The emerging (national) popular music culture in China

ABSTRACT

Before the emergence of the modern sense of popular music in China, the uses of music in that country have been instrumental in serving political purposes for the state. The modern form of popular music began to enter China through Hong Kong and Taiwan – the two very political locales in which we could observe China’s political economy through the reception of their music in mainland China. How the Chinese authorities coped with the production, distribution and consumption of this ‘foreign’ popular music, is reflective of the swing of the pendulum between relaxation and control, and hence the changing ideologies of the state. Based on the cultural and institutional analysis on a few classical Chinese popular singers since the mid‐1980s, this paper illustrates such a transformation. The paper argues that the Chinese authorities have evolved from a dictatorial authority, which chose to control popular music by means of direct bans and censorship, to an active agent, through various strategies, managing and producing a kind of popular music that can be conducive to, and be resonant with, the national ideologies.     

Micro: global music made in J‐pop?

Abstract

This article tackles J‐pop as a result of diverse influences from Western music. Its strength stems from its capacity to ‘tame the exotic’, i.e. assimilate and recreate from styles that were uncommon for Asian cultures by integrating elements of rock, reggae, hip hop, etc and labelling these J‐rock, J‐reggae, J‐rap. This assimilation and indigenization process in J‐pop creation could be seen as a way to resist against competitors from other places of music production. The article also attempts to identify the specificities and assets of J‐pop in the music scene in general. It elaborates on J‐pop's coolness, and the reason why it could expand throughout East‐Asia. Pop music and pop culture flows in East‐Asia could be regarded then as a means to trigger a sense of community and togetherness through the consumption of pop culture products. Throughout the analysis on J‐pop, the article will rely on one musical example, Def Tech and Micro, as this artist tends to explore various musical genre and intermingles them, so as to create a specific style, coined ‘Jawaian reggae’.     

Screaming and crying androids: voice and presence in Chinese popular music

Abstract

The voice is, next to the face, a defining aspect of the persona of popular music stars. This article seeks to understand the voice prior to lyrical content and genre convention. How does the voice relate to a singer and his or her body? Is the singing voice a sign of an individual? Does it rather embody a tradition, a nation or a generation? Or are the voices of Chinese popular music radically disembodied and phony?     

The changing faces of politics and repression in Malaysia

Abstract

For a long time popular music and aesthetics have been considered as mutually exclusive categories within the musicological discourse. Based on the predominance of idealistic autonomy aesthetics, the concept of the (musical) ‘work of art’, at its core, legitimised the exclusion of popular music from the realm of aesthetics. Since the concept of autonomy constituted the beauty of art as a sphere free from social functions and independent from interests of the culture industries, two antithetical strategies in researching pop music have recently emerged: on the one hand pop music has been described as art, on the other hand it has been considered as a cultural phenomenon solely explored through sociological approaches. This paper looks for an alternative way in order to overcome the dualisms of art and everyday life, aesthetics and society, without neglecting the inherent aesthetic dimension of popular music cultures or the processes of identity‐making of the involved people. For this purpose, concepts developed in theatre and ritual studies seem to be fruitful for describing pop music as ritual in social space (musicking), and in terms of an aesthetic of the performative. Based on participant observations and interviews, the paper discusses a rock concert that the Yoon Band from South Korea held in Germany. In view of the event character and of liminal and transformative processes within the performance, it gives an example of how Korean people in Germany negotiate their identities and draw national boundaries through actively participating in and through music. Thereby, the way popular music constitutes the diasporic community can be detected in the underlying social, symbolic, and sound patterns of the performance.     

The lyrics of laborious life: popular music and the reassertion of migrant manhood in Northeastern Thailand

Abstract

The focal subject under investigation in this paper is the gendered identities of overseas male migrant workers as presented in the contemporary popular song lyrics from Northeastern Thailand. My reading of such lyrics is informed by my ethnographic fieldwork of Thai migrant workers in Singapore. I intend to uncover some complex, cultural junctures of transnational labor migration, in which men, mobility, and music have come across and formed a social force to reshape cultural imagination of migrant manhood. I argue that popular music celebrates male heroism of overseas migrant workers. Instead of challenging existing structures of hegemonic masculinity in the region, popular song texts poetically reaffirm and reassert the traditional dominant gender ideology and cultural practice. Overseas workmen are usually depicted as hard‐working, self‐sacrificial heroes in their attempts to rescue their families as well as romantic, caring lovers and morally responsible fathers.     

