan’an
39
Apter, David E., and Tony Saich. Revolutionary Discourse in Mao’s Republic.
(Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1994), p. xv
40
Apter and Saich, Revolutionary Discourse in Mao’s Republic, p. 71
18
was where these memories and experiences were created, and its importance to the
Communist success story was attributed to the fact that the lives of many
individuals were joined together during the war period. It can be said that, by
maintaining this “master narrative,” Mao was able, despite serious “failures” in his
economic programs, to maintain power over the Chinese people because of the
respect and sentiment he had already built up from the Yan’an days.
From Sovereignty and Authenticity to Religious Domination
By the time of the Cultural Revolution, Mao had reached a position of
prestige in culture that was reflected in all aspects of daily life, and he became the
center of a political religion that dominated society and values. Zuo Jiping
describes this in his article, which is based primarily on his personal experiences
and observations during the Cultural Revolution.
41
The Communist Party attacked
traditional religion and sought to purge the “Four Olds”–old ideas, old values, old
customs, and old traditions; at the same time, it “initiated and encouraged a new
religion centered around Mao.”
42
It was as if what was done away with could be
replaced by a new religion that would satisfy the needs that the old morals and
practices met. Any regrets of discarding the old would be surpassed by what Mao
brought to society.
41
Zuo, Jiping. “Political Religion: The Case of the Cultural Revolution in China.”
SociologicalAnalysis 52.1 (Spring 1991):99-110.
42
Ibid, p. 101
19
As leader of the Communist Party and initiator of the Revolution, Mao was
the focus of societal attention and obedience. According to Zuo,
Mao was, all of a sudden, seen as a god and widely worshiped by the people
with banners, slogans, and songs proclaiming his praises. He was called
“the Red Sun”, “the Great Teacher,” “the Great Leader,” “the Great
Commander,” “the Great Steersman”, and “the Messiah of Working
People.
43
Everyone had a copy of his “Little Red Book” and at least one portrait of his.
Family members would stand in front of his picture in the morning before breakfast
to ask for instructions for the day, and in the evening, stand there again and make
“a quiet confession of the ‘sins’ they had committed during the day.”
44
This
similarity to Catholic religious practices suggests that Mao’s presence penetrated
even domestic routines and individual lives. He was not only a public figure, but
also very much a kind of personal savior.
Mao’s importance even became a means by which society organized itself.
Formal meetings opened and closed with two songs in praise of Mao–“The East is
Red” and “Sailing in the Sea Relies on the Steersman”—and these two songs “were
considered as sacred as the Chinese national anthem.”
45
The songs sung to Mao
hearken to hymns of Western religious traditions. While Protestant and Catholic
religious services began and ended with worshipful singing to God, meetings
during the Cultural Revolution paid homage to Mao. Additionally, “the masses
43
Ibid
44
Ibid
45
Ibid, p. 102
20
were...expected to learn and practice a special dance of loyalty to Mao. Thus he
was worshiped continually through verbal expression, singing and dancing.”
46
The
tradition of singing and dancing that began as a communicator of Communist
ideology in Yan’an was now translated into adoration for Mao. The concept of an
all-deserving and all-powerful God to be worshipped constantly—“do all for the
glory of God”
47
— was paralleled by the Chinese in their adoration of their national
god and the father of the Revolution.
Visual culture during the Cultural Revolution also contributed to this
“deification” of Mao and to what has been termed “the cult of Mao.” “Chairman
Mao Goes to Anyuan” (1967) is said to have had nine hundred million copies
printed,
48
and it portrays a young Mao Zedong marching across the mountaintops in
traditional Chinese scholarly attire with a rolled-up document in his hands. Mao’s
meetings with the Red Guards became a favorite subject for young artists.
49
Oil
paintings such as “We Must Carry the Great Cultural Revolution to the End”
(1969) depict Mao with thousands of enthusiastic and adoring Red Guards, and he
stands over them as a father-figure. Indeed, “by the end of the Cultural Revolution,
it had become conventional to speak of portraits and pictures of [him] in religious
46
Ibid
47
1 Corinthians 10:31 (The Holy Bible)
48
Andrews, Julia F. Painters and Politics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 339
49
Ibid, p.320
21
terms, as though they actually embodied a god.”
50
The abundance of Mao imagery
can be compared to the religious artistic devotion to the Virgin Mary in Catholic
traditions, suggesting that the political religion of the CCP during the Cultural
Revolution was centered on Mao as a father-figure and a god.
And because this god was flesh-and-bones, in human form, the hysteria and
excitement he induced was extreme. According to Liang Heng, who grew up
during the Cultural Revolution, “if there was any single thing that meant ecstasy to
everyone in those days, it was seeing Chairman Mao…I would have laid down my
life for the chance.”
51
Mao Zedong was not simply a religious figure that was
worshipped as part of individual, familial, and societal ritual. Nor was he merely
the object of adoration and praise through singing, dancing, and visual art. He was
a larger-than-life Person that drew fanatical longing. And because Mao as a divine
national leader drew so much attention and respect, the religion he established was
highly political and had far-reaching consequences. On the sixteenth anniversary
of the founding of the People’s Republic, there was a grand celebration of 50,000
people in Tiananmen Square, with music, fireworks, singing, and dancing. Jung
Chang, who was a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution, writes about her
emotions during the event.
52
She was both inspired and touched, and she kept
saying to herself, “’How lucky, how incredibly lucky I am to be living in the great
50
Ibid, p. 342
51
Liang, Heng, and Judith Shapiro. Son of the Revolution. (New York: Random House,
1983), p. 121.
52
Chang, Jung. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. (New York: Touchstone, 1991).
22
era of Mao Zedong!…How can children in the capitalist world go on living without
being near Chairman Mao, and without the hope of ever seeing him in person?’”
53
She wanted to rescue the capitalist children from their plight, pledged to work hard
to build a stronger China, and determined that the purpose of her life was to see
Chairman Mao. Mao brought hope to the Chinese youth, and she now wanted to
spread this hope to other nations. Like a religious convert who wants to share
newfound faith to her friends, Chang’s personal emotions led to desire for political
action, and it was precisely this need for action that upturned society during the
Cultural Revolution.
Just as in wartime, “songs served as media of propaganda and ideological
indoctrination; they were vehicles for the values and ideals of the first generation to
grow up in the PRC.”
54
Based on interviews with former Red Guards, Vivian
Wagner has written that “singing was the most important method of
propaganda…In isolated areas songs made up for newspapers and
radiostations…[they] were indispensable media of political information.”
55
Music
served as a carrier of information, one that could catch the attention of all levels of
society and be easily transmitted. Moreover, “singing could foster the collective
spirit and help channel accumulated emotions…depending on the circumstances,
53
Ibid, p. 272
54
Wagner, Vivian. “Songs of the Red Guards: Keywords Set to Music.”
http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eeasc/resources/working_paper/noframe_10b_song.htm
55
Ibid
23
[it] was either a more or less spontaneous form of expression or part of daily
enacted rituals.”
56
As a participatory exercise rather than a receptive activity,
singing was presumably much more effective (and pleasant) than loud and militant
speeches would have been. It made ideas accessible to literate and illiterate,
children and adults. And given the political circumstances, revolutionary songs
very well may have been the ultimate love songs for a generation of zealous youth
that, taught to overthrow tradition and parental authority, needed an object of
affection and reverence.
From a wartime mentality of nationalism that required the full cooperation
of literature and art, to the popularization of folk entertainment that communicated
with and gained support from the masses, to transforming cultural values by
political leadership, to the deification of Mao, the CCP established its power in
China and created a political religion that tolerated no dissent. Music ushered in
the Communist era, and music expressed Mao’s divine hold over the nation. The
extent to which “East is Red” permeated society certainly opens up a window
through which to understand music as a vital force that propelled the political and
religious fervor of the Cultural Revolution.
56
Ibid
24
Chapter 3: China’s National Anthems
Introduction
In Chapter 2, I laid out a sketch of the background against which “East is
Red” came into being. In this chapter, I provide a brief history of “The March of
the Volunteers” and “East is Red” and give a lyrical and musical analysis of each.
My musical analysis focuses mainly on the melody and not so much the rhythm of
the phrases. I am interested in how the melody and the words support each other
and work together to bring out the message of each of the songs.
Tools to Understanding the Music
This section is purely technical, an introduction to the language of music
that will clarify the musical analysis I undertake in this chapter. Below are some
important terms that I will use. All definitions in quotations are taken from The
Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music.
57
Other explanations are my own.
Bar: “The vertical line marked on a stave to denote the point of metrical
division.”
Motif: “The shortest intelligible and self-existent melodic or rhythmic
figure.”
Octave: “Interval of 8 notes, counting bottom and top notes. Notes an
octave apart have same letter names.”
Phrase: “Short section of a composition into which the music…seems
naturally to fall.” A phrase is like a musical sentence, and each phrase
57
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. 3
rd
Ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
25
expresses a complete thought. Just like many sentences make up a
paragraph, musical phrases make up a section.
Pickup: This is when the first note(s) of a new musical phrase begin on the
last few beats of the preceding measure rather than on the first beat of a new
measure.
Pitch: “The location of a sound in the tonal scale.”
Scale: “A series of single notes progressing up or down stepwise…a series
of notes within an octave used as the basis of composition.”
Staff: “The system of parallel lines on and between which the notes are
written, from which music is played.”
Tonic Chord: “First degree of the major or minor key. The ‘key-note’ from
which [a] key takes its name.”
“The March of the Volunteers”
“The March of the Volunteers” was the result of the cooperation between
two men in the 1930s. Tian Han, a leftist poet and playwright who had participated
in the May Fourth movement and was a founding member of the Creation Society
along with Guo Moruo, wrote the lyrics in 1934. The composer of “The March of
the Volunteers” was Nie Er, a violinist and composition student at the Shanghai
Conservatory who had studied with Russian musicians.
58
The two became friends
in 1932, and under the instigation of the latter and along with two other young
58
Wong, Isabel K. F. “Geming Gequ”, p. 122
26
musician friends, formed the Society of Friends of the Soviet Union in order to
study “contemporary Russian music and the Marxist esthetic principle of social
realism.”
59
This was Nie Er’s introduction to Russian propaganda films of the
1930s, and he was “particularly impressed by how the Russians used music to
enhance the film’s narrative and later endeavored to emulate the technique.”
60
Nie
Er joined the Communist Party in 1933 and began to compose patriotic and anti-
Japanese songs. The following year, he put nearly forty of Tian Han’s texts to
songs, and “As Nie’s tunes allowed the lyrics to be clearly enunciated, they were
particularly suitable for use in mass movements.”
61
“March of the Volunteers” was commissioned for a patriotic movie called
Children of the Storm. The movie was released in 1935 and was an instant
sensation. The song was released on gramophone record to help promote the
music, and it “became so wildly popular that the artist and musicologist Feng Zikai
reported he heard it being sung by crowds of people in rural villages from Zhejiang
to Hunan, just months after it was written.”
62
“The March of the Volunteers” even
became known outside of China within a few years.
This movement was significant because although Marxist organizers had
used songs in China before, most of those songs—the most famous of which was
59
Ibid p. 122-3
60
Ibid, p. 123
61
Ibid
62
Ibid, p. 129
27
“The Internationale”—had been “imported” from the Soviet Union. There are a
few different versions and translations of “The Internationale,” but its general
theme of the rousing of the people to action remains the same. This particular
version has the lyrics as:
Arise ye workers [starvelings] from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.
No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty [give up their booty]
And give to all a happier lot.
Each [those] at the forge must do their duty
28
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.
63
“The Internationale” is a global cry to fight against tyranny. The people
cannot put their hope in a “saviour from on high”—instead, they must rally
alongside their comrades. This call to action, “arise”, is translated as qilai, and it is
also the opening for “The March of the Volunteers.” The score (containing both
the Chinese numerical notation and the musical staff) and Chinese lyrics are as
follows:
64
63
Lyrics taken from http://www.uv.es/~pla/red.net/intaoter.html
64
Taken from http://www.myscore.org/jdgq/jdgq31.htm
29
30
31
This is translated as:
Arise, all you who refuse to be slaves!
With our flesh and blood, let us build our new Great Wall!
The Chinese nation faces its greatest peril.
The thundering roar of our peoples will be heard!
Arise! Arise! Arise!
We are many, but our hearts beat as one!
Selflessly braving the enemy’s gunfire, march on!
Selflessly braving the enemy’s gunfire, march on!
March on! March on! March on!
65
The call to action here is specific to the Chinese people. Like “The
Internationale,” it does not call for a strong leader to liberate the people. Instead,
“we are many, but our hearts beat as one”—it is unity that gives strength. Freedom
will be won through the sacrifice of the people’s “flesh and blood” and their
selfless “braving [of] the enemy’s gunfire.” This is revolution for the people and
by the people. So although it is much shorter than “The Internationale,” “The
March of the Volunteers” captures the same general spirit.
In addition to the thematic similarities, “The March of the Volunteers” and
“The Internationale” also share the same opening musical motif. Both songs begin
on the fifth pitch and then go up to the first pitch. This is a form of “word
painting”
66
in which the music reflects what the words are saying. The two notes
that go with qilai are going upwards, doing musically what the word means.
65
Melvin, Sheila and Jindong Cai. Rhapsody in Red, p. 128-9
66
Defined in http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/textw/Wordpainting.html as: “Musical
depiction of words in text. Using the device of word painting, the music tries to imitate the emotion,
action, or adjectival description in the text. This device was used often in madrigals and other works
of the Renaissance”.
32
After the opening motif, however, the melodies take on different directions.
“The Internationale” uses most of the pitches of a seven-note diatonic scale (and
even some raised pitches), incorporating both leaps between notes and ascending
and descending scales within the phrases. It can be divided into four sections, with
four phrases in each section. Sung in a stately manner with a steady beat, it has a
sophisticated-sounding melody that incorporates both a grand feel and strains of
beautiful lyricism in the middle section.
“The March of the Volunteers,” on the other hand, uses mainly step-wise
motion within each phrase, and when there are skips in the notes, they are mainly to
outline arpeggios. The notes used most often are the fifth, first, and third pitches,
which are the main notes of the tonic (first) chord of the piece. This is important,
for it signifies that the piece is not in pentatonic mode, the traditional scale pattern
for Chinese traditional and folk music. This makes sense, for it was written by a
violinist who was trained in Western classical music.
It is a bit challenging to divide “The March of the Volunteers” into phrases,
for they are not as clear-cut nor as evenly divided as either “East is Red” or “The
Internationale.” The first section consists of two phrases, which are respectively
three and five bars long. The first phrase establishes the theme of the song: “Arise,
all ye who refuse to be slaves!” The melody jumps up from the fifth pitch to the
first pitch. Then it goes back down to the fifth pitch and ascends back up to the
first pitch through a scale.
33
The second phrase “With our flesh and blood, let us build our new Great
Wall!” offers a further explanation of the call to action. Musically, it is also
complementary to the first phrase. It goes up to the fifth pitch, which is an octave
above the fifth pitch used in the first phrase.
Thus, the first section spans the musical distance of one octave, with the
first phrase going down to the fifth pitch and the second phrase going up to the fifth
pitch.
The second section also has two phrases, which are five and four bars long,
respectively. The first phrase states, “The Chinese nation faces its greatest peril.” It
uses the sixth, fifth, second, and third pitches to outline the words Zhong hua min
guo (Chinese nation), and since the sixth pitch has not been sung up this point, it
attracts the listener’s ear and draws emphasis to the words. This emphasizes the
34
specific call to the Chinese nation and the fact that this is not a global effort (like it
is in the “Internationale”).