Musical discovery,colonialism, and the possibilities of intercultural communication through music

ABSTRACT

Discourses of discovery have been important in a wide range of musical contexts, from early modern ideas about musical composition through to current forms of popular music production and consumption. Across these various contexts there are often inherent connections between discovery and colonialism, connections that become most apparent in non-Western socio-cultural and musical settings. In this article, I situate discourses of discovery within the “coloniality of power,” noting how colonial discovery can be more critically described as invention. From here, I turn to the genre of World Music as an example of how musical discovery is underpinned by inherently colonial perspectives, articulations of power, and relationships of dominance and subordination between Western and non-Western cultures. In contrast, I present the concept of interculturalism as a way of thinking about the possibilities of cultural in-between-ness beyond discovery, drawing on the practices of musicians who articulate intercorporeal and intercultural communication through performance.     

Discourse of cultural identity in Indonesia during the 1997-1998 monetary crisis

Abstract

‘Asian Pop’ cultural products, which include a wide range of media artifacts such as film, music, television drama, comic books, magazines, websites and fashion, have emerged as a popular choice for youth in Asia in recent times. These cultural artifacts feature prominently in the lives of urban youth in major metropolitan centers throughout Asia. This paper examines how Thai youths have become consumers of Korean pop (K‐pop), following the trend of neighboring countries. The popularization of Japanese pop (J‐pop), Taiwanese‐pop and more recently, K‐pop, is welcomed by the Cultural Industry as a sign of expanding borders and as a major step towards expanding its Asian market. On the one hand, growing consumption and mainstreaming of Asian pop might become problematic due to the notion of cultural ‘McDonaldization’/standardization, in the future. On the other hand, perhaps nationalism and national ties will manage to overrule this projected standardization. This paper explores the Thai youth’s consumption of K‐pop in the process of cultural appropriation vis‐à‐vis their ‘national’ cultural formation in changing socio‐cultural contexts.     

China’s popular nationalism on the internet. Report on the 2005 anti‐Japan network struggles 1

Abstract

In April 2005, waves of anti‐Japan protest swept China and South Korea. In China, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in more than 40 cities to protest against Japan over its irresponsible attitude toward the history of colonial rule and war crimes of 60 years ago. Despite the protest having a strong ground and its action being generally non‐violent and peaceful, it was then severely condemned by many Western critics and media as chauvinistic and irrational, and as being manipulated by the Chinese government to legitimize its rule. Against such a notion, this essay attempts to work with China’s ‘popular nationalism’ (renmin minzu zhuyi), and considers its space as an autonomous political domain that is independent of the state nationalism. The ‘cyber‐nationalism’ (wanglu minzu zhuyi), this paper argues, not only challenges the state monopoly over domestic nationalist discursive production, but also opens up new possibilities for performing common people’s ‘public discursive right’ (gonggong huayu quanli). Far from being a homogeneous unity, the online campaign is characterized by free exchange of information and lively debate over the boycott strategy.     

The European music industry and European music policy

Although the European Union has had a policy for the audio‐visual industry for some years, it is only since the mid‐1990s that music and the music industry have figured directly in policy development in the cultural and employment sectors. This present status of music within the evolving strategies of the European Commission and European Union is described in this chapter, with particular reference to the EC Culture 2000 programme, as well as the ‘Action Plan’ for music proposed by the European Music Office (EMO), a consultative body representing various industry and voluntary organisations. The Action Plan has three aims: to facilitate the circulation of performers and music within Europe, to enable better collaboration and exchanges between members of the music professions and to improve the accessibility of music to the public.

A key element in the proposed higher status accorded to music is the collection and analysis of data on musical activity and musical employment at the European level, notably through reference to the 1996 study carried out by EMO and updated more recently as part of the EC and EMO funded European Music Observatory project. Statistics covering employment, sales of recorded music, composers’ royalty earnings, sales of instruments, public support for music and other features are included.

The chapter also considers the difficulties posed by such a pan‐European project, notably in the comparability of data between nations with different national systems of data collection and the difficulties of attempting to combine data from the ‘subsided’ and ‘commercial’ sectors.     