The second phrase begins from the lower fifth pitch and goes up to fifth
pitch an octave above. This is the first phrase of the song in which the notes go all
the way from the lower fifth pitch to the upper fifth pitch. This matches nicely with
the words, which state, “The thundering roar of our peoples will be heard!” The
dramatic effect of the people’s thundering roar needs the musical “space” of an
octave to take place.
The third section is introduced with a bridge consisting of three phrases set
to the words, “Arise! Arise! Arise!” The music is doing exactly what the words
say—each two-note setting of the syllables qilai goes higher than the previous one.
In a sense, the pitches are tag-teaming each other, as in a relay race.
35
This sets up the third section, which can be divided into two phrases. The
first phrase is five bars long and goes with the words, “We are many, but our hearts
beat as one! Selflessly braving the enemy’s gunfire, march on!”
The second phrase is six bars long and goes with, “Selflessly braving the
enemy’s gunfire, march on! March on! March on! March on!” This entire section
repeatedly outlines the tonic chord.
36
March on! (qian jing) is set to the same musical motif that went with
“Arise” in the beginning and is repeated three times.
Isabel K. F. Wong gives special attention to “The March of the Volunteers”
in her article on revolutionary song, stating that “the short declamatory phrases of
the song and its marchlike rhythm fitted the rousing and defiant text perfectly.”
67
It
is also her opinion that “all the melodic, rhythmic, and textual factors…contribute
to produce a song style totally devoid of complexity.”
68
But according to Wong,
“this simplicity is, of course, intentional; it obeys Mao’s decree, in his Yan’an
‘Talks,’ that mass songs can relay their political messages best by staying simple,
plain, and easy to memorize.”
69
Although the tune may not be as sophisticated as
“The Internationale”, it is very pleasant-sounding and certainly achieves a specific
effect—that of mobilizing listeners to action. This is done not just from the very
opening, with the musical motif of qilai, but also at the end of the piece, in the third
section.
“The March of the Volunteers” was a result of the collaboration between
Nie Er and Tian Han. Tragically, their partnership came to an end shortly after the
penning of the lyrics for “The March of the Volunteers.” Tian Han was arrested,
and Nie Er died that year.
70
But the song they had created lived on and was chosen
67
Wong, “Geming Gequ,” p. 137
68
Ibid, p. 138
69
Ibid
70
Melvin, Sheila, and Jindong Cai, Rhapsody in Red, p. 129
37
as the official song of the Communist New Fourth Army in 1937, causing the
Nationalist government to severely censor it. Truly, as an anti-Japanese and
Nationalist-censored song created by two individuals who were devoted to the
Communist revolution, “The March of the Revolution” was an apt choice for the
national anthem when the People’s Republic was founded in 1949.
“East is Red” Takes Over
“The March of the Volunteers” was replaced by “East is Red” during the
Cultural Revolution, and this had everything to do with the changing political
climate. As Jiang Qing, Chairman Mao’s wife, took power on the cultural stage of
politics, efforts were made in “undermining established cultural leaders,” for, as
Clark puts it, “A revolution always needs new blood in its ranks and can best
succeed when the other side crumbles from within.”
71
During the Conference on
Army Literature and Art Work in February 1966, Jiang Qing and her allies “called
for…a re-organizing of the cultural ranks,”
72
and “more than a dozen films from the
previous ten years or so were cited as filmmakers’ shortcomings and lack of
commitment to the revolution.”
73
Among the playwrights that were criticized was Tian Han. His Guan
Hanqing, which in the 1950s and early 1960s “was hailed as one of the best
socialist dramas because of its vivid exposures of a dark, feudal China,” now came
71
Clark, The Chinese Cultural Revolution, p. 24
72
Ibid
73
Ibid, p. 115
38
under attack. He “was accused of drawing on historical figures and legends to
attack the party’s policies,” and “the exile of Guan Hanqing, it was asserted,
seemed to parallel too neatly the banishing of numerous PRC writers in the
1950s.”
74
Tian Han’s Xie Yaohuan was also criticized—a “prominent essay by
Yun Song” was titled, “’Tian Han’s Xie Yaohuan is a great poisonous weed”—and
his spoken plays and operas were banned. So intense were the assaults against him
that “whole pages of newspapers” were “filled with denunciations of his work and
his person.”
75
Tragically, “Tian Han, the foremost leftist writer before 1949 and a
widely acclaimed playwright and critic after 1949 was tortured to death in
prison.”
76
Given these political circumstances, then, it is easy to understand how
the “March of the Volunteers” that he had penned also fell from its position of
national musical prestige and needed to be replaced. With the denunciation of
important cultural figures such as Tian Han, the Cultural Revolution brought other
works into importance, and this includes, of course, “East is Red”, which,
according to Kraus, was “the musical fanfare which opened the Cultural
Revolution.”
77
“East is Red” came from a folk love song that was popular among farmers
in Shanxi, near Yan’an. The words are simple, evoking daily life in the country as
74
Chen, Xiaomei. Acting the Right Part: Political Theater and Popular Drama in Contemporary
China. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), p. 208
75
Clark, The Chinese Cultural Revolution, p. 193
76
Chen, Acting the Right Part, p. 208
77
Kraus, Pianos and Politics, p. 119
39
well as a lover’s emotion. One can imagine it being sung as farmers worked in the
fields, and the nonsense syllables (“hu-er-hai-yo”) also underscore its folk origins.
Said to have been written by a poor peasant, its original lyrics were:
Sesame oil, cabbage hearts
Wanna eat string beans, break off the tips,
Get really lovesick if I don’t see you for three days
Hu-er-hai-yo
Oh dear, Third Brother mine.
78
There is nothing particular or extraordinary that differentiates this song
from other Chinese folk songs. Love songs have abounded among common-folk
throughout Chinese history, and many can be found in the Confucian collection of
the Book of Odes, as well as in the Music Bureau poetry of the Han dynasty. Ruan
Ji wrote in the Han Dynasty that “melodic lines arise from the hearts of men. The
heart is moved when external things cause it to be so. The affections, thus being
moved by external things, express themselves in sounds.”
79
Music, then, seems to
have a place in Chinese traditional thought as something that exists within mankind
as a means for expression. Within this paradigm, folk music seems to have been an
especially unique avenue for human expression. Folksong collectors in the New
Literature Movement of the May Fourth era found that “Chinese love songs often
displayed an air of openness and boldness seldom found in literary genres.”
80
78
This translation taken from www.morningsun.org
79
Egan, Ronald. “Nature and Higher Ideals in Texts on Calligraphy, Music, and Painting” in
Chinese Aesthetics. Ed. Zong-qi Cai. (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004), p. 295.
80
Hung, Chang-tai. Going to the People, p. 65.
40
Singing, then, can be seen as a natural form of individual expression, one that
existed among the common people of China. In fact, it seems to be an act that is
found in all cultures because “music is an essential and necessary function of man”
that “came into being because of man’s interdependence, his need for expression
and communication,”
81
in direct correspondence to a human need. Human beings
seem to find in music an outlet for their innate need for expression and
communication, and this has been the case regardless of circumstance, class, or
culture.
The specific style of this song is most likely “Xintianyou,” a Northern
Shaanxi genre of “’casual singing’ of the local people.” According to Professor
Xiao Mei from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, this particular style was not as
favored by locals as other ritual music genres (such as yangge), for its theme of
love and sex “were often discarded as dross.”
82
This particular song has been
interpreted as “a salacious ditty…which, with a few words and interjections,
celebrates the pleasures of (male) sexual satisfaction after a hearty meal.”
83
The
reason “Xintianyou” was selected “as a genre that best represents the people’s
voice” during the times of war is, according to Professor Xiao Mei, because of its
81
Gaston, E. Thayer. “Man and Music”, p. 15
82
Mei, Xiao. “Whose Voice: A Perspective from Fieldwork” (talk given at the International Music
Council, Beijing, China, August 7, 2007). Found on the “International Music Council” website at:
www.unesco.org/imc/programmes/downloads/Mei.pdf
83
Huot, Clare. China’s New Cultural Scene. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), p. 157
41
musical characteristic of a “melody that jumps linearly up and down” that makes it
“suitable for loud, sonorous, deep, passionate, [and] stirring” styles of singing.
84
With its original lyrics about sesame oil and cabbage sprouts, the tempo and
style might have been slower and sung by only one person. But when, in 1938, the
song was put to new words in order to mobilize the people to fight against the
Japanese, the rhythm perhaps became more march-like, to be sung in a rousing
manner by a group of people:
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.
85
Here, the theme of love remains the same, as well as the mention of Third brother,
but the context has changed. The nation is at war, so lyrics about sesame oil,
cabbage hearts, and string beans are replaced with military imagery. It is implied
that Third brother desires to see his lover, but the urgent needs of the nation prevent
him from doing so.
In the face of war, this simple folksong was harnessed as a vehicle for
expressing nationalistic sentiments rather than individual emotion. This was part of
a widespread popularization of political culture that took place during the war. Not
84
Mei, Xiao. “Whose Voice”.
85
This translation taken from www.morningsun.org
42
only was music used for nationalistic purposes, drama and art (cartoons especially)
were used as means of communication with the public, including the illiterate.
86
The final song version of “East is Red” was established in 1942, when the
tune was reworked once again by a primary school teacher, Li Yu-yuan. It reads:
The East is red, The sun is rising.
China has brought forth a Mao Zedong.
He works for the people’s happiness,
Hu erh hai ya
He is the people’s great saving star
Chairman Mao loves the people,
Chairman Mao, he is our guide
To build a new China
Hu erh hai ya
He leads us forever forward
The Communist Party is like the sun,
Bringing light wherever it shines.
Where there’s the Communist Party,
Hu erh hai ya
There the people will win liberation.
87
The essence here is still that of a love song—just magnified into grandiose and
national terms. The object of love and adoration is Chairman Mao, who loves and
guides the people of China. Just as the soldier who fought against the Japanese in
the previous version of the song, he “works for the people’s happiness” and leads
them “forever forward.” Like the rising sun that illumines the earth, Chairman
86
Hung, Chang-tai. War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China.
87
This translation taken from www.morningsun.org
43
Mao is the bright center of the Communist party. The color red, a symbol for love
and passion, is now the definitive characteristic of the East. Love and passion are
projected onto the image of a burning red sun, and these emotions have now been
magnified from a human affair between two people to a national and politically
endorsed and enforced admiration and worship for Mao and his ideals.
Many of the folksongs of North Shaanxi use pentatonic scales,
88
the scale
patterns that are characteristic of traditional Chinese music (and something that the
ears of the people would have been accustomed to hearing). This musical modality
is based around five notes—the first, second, third, fifth, and sixth notes of a
scale—with two “changing” tones that are used as passing tones, and always
descending. The pentatonic core can be built from any pitch, and it has little
dissonances (no semitones or tritones).
89
“East is Red” is no exception, and
combined with the rhythmical elements, would presumably have been quite
accessible and easy to sing. The meter of the song is in 2/4, giving it a march-like
feel and making it easy to conduct or direct, even for non-musicians. As a song
that opened formal meetings during the Cultural Revolution, its steady pulse would
probably have acted as a unifying element for the people involved, with the sensory
experience of both hearing and producing music effectively bringing individual
emotions and personalities into a collective aesthetic product. Thus, when set to a
88
Wong, Isabel K. F. “Geming Gequ”, p. 139
89
Malm, William P. Music Cultures of the Pacific, the Near East, and Asia. (Upper Saddle River:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1996), p. 178.
44
simple duple meter, the pentatonic mode of “East is Red” makes it accessible to
the masses, regardless of musical training or taste. Below is a musical score of
“East is Red”, taken from a compilation of the Union of Chinese Musicians.
90
It is
followed by the Chinese numerical version.
91
90
Unity is Strength: Popular Chinese Songs Compiled by the Union of Chinese Musicians. (Peking:
Foreign Languages Press, 1964), p. 2.
91
Taken from http://www.myscore.org/showarticle.asp?id=423
45
46
The musical phrases of “East is Red” correspond nicely to the lyrics, acting
as an effective vehicle for expressing the meaning of the song. The song can be
roughly divided into four basic phrases. Each of the three verses is sung over the
four-phrase melody, with the last three lines of the third verse repeated in a final
phrase that takes the melody of the fourth phrase up an octave (for a “grander”
sounding finish) but does not change the pitches.
The song begins on the fifth pitch, which goes up a step to the sixth pitch
before coming down to the second pitch. The effect of this melodic shape is to give
a sense of “opening up”—a heroic-sounding beginning. This acts as the first half
of the first musical phrase, over which three Chinese characters are sung. For the
47
first verse, it is the statement, “East is Red”—very fitting, given the title of the
song. The second verse states, “Chairman Mao,” and the third verse states, “The
Communist Party.” Each set of opening words contributes to the overall theme of
the song and establish the topic of each verse.
The second half of the first musical phrase goes from the first pitch down to
the lower sixth pitch, landing back on the second pitch.
By starting on different pitches and ending up on the same pitch as the first
half of the phrase, it “completes” it musically. The first verse is completed with the
phrase, “The sun is rising;” the second verse, with “Loves the people;” and the
48
third verse, “is like the sun.” These are the characteristics that define the subject
stated in the first verse of the song.
These motifs not only complete the first phrase, they also lead into the
second phrase, in which a further explanation of the opening statements of each
verse is given—for the first verse, it is “China has brought forth a Mao Zedong;”
for the second and third verses: “Chairman Mao, he is our guide,” and “Bringing
light wherever it shines.” Musically, the second phrase begins and ends on the
same pitches as the first phrase (the fifth and second pitches). The melodic contour
between the beginning and ending of the phrase give it more variety, although it
uses the same pitches as the first phrase. Both the first and the second phrase are
made up of four musical measures, with two beats per measure.
The third phrase is one beat shorter than the first two phrases. It also begins
on the fifth pitch and ends on the second pitch.
49
In each verse, the third phrase begins a new thought that elaborates on the
previous statement: “He [Mao Zedong] works for the people’s happiness;” “To
build a new China;” “Where there’s the Communist Party.” Because it is shorter
than the first two phrases, the third phrase acts as a sort of “transition” that propels
the music into the fourth phrase, which begins on a two-note pickup at the tail end
of the last measure of the third phrase. The “propelling” motion of the third phrase
is aided by two “passing notes” in the second beat of the second measure, on the
seventh and sixth pitches. The seventh pitch is not part of the five-pitch pentatonic
core, thus functioning specifically as a passing note and making a four-note
descending scale possible (from the first pitch down to the fifth pitch). It also adds
some flavor to the melody, increasing anticipation for the next phrase.
The fourth phrase is longer than the previous three. It is the only phrase
that does not begin on the fifth pitch, nor does it end on the second pitch, making it
seem quite different from the previous three phrases. However, a closer look at the
relationship between text and melodies shows that the fourth phrase can be seen as
a sort of “inversion” of the previous pattern. Each of the three verses contain the
50
nonsense syllables “hu-erh-hai-ya,” which take place over the two-note pickup and
the measure following (three beats total). The actual verbal statements in the fourth
phrase begin on the next measure, which begins on the second pitch and ends on
the fifth pitch. So the second and fifth pitches still book-end the fourth phrase (if
the “hu-erh-hai-ya” motif is separated from it), just in reverse order than the
previous three phrases.
And although the fourth phrase is the longest one so far, it contains more
fast notes that move in step-wise motion (as opposed to the leaps in the first two
phrases). Again, passing notes are used, this time in a five-note descending scale.
The relative complexity in the melodic shape of the fourth phrase also corresponds
to the ideas it describes. Since this is the final statement of each verse, it is the
most idealistic and hopeful. The facts about the East, Chairman Mao, and the
Communist Party have already been established in each verse by this point, so the
final point (embodied by the fourth phrase) brings each idea to a greater height.