Geolocating popular memory: Recorded images of Hashima Island after Skyfall

ABSTRACT

This article examines efforts to document Japan’s Hashima Island following its appearance in the popular film Skyfall. It describes how the film’s commercial success led to an effort by Google to produce images of the island’s built environment using digital navigation technologies. It further describes how this effort led the Japanese government to include Hashima Island in a bid to gain Unesco heritage status for Meiji-era sites of industrialization. Drawing from visual studies, critical media studies, and from interdisciplinary approaches to collective memory, this article analyzes how the circulation of images depicting Hashima Island in popular culture affects continuing efforts to hold Japan accountable for injustices committed there in the past. By narrowing on the moment “after” Skyfall, the article concludes with an assessment of the island’s Google Street View archive in terms of its broader impact on the uses of navigation, spatial presence, and digital heritage.     

Beyond the anti-American sentiment

Abstract

This paper juxtaposes the predicaments of two popular stars in Asia whose mobility in their respective cultural fields became challenged by political sentiments in 2004. Chang Hui‐Mei (A‐Mei), the aboriginal pop diva from Taiwan, became the target of a protest organized by Chinese ‘patriots’ before a performance in Hangzhou. The event set off a series of public debates involving high‐level Taiwanese politicians, fans, and members of the public that recalled a similar controversy in 2000 when A‐Mei was banned in China after singing at the inauguration of President Chen Shui‐Bian. Some months later, Korean Wave star Song Seung‐Heon became the subject of a draft‐dodging investigation while he was shooting a highly anticipated TV drama, Sad Love Story. Support from different configurations of overseas fans poured in and remained strong even after he gave up the project and began his mandatory military service. Using these two parallel cases to reveal how politics and entertainment interact in Asia independent of stars’ volition, this paper investigates the affective investment and communication strategies of A‐Mei’s cross‐strait fans and Song’s Chinese‐Asian fans during these emotion‐laden circumstances. The inter‐referential approach of this paper not only reveals the importance of considering patriotism as a latent (rather than exceptional) political and popular force in trans‐Asian popular culture, but also reconfigures the relationships between the public, popular, and political in inter‐Asia cultural traffic.     

‘Let the People Sing’: J.B. Priestley and the Significance of Music

Abstract

In a writing life that spanned the 1910 to 1970s, J.B. Priestley engaged with a variety of subjects, across various literary forms, ranging from politics, popular culture and Englishness through to theories of time. However it has rarely been noted that he also wrote passionately and knowledgeably about music, with the latter playing an important role in key novels, plays and nonfiction. Priestley also promoted chamber festivals, wrote the libretto for an opera ‘The Olympians’, and even occasionally performed himself. Priestley’s writings on music fitted into his concerns about the rise of an Americanized mass order, and his mistrust of commericalized musical forms was shared by other critics of the time. However, Priestley’s work is more significant than a binary high/low low cultural validation of classical music/dismissal of more popular musical forms. He was often critical of jazz and ragtime, but more positive about popular music that was produced in, reflected, and empowered the individual and community. Priestley’s writings on music marked a genuine attempt at understanding the role of music in culture, and contributed to his democratic critique of the mass society.     

Pi Village,with occasional music: notes on the New Workers Art Troupe

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on music practice of the New Workers Art Troupe (NWAT, xingongrenyishutuan) that is based in Pi Village (picun), Beijing. During last 3–4 years, the troupe has gradually attracted the attention of young scholars and college students due to their public advocacy for the rights and benefits of migrant workers in Mainland China. Given structural marginalization of workers and peasants that ironically contradicts with the officially claimed principles of socialism, the NWAT should not be ignored as far as cultural activism in nowadays Mainland China is concerned. Many researchers have investigated NWAT’s practices according to approaches of various discipline, however, the cultural meanings and social-historical condition of its core art form, music, have been largely neglected. Whereas this neglect acts both as cause and consequence, discourses about the NWAT have gradually been overwhelmed by moral commitment or sympathy to “disadvantaged groups,” which eventually proves nothing more than the coming-being of a moral order dominated by the new-born Chinese middle-class. In order to comprehend the affects the NWAT’s music articulated, what need to be illuminated are not only what they are singing, but also where and how they sing, as well as the cultural mechanism behind their practice.     