The East is not only red, it has brought forth a Mao Zedong that “is the people’s
51
great saving star.” Chairman Mao not only loves the people and is the people’s
guide, “He leads us forever forward.” And the Communist Party is not only like a
sun that brings light wherever it shines, it is in the Communist Party that “the
people will win liberation.” Here in these final statements, “East is Red” takes on
hymn-like and religious elements. It moves from mere praise and admiration to
glorification and deification of Mao and his Communist Party.
Although the fourth phrase is complex in terms of faster-moving pitches, it
does not match the climactic statements of the verse with dramatic, musical leaps.
This makes sense when we remember that the final phrase of each verse must
return to the opening tune. By ending an octave below the starting note of the first
phrase (on the fifth pitch in the scale), the fourth phrase sets up the grandiose
musical feel of the first phrase, serving as a contrast of stepwise pitches versus the
leaps of the opening notes. Thus, while each verse ends with highly idealistic and
even religious statements set to faster-moving and melodically complex notes, it at
the same time prepares for the repeating of the first phrase with a new verse/new
idea.
Finally, “East is Red” ends with a final musical phrase, which allows for the
repeating of the last three statements of the third verse (“Where there’s the
Communist Party,/ Hu-erh-hai-ya/ There the people will win liberation”). The
musical notes are the same, but the last three measures take the pitches up an
octave, causing the piece to end on the fifth pitch that it started on. Since this is the
final verse, there is no need to “set up” the opening of the song again by ending on
52
the lower fifth pitch (the way the fourth phrase does).
As my analysis has shown, the music and the lyrics of “East is Red” work
together to give immense praise to Chairman Mao. It functioned more like a hymn
of praise to a national leader than as an anthem in reverence to a country, and it
permeated society to a much higher degree than “The March of the Volunteers”
did—it was truly a part of everyday life. “East is Red” opened formal meetings
and became China’s unofficial anthem. Furthermore, it replaced the Westminster
chimes that played in the clock of Shanghai’s former custom’s house, and it opened
the day of the Central People’s Broadcasting Station (played on a set of bells that
were cast over 2,000 years ago in the Warring States period!)
92
In 1964, it was put
into a song-and-dance epic that was part of a “musical extravaganza for the
fifteenth anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic”
93
and
92
Kraus, Richard Curt. Pianos and Politics in China, p. 119
93
Ibid
53
“presented a creation myth, an historical vision, a belief system, and a moral
landscape in which the generation of the Cultural Revolution came of age.”
94
As a song that had existed in the Chinese consciousness since the 1940s,
when the Communist Party was first embarking on its journey towards power and
statehood, “East is Red” can be seen as a highly effective tool for shaping the
minds and the collective experiences of the Chinese people, and of turning their
hearts and emotions towards worship—and obedience—of their larger-than-life
national leader. Singing patriotic, popular, or religious songs can serve as a
collective exercise for expressing love for one’s country, culture, and faith in any
society. But in a decade of extremes, the effect and importance of songs must have
been magnified, especially because there was no differentiation between political,
popular and spiritual. In a sense, the Cultural Revolution achieved a unique—and
perhaps destructive—unification of different societal elements, allowing very little
room for compartmentalization or individualism. Chairman Mao was both political
leader and spiritual father, as well as the most culturally popularized icon. And it
was in such a time that “East is Red,” among other songs, became an important
expression of this unification and therefore an important symbol of the culture of
the time.
94
http://www.morningsun.org/east/index.html
54
Chapter 4: Voices from the Cultural Revolution
In a decade where the enemy was neither Japanese invaders nor Nationalist
armies, but rather anyone opposed to Mao and his thought, “East is Red” can be
said to have been a more fitting national anthem than “March of the Volunteers.”
The Communist victory had already taken place, and Chairman Mao had saved the
people. Now they were united under his leadership rather than by the dangers of
battle. In contrast to the statement, “No saviour from on high delivers” from “The
Internationale,” China had found its “saving star” in Mao Zedong. The nation no
longer needed a rallying cry to action; instead, it had a hymn of praise that
represented a political religion that few dared oppose.
It is hard to determine exactly how much a song like “East is Red” could
shape the hearts and minds of the Chinese people into genuine reverence and
worship of Mao. David Holm wrote about Yan’an propaganda that “the ritualistic
character of the peasantry’s response to Party policy created a complex pattern of
interaction in which dramatic art and social life imitated each other and became
increasingly difficult to disentangle.”
95
In other words, was it art that affected how
people lived, or did the way people live determine what art was about? In the case
of the Cultural Revolution, one wonders how much of the daily rituals to Mao were
expressions of how people really felt, and how much of it was purely to go along
with everyone else. And at what point could merely “going through the motions”
95
Holm, David. “Folk Art as Propaganda”. Popular Chinese Literature and Performing
Arts in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979. (Berkeley, University of California Press,
1984), p. 33
55
translate into the genuine emotional reactions that the rituals were meant both to
inspire and reflect?
While these questions are impossible to answer definitely, they do outline
an interesting framework within which to analyze the effects of music on society. I
had the opportunity to interview a few individuals who were all influenced by the
revolutionary music and the Cultural Revolution. Perhaps their stories can shed
some light on the impact of music in revolutionary movements and the long-term
effects of the Cultural Revolution on the Chinese people. Although their opinions
are in no way an adequate representation for all of the voices from the Cultural
Revolution, they do provide a personal touch on which to conclude this paper.
*****
Mr. Huang, July 11
th
, 2008:
Mr. Huang was born in 1933 and participated in the Communist Revolution
from an early age. When he was in middle school he had the opportunity to
emigrate to Canada, where his father was studying to become a doctor. Young
Huang, however, was attending a Communist middle school in Hong Kong and had
been “brainwashed” to want “revolution rather than democracy.” He chose to
forego that opportunity, instead devoting the next two or three years to the cause of
the revolution. Southern China was still under Chiang Kai-Shek’s control, and he
joined other young people in guerrilla bands and youth culture corps (qingnian
wengong tuan). He liked to sing and enjoyed traveling to schools to perform and
spread Communist ideology. The first song Mr. Huang learned was the Soviet
56
Internationale, and he soon learned others, including “We workers are People,
too,” “Farmers Want to Become Landlords.” “March of the Volunteers” was
extremely popular, as was the “Yellow River Cantata,” which was performed in
Hong Kong. Huang soon returned to China in order to welcome the People’s
Liberation Army and continue serving the Revolution.
Mr. Huang participated in and went through the whole process of the
Cultural Revolution. As part of the propaganda department of Yangchun County,
he was involved in education (mainly aimed at intellectuals), culture, and
propaganda work, handling such responsibilities as spreading the ideas of
Chairman Mao—as soon as he heard a broadcast of the Chairman’s newest decree,
he would take notes and have them printed. During the more chaotic period of
time, there were two factions; the fighting was bad, he said, to the point of using
weapons. Both sides called themselves revolutionaries and wrote dazi bao (big
letter posters) and essays attacking each other
Mr. Huang also described the cult of Mao that elevated his status to that of a
god. He was the “reddest red sun” in the universe—he was God. One of his words
was worth a thousand, and his Little Red Book was a Bible that had to be carried at
all times. He himself never saw the Chairman, but he did see the film of the Red
Guards meeting Mao. Every morning, the loudspeakers would broadcast “East is
Red,” and, like Zuo, each morning and evening he had to report to Mao’s portrait
and do the loyalty dance. “At the time,” remembers Huang, “everyone was like
crazy. People weren’t people—they were robots. We were bolts for the party.”
57
Eventually, Mr. Huang “realized that what [Mao] said was not reflected in
what he did.” The CCP was an elite bureaucracy, and the passion he once had had
faded. By the time Mao passed away, he had already been “totally disappointed” in
him and thought that it was “about time for him to go.” During the decade of the
Cultural Revolution, he had seen so many model plays he “didn’t want to see them
anymore.” He used to own a lot of the songs they sang, but he threw them away
when he moved away from China in 1975. After his disillusionment with Mao, he
did not want to sing those songs anymore—“they bring back bad memories.”
Mr. Huang’s story shows how music played a large role in revolutionary
experience. As a young man, songs appealed to him as he was swept up into the
Communist cause. Not only were they an attractive way for him to learn
revolutionary ideology, but they also became his tool for teaching others. During
the Cultural Revolution, “East is Red” was his alarm clock as well as the national
anthem, and one can easily imagine that he would have been able to sing it in his
sleep. It is understandable that when Mr. Huang realized that the Chairman was
not living up to the description in “East is Red,” the disconnect between musical
statements and experiential reality must have seemed magnified. And the fact that
Mr. Huang threw away his music and stopped singing it after the Cultural
Revolution ended indicates just how representative those songs were of the era.
For Huang, it was impossible to compartmentalize the music and the politics—
music was politics. And yet, when I asked him to sing the songs for me, he
remembered them all and was able to do so without much thinking or hesitation.
58
So just as the music was closely entwined with politics, it was also engrained into
his revolutionary experience and could not be erased from it, as much as he tried to
forget.
*****
Mr. and Mrs. Zhang, July 28, 2008
Mr. Zhang and his wife are around 20 years younger than Mr. Huang and
both participated in the Cultural Revolution as children rather than adults. Mr.
Zhang has many memories of using music to express his love and devotion to Mao.
Every day, at three o’clock in the afternoon, he would go to a meeting, during
which Mao’s quotes (yulu) were recited and sung. During his last year in
elementary school, he participated in a propaganda team (xuanchuan xiao fengdui),
with which he would march around the streets in formation wearing a red armband.
“If we wore the armband, we wouldn’t even have to pay for bus tickets,” recalls
Zhang. And whenever his team came upon another team, for example the worker’s
team, they would sing yulu songs to each other. Zhang also remembers gathering
in the streets at midnight to await the announcement of Mao’s decree the next day.
“All night, there was a parade, with lots of music and drum-banging.” According
to her husband, Mrs. Zhang participated in a Mao Zedong Thought Team in middle
school, with which she traveled around to different places spreading ideology
through song-and-dance performances, which often lasted up to two hours. She
received training in singing skills through that experience, and she still sings
occasionally in social functions nowadays.
59
Like Mr. Huang, the Zhangs experienced the use of revolutionary music as
a tool for learning and spreading Communist ideology. As Mr. Zhang marched
around with the propaganda team as a youngster, singing served as means of
showing where he belonged—and where he found his identity. Indeed, the
accounts of the former Red Guards seem to indicate that singing was a highly
active form of participation in the Cultural Revolution rather than something that
was forced upon the masses by the government. It was described as satisfying “the
youth’s need for a heroic, emotionally charged atmosphere;” in fact, “’propaganda
would work by itself’” as songs were taught and transmitted from one “’bunch of
kids’” to another with a “’snowball effect.’”
96
These songs were not memorized by
rote—they were a contagious social phenomenon that carried the emotions and
energy of the masses of youths involved in the Red Guard movement.
Perhaps, then, singing became a form of agency for individuals swept up in
a chaotic decade to find some sense of security. Ban Wang has called the Cultural
Revolution an “unprecedented movement” that “compressed and intensified much
that had laid dormant in Chinese culture in the twentieth century.”
97
The “tensions
between the aesthetic and the political” were enacted in unmatched “intensity
…poignancy … passion and violence,”
98
and Wang analyzes this through a
96
Wagner, Vivian. “Songs of the Red Guards”.
97
Wang, Ban. “The Cultural Revolution: A Terrible Beauty if Born”, in The Sublime Figure of
History: Aesthetics and Politics in Twentieth-Century China. (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1997), p194.
98
Ibid
60
psychological—and specifically Freudian—framework. The conclusion he arrives
at is that “authoritarian power is much more insidious and subtle than it appears in
the simplified view that sees only its absolute tyranny…we may be able to see that
even as victims we have a considerable share in our own victimization.”
99
Wang’s
approach gives as much weight to the responses of the people to their politically
controlled environment as to the power of the government. While it is hard to
thoroughly understand the psychological impact of any mass movement and
impossible to really know how individuals like Mr. and Mrs. Zhang responded
emotionally to historical events, it is nevertheless interesting to think about how
songs of the Cultural Revolution might have become a form of agency through
which individuals could join themselves with a collective movement and seek to
find acceptance and fulfillment
Mr. Zhang also had much to say about the spiritual climate during the
Cultural Revolution. In his opinion, Mao was not only a deified leader, but more
importantly the idol of a strong spiritual force that “made people crazy” and “lose
[all sense of] reason.” When he saw the highly publicized encounter between Mao
and the Red Guards in Tiananmen Square when Mao told the young Song Bing
Bing to change her name to Song Yao Wu, Mr. Zhang and his brother and sister
also decided to change their names. Unbeknownst to their father, they changed
their names to Zhang Wu, Zhang Yao Wu, and Zhang Ai Wu (translated
respectively as “Battle,” “Must Have Battle,” and “Love Battle”). When Mao died,
99
Ibid, p. 228
61
Mr. Zhang’s work unit set up an altar in the cafeteria, which was guarded 24 hours
a day with guns. Revolutionary music played all day through the loudspeakers, and
people cried until they fainted.
After the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Zhang and his siblings changed their
names back. During the reform period, many revolutionary songs were revised to
reflect sarcasm and “black humor” (hei you muo). But “after a while, there was a
lot of nostalgia…people felt like they had lost their youth. There were a lot of
complex emotions.” Some people collected Cultural Revolution objects—Mao
portraits, books, music—and made a huge profit. There are still remnants of the
“Mao deism” of the decade. People use his image as protection against spirits and
still want his ideals. “The Chinese people all have a wound within. A hole will
always be there, and everyone has a small Mao Zedong, a shadow of him, within
us.”
The deified personhood of Mao and the revolutionary songs of his rule
lingered on even after the Cultural Revolution was over. Zhang sees it as a decade
of huge spiritual and emotional repercussions. From a bottom-up standpoint, the
Cultural Revolution was much more than politics—it was a movement of a highly
religious nature that affected all aspects of life. Under this view, what has been
termed the “cult of Mao” did not spring out of nowhere. It arose because
deification of the Chairman satisfied a need that otherwise had no outlet given the
62
political circumstances of the day. Dorothy Ko
100
and Gail Hershatter
101
have both
argued for women’s agency in seemingly oppressive conditions in Chinese history
(footbinding and prostitution), challenging black-and-white notions that women
were mere victims of a patriarchal system. Likewise, the Cultural Revolution
cannot be seen simply as a time of “brainwashing” by the authorities. It contained
intensely spiritual and emotional elements that individuals responded to—at least to
some extent—with their own free will.
*****
Mrs. Zhong and Mrs. Chen
Mrs. Zhong and Mrs. Chen were both born during the 1960s and were very
talented performing musicians. Although they did not participate actively in the
Cultural Revolution, they were affected by both the politics and the music of the
time. They have differing impressions of Mao Zedong, but both were profoundly
emotionally affected by his policies.
Mrs. Zhong
102
was born in 1962 and spent 34 years in China before moving
to the U.S. A gifted performer, she entered into fine arts school at the age of
sixteen, where she received four years of specialized training in Beijing Opera-style
singing. Even though she also had the opportunity to enter acting school, her father
100
Ko, Dorothy. Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding. (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2005).
101
Hershatter, Gail. Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century
Shanghai. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
102
Interviewed on July 27, 2008. Los Angeles, CA.
63
insisted on opera, for in it was the “beauty of China.” The Cultural Revolution had
ended by that time, but according to Mrs. Zhong, there was still a good audience
for opera, and to be able to sing it was considered prestigious. Mrs. Zhong was
assigned to learn the role of the laodan, the hardest female part to sing, because of
her fine voice and musical talent. She learned and performed many operas. Upon
graduating, she went into broadcasting for a local television station, where she
wrote operas. The training she had received in school, as well as her own interest
in Chinese literary classics, gave her the skills she needed to undertake such a job.
She was able to write scripts and plots in such a way as to truly bring out a
character.
Mrs. Zhong’s most vivid impressions of the Cultural Revolution are of
people dancing in the yard. Everyone, whether old, young, male, or female—“as
long as you weren’t sick in bed”—danced. The Cultural Revolution was a
“movement,” says Mrs. Zhong, and “we just followed the orders from above.” And
for Mrs. Zhong, that top-down leadership style was not a problem. She compares
Mao to Tsao-tsao, one of the three main figures in the Romance of the Three
Kingdoms. A genuine literary man, he “knew the classics better than anybody else”
and wrote “very good poems”—many of which she can recite from memory. He
understood China’s condition and the direction it needed to take, and as someone
from a peasant background, he understood that it was from the peasants—who
made up 85-90% of the population—that revolution must start. China needed such
a person in a time of chaos and poverty, and Mao had both the literary knowledge
64
and the military ability to be the hero that she needed. He had “very good
theories.” Mao’s one weak point, says Mrs. Zhong, is that he never studied abroad.
So “no matter how good his insight was, he just didn’t have a global perspective.”
Mrs. Zhong was very sad when he died and cried for a very long time—“we
wondered what China would do after he passed away, what we would do without
him.” She still has a “very good impression” of him.
Mrs. Chen,
103
on the other hand, emphasized the disillusionment felt
towards political ideology and culture. She had much to say about the loss of faith
that she and others around her experienced as a result of the Cultural Revolution.
In terms of her own emotional development, her concept of “right and wrong was
always changing.” She told me that growing up, she was constantly looking for her
identity, and so were others around her. Her cousin told her in a recent
conversation, “I’ve believed in Mao…I can’t believe in anything else anymore.”
Says Mrs. Chen, “My generation, but especially the generation ten years older than
me, we don’t know what we believe.”
The youngest of my interviewees, Mrs. Chen was born in Northern China
just before the 1970s
104
and spent most of her life away from her parents. Her
father had been a very prominent musician who became a successful composer for
Jiang Qing’s model operas when he was only in his 30’s, so when the Cultural
Revolution ended and the Gang of Four “dethroned”, he was put in jail. Chen was
103
Interviewed on July 13, 2008. Los Angeles, CA.
104
She did not specify her exact age, but she did say she is almost 40 now.
65
sent to the South to live with an aunt and told to cut off all relations with her father.
She attended drama school and was trained in the four disciplines of performance,
singing, dance, and lyrics. She had excellent grades throughout her childhood, was
always selected to play the leading roles, and was a competitive athlete as well.
She was very willing and knew very well what it was like to work hard and
sacrifice to attain her goals; on the other hand, she was also “spoiled by society”
because of her accomplishments.
As part of her education, she had to learn the skill of directing and the “use
of emotions to act.” To aid that process, she studied philosophy and the works of
Nietzsche, Freud, and Stanislovsky. Her third year of college was focused on
Chinese opera, and she “had to learn the technique to express things externally.”
Thus, she became very interested and immersed in the study of human emotions
and thought. When she studied philosophy, she would come upon each book and
think to herself, “Ah, this is right!”—until she read another book that promoted a
different view. Her ultimate conclusion is that “not one is correct. Each one is
going to the extreme…If you go extreme, you can become a philosopher.”
Despite her personal journey towards disillusionment with both
philosophy and politics, Mrs. Chen retains fond memories of the music of her
father’s Cultural Revolution days. She grew up on the model operas and has a high
opinion of them—“they were very good and able to uplift one’s spirits.” They
were a good mix of Western and Eastern elements and of very high musical quality.
Looking back, she does admit that there was too little variety in those days, but
66
Mrs. Chen maintains, “Even though my father went the wrong direction [in the
Cultural Revolution], there was nothing wrong with the music. In fact, she looks
back with nostalgia on Cultural Revolution music. During the reform years, when
other music came into China, Mrs. Chen felt that the quality of music was sub-par.
“There was Deng Lijun, and a bunch of romantic songs…rock and roll…a
questioning of Cultural Revolution songs,” none of which came close to the
“sensitivity to the arts” of the old days and the nationalistic folk songs of the past.
Concluding Thoughts
So what kind of revolution was achieved in the decade of cultural upheaval
unleashed by Mao and his associates? The Cultural Revolution was both a
culmination of the Communist Party’s efforts and ideology and a departure from
previous revolutionary themes. And its cultural consequences reflect both an
unconventional social upheaval and a following of traditional Chinese values.
As much as the CCP tried to destroy Chinese traditions, its very strategy of
using the arts—especially folk arts—for purposes of nation-building was very
Confucian. The Confucian classic of the Book of Odes was believed to have been
compiled around 600 B.C. from an earlier compilation of over 3,000 poems that
contain the oldest extant examples of Chinese poetry.
105
It is believed that these
poems were first gathered in the beginning of the Zhou dynasty, when the king sent
officers out to the countryside to collect folksongs, which were then brought back
105
Watson, Burton. Early Chinese Literature. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), p.
202
67
to court as a means of informing the king of public opinions and sentiments. Folk
songs were collected in a similar manner in the Han Dynasty, when the Music
Bureau was set up by Emperor Wu to determine the mood of the populace and to
be used in religious and secular state functions.
106
Both instances of the
government going out to the people exemplify the Confucian concept that music
was closely tied to the morale of the people and that it served to unite the people.
107
The use of folksongs to promote nationalism in the Sino-Japanese War, then, was
not a particularly unique phenomenon within Chinese history.
Nor was China unique in using music as a means to communicating ideas,
gaining power, and expressing devotion. A similar pattern occurred in Germany
around four hundred years earlier. In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five
Theses on the door of the Wittenburg Church in Germany. This was the beginning
of the Protestant Reformation and Luther’s break with the Roman Catholic Church.
How one man was able to turn the tides of religion is intriguing, and music had a
large part to do with it. Luther wrote in 1523 that he wished there were spiritual
songs that could be sung in the vernacular in addition to the Latin music sung for
mass.
108
His views on the relationship between music and morality, and on the
power of song, “were to shape a popular movement that swept Germany during his
106
Watson, Burton. The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth
Century. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), p. 69.
107
Egan, Ronald. “Nature and Higher Ideals”, p. 293.
108
Information from this paragraph taken from Oettinger, Rebecca W. Music as Propaganda in the
German Reformation. (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2001), p. 1
68
lifetime and afterwards,” for “German songs, sung by the people, helped Luther’s
Reformation spread like wildfire…through all levels of German society.” During
the first forty years of the Reformation, “hundreds of songs written in a popular
style and set to familiar tunes appeared in German territories…and these songs
were “perfectly adapted to spread rapidly through the still primarily oral culture of
sixteenth-century Germany.” Like the CCP’s pouring of new wine (Communist
ideology) into old bottles (folk songs), Luther’s Reformation was set into motion
largely with the use of popular music with reformed theological content. The
accessibility and familiarity of popular music allowed the message to penetrate
society in the way that Communism came to be understood and accepted by
Chinese peasants.
The Communist Party was very effective in using folk literature and
entertainment as tools in the establishing of revolutionary culture, yet the road to
this culture was nonetheless fraught with complications, ambiguities, and debates.
This took place as early as the yangge movement mentioned in the previous
chapter, which was, according to David Holm the “forerunner of the revolutionary
folksong of the Great Leap Forward period and of the revolutionary model Peking
opera of the Cultural Revolution years.”
109
As such, it serves as one of the earlier
examples of the “continuing tension between populist and ‘elevating’ perspectives,
both within the Party’s own cultural apparatus and in the Party’s artistic
109
Holm, David. “Folk Art as Propaganda”. Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in
the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979. (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984), p. 4
69
ideology.”
110
Chosen by the Party as the vehicle for propagating Communist
ideals, it was a “conspicuous form of cultural life”
111
in Northern Chinese villages
due to its association with the New Year. It was ideal for reaching the common
people because its plotlines were taken from every life, and the songs in the plays
were in folk style.
112
The leadership of the CCP put much thought into the nature of propaganda
work. As Holm points out, Chairman Mao and “other advocates of ‘political
warfare’ developed a sophisticated and highly articulated set of ideas on
propaganda” in the 1929 Gutian Conference.”
113
In the draft resolution of the
conference, they stated that propaganda work should have both “’time quality’” and
“’local quality’”
114
in order to be effective. What this meant was that proponents of
propaganda had to be sensitive to the differences in local cultures and dialects, as
well as to constant changes in situations. Furthermore, “all targets of propaganda
were to be addressed in terms of their own specific psychology and within the
terms of their own experience, not merely in terms of general political issues: the
general was to be linked with the particular.”
115
Thus, propaganda had to be all-
110
Ibid
111
Ibid, p. 13
112
Ibid, p. 20
113
Ibid, p. 6
114
Ibid
115
Ibid, p. 7
70
encompassing yet at the same time be relevant to each individual. This was the
tradition of political propaganda by the time of the yangge movement in Yan’an.
But the task of carrying out political ideals proved to be a challenge.
Although the reform process was to be “’from the masses, to the masses,’”
116
the
Party nevertheless had the final say about the content and quality for revolutionary
yangge. Traditional characters in the plays were replaced by ones that would
embody the revolution—workers, peasants, soldiers, students, and merchants. And
Western musical elements were added—the folk melodies were played in Western
style, and instruments such as the violin were added to the traditional Chinese
flutes and percussion. Dance steps were drastically simplified, and sexual elements
removed from the plots. The question of “how much of the original character of
the yangge play was to be retained” became a “contentious issue” in artistic circles
during the Yan’an Period.
117
And especially because yangge were often performed “as an integral part of
mass meetings and other public occasions of an actively political nature,”
118
it
became difficult to gage the peasants’ reactions to the plays. As Holm put it, “the
ritualistic character of the peasantry’s response to Party policy created a complex
pattern of interaction in which dramatic art and social life imitated each other and
116
Ibid, p. 21
117
Ibid, p. 28
118
Ibid, p. 32
71
became increasingly difficult to disentangle.”
119
Balancing Western elements with
Chinese style proved to be an unstable process of compromise and debate, and this
pattern would continue for years to follow. The Party had shifting attitudes
towards performance styles, although in general, “there seems to have been more
tolerance than intolerance in the years before the Cultural Revolution.”
120
A main factor in the intolerance towards yangge was the influence of Jiang
Qing (Mao’s wife) on music during the Cultural Revolution. Because of her dislike
of folksong, very little was seen of yangge during that decade.
121
The music of Nie
Er was also largely ignored during the Cultural Revolution, “in part because [he]
had worked with writers who were labeled counter-revolutionary, but mainly
because Jiang Qing preferred revolutionary music with which she herself was
directly associated.”
122
The music she was most closely associated with was opera,
and those ten years were filled with model operas. Indeed, the reforming of
Chinese opera was the “chief battleground for China’s artistic conflicts in the
Cultural Revolution,”
123
and after Jiang Qing’s appointment as adviser on cultural
work to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the No. 1 Peking Opera
Company was also incorporated into the PLA.
119
Ibid, p. 33
120
Ibid, p. 35
121
Ibid, p. 35
122
Melvin, Sheila and Jindong Cai. Rhapsody in Red, p. 280
123
Kraus, Pianos and Politics, p. 120
72
In 1966, Jianq Qing spoke at a rally about her views on the new culture of
the decade. She said, “To weed through the old to let the new emerge means to
develop new content which meets the needs of the masses and national popular
forms loved by the people.” The content was to be compatible with the fact that
“we are atheists and Communists” who “do not believe in ghosts and gods at all.”
It was important that the Chinese nation “have its own forms of art, its own artistic
characteristics” and to attain this goal, “we must act in accordance with Chairman
Mao’s instructions about ‘making foreign things serve China.’” She urged her
audience to “make the No. 1 Peking Opera Company of Peking an exemplary
revolutionary company which is truly proletarianized and militant!”
124
But even the model operas of the Cultural Revolution could not escape the
tension between various elements. Jiang Qing felt that “Western music is
politically unhealthy,” but on the other hand, “Chinese folk songs are not a
satisfactory basis for creating a new musical culture.”
125
In effect, Chinese opera
needed European musical instruments to enhance it. The Central Philharmonic set
revolutionary opera to symphonic music, and zealous young revolutionaries who, a
few years earlier, had destroyed pianos and violins, were now eagerly studying
them with the hopes of participating in model opera productions, which all used at
least some Western instruments—“the training of so many young people in both
124
Information in this paragraph taken from “Literature and Art Workers Hold Rally for Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution”. Peking Review, no 50, December 9, 1966, pp. 5-9 found on
www.morningsun.org
125
Kraus, Richard Curt. Pianos and Politics, p. 135-7
73
Western instruments and Chinese music was unprecedented in China’s history.”
126
Mao said that it was acceptable for musicians to “’apply appropriate foreign
principles and use foreign musical instrument’”—after all, they were just tools. In
fact, he said, “’much of the music of the Sui and Tang dynasties had come from
foreign countries, and this had done nothing to harm Chinese music.”
127
After all the efforts made to nationalize culture by creating original Chinese
music, Chairman Mao and Jiang Qing were finding themselves in need of Western
instruments and technique. Had they come full circle to the May Fourth era, when
shapers of culture looked to the West for inspiration and guidance? Or had they
reached a more successful means of incorporating the best of both East and West to
make music serve its revolutionary purposes?
While earlier movements had wrestled with the question of how to “attain
the universal while at the same time preserving what is distinct about local
culture,”
128
Cultural Revolution politics engaged in selecting appropriate material
that was both progressively modern yet not overtly Western. Andrew F. Jones, in
Yellow Music, challenges the notion of “Chinese modernity as a belated…project,
as a futile foot race in which backward China is condemned to forever pursue—and
never overtake—the West,” positing that “instead, we need to look at the ways in
126
Ibid, p. 225.
127
Ibid, p. 207
128
Jones, Andrew F. Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz
Age. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), p. 26
74
which both…parties have been and continue to be inextricably bound up in a larger
and infinitely more complex process.”
129
Despite their different musical
characteristics and political reception, “March of the Volunteers” and “East is Red”
were both songs that came out of this complex process of negotiation between
Western sounds and Chinese musical character.
Though hoisted up to national anthem status for a brief ten years, “East is
Red” was just as much a part of Chinese cultural development before 1966 as
“March of the Volunteers” was. Indeed, it is a musical symbol of how the Cultural
Revolution was not so much “an aberration” but the culmination of the “profound
ambiguity” created both by contact with the West and by “certain tendencies in
Chinese cultural and social developments in the twentieth century.”
130
More than
that, it was the perfect representation of the Mao-dominated nation that, left with no
more military battles to fight, turned against its own citizens and music upon the
command of the Chairman’s associates.
The Cultural Revolution saw all levels of society affected by the decrees
and ideals of Mao. Calling on Chinese, particularly the young, to renew his
revolution in order that China might avoid the perils of revisionism and
complacency he observed in the Soviet Union,”
131
Mao unleashed a movement full
of emotional extremes and a spiritual attitude towards his leadership. Popular and
129
Ibid, p. 10-11
130
Ibid, p. 5
131
Clark, The Chinese Cultural Revolution, p. 1
75
political culture merged into one standard and was subsumed under the cult of Mao
that pervaded even the minutest details of daily life. And it was in this sense that
the Cultural Revolution was truly revolutionary, for it united spiritual, emotional,
and psychological elements of society under political culture and affected the lives
of the Chinese people in both short and long term ways.
76
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77
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78
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79
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Huang, Natasha N.
(author)
Core Title
"East is red": a musical rarometer for cultural revolution politics and culture
School
College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Degree
Master of Arts
Degree Program
East Asian Languages and Cultures
Publication Date
12/05/2008
Defense Date
11/03/2008
Publisher
University of Southern California
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Tag
anthem,China,communist,cultural revolution,east is red,March of the Volunteers,music,OAI-PMH Harvest
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committee member
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Tags
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