Translation of ‘America’ during the early Cold War period: a comparative study on the history of popular music in South Korea and Taiwan

Abstract

The evaluation of the cold war influences played by the US on the rest of the world should not only be accounted economically and politically, but also culturally. In this paper we see the US influences on South Korea and Taiwan from the value‐laden concept of Americanization and through which we examine comparatively specific practices of domestic popular music development in these two countries. Setting this paper as a historical comparative study, we see the working of Americanization in relation to popular music as a value regime in which American is constructed as an ideal model imaginatively and discursively, which was made possible by economic, social and cultural forces in South Korea and Taiwan. Focusing on the Cold War period, circa 1950s to 1960s, levels and aspects of Americanization were therefore ways of translation, to use Said’s concept of traveling theory analogically; Anglo‐American music genres traveled to these countries to be incorporated contextually as new or trendy conventions of music‐making, which in turn helped form local music genres. The socio‐historical contexts of South Korea and Taiwan, with respect to the presence of American army forces, and similar postwar anti‐communist political forces, in nation‐building (north–south Korea, red China–free China antagonism respectively) are central to our understanding of the visibility of Americanization in different music cultures in these two countries. This paper will go into each country’s historical trajectory of music practices that took Japanese colonial influences up to the postwar time and then blending with Anglo‐American genres in indigenizing that eventually marked their different paths, as we comparatively reveal their institutional, political and national cultural conditions, which were necessary in shaping each country’s music‐making conventions, entertainment business, and consumption cultures of popular music – and that might implicitly inform tentatively the present rivalry between ‘offensive’ Korean Wave and ‘defensive’ Taiwanese ‘rockers’ in the globalization era.     

Eric Hobsbawm and the Significance of Jazz

ABSTRACT

This paper explores Eric Hobsbawm’s interest in Jazz, and argues that he helped popularise the music, gave it intellectual credibility and that his jazz writings are still relevant for jazz scholars and cultural historians. Jazz also influenced his view of history. Drawing on his recently catalogued private papers, it suggests Hobsbawm consistently argued for the historical significance of jazz, was flexible in the use of genre and subgenre and was aware of the role of the music business, and the way critics and writers helped shape the music’s meanings. The paper also argues that Hobsbawm wrote partly as fan, and that his penetrating analysis of jazz sometimes led him to undervalue other popular music forms.     

“Gangnam Style” in Dhaka and inter-Asian refraction

This essay explores the political implications of the flash mob dance in Dhaka, Bangladesh performed in response to the 2012 global viral sensation of South Korean rapper PSY’s “Gangnam Style” music video. The global fame of “Gangnam Style” has much to do with its success online and in the U.S. popular music industry. It, however, also solicited suspicion from popular culture critics that the images of comical PSY worked successfully thanks to unchecked consumption of the racial stereotypes of Asian men. While recognizing these problems as more than valid, this essay simultaneously calls for a more transnational and inter-Asian understanding of the material to argue for a productive quality of PSY’s performance. Using “refraction” as a mode of thinking about inter-Asian circulation of pop culture, this essay considers the flash mob performed in Dhaka, Bangladesh as an important yet underexplored case study that shows different performative practices associated with “Gangnam Style” deeply rooted in historicity of colonialism and nationalism. The case study shows that the circulation of “Gangnam Style” materialized through a performance in Dhaka enlarged contemporary discourse among young urban Bangladeshi spectators around Bangladeshiness and its cultural identity. This complicated an easy assumption about “Gangnam Style” and its success in the U.S. mainstream pop culture, while simultaneously displacing the Bangladeshi cultural subjects from the immobile position of “the Other.”     

The value of music in London

London is one of the world's foremost music cities. Using a statistical approach developed in earlier studies of music in the United Kingdom (NMC, 1996; NMC, 1999), this chapter presents the results of a survey commissioned by London Arts from researchers at the University of Westminster. The chapter draws together available data oh the commercial and public sectors of the industry, on live performances and their audiences, on education and training and on exports. This data has been supplemented by new research, notably in the area of live performance and in identifying geographical ‘clusters’ of music business firms in certain areas of inner London.

Among the key findings of the research are that consumer spending represents some 90 per cent of the £1.1 billion total spending on music in London; consumers spent more on concert tickets and entrance charges for music of all types than on CDs and other soundcarriers; music provides the equivalent of 34,000 full‐time jobs in London and creates added value of over £1 billion and the London music business has net foreign earnings of over £400 million per annum.

The chapter concludes with some reflections on the implications of this research for music policy at both the national and city level. The statistical evidence demonstrates that classical music, a genre with only 10 per cent of the audience, continues to attract over 90 per cent of public subsidy. A similar imbalance in training of education of musicians means that the development of many young and talented non‐classical musicians is left to the vagaries of the market.     

Consuming Popular Music: Individualism,Politics and Progressive Rock

Historians have maintained that popular music had an influence upon individuals and in turn society. Yet the historiography of popular music has focused far more on bands and wider social reactions to the music than on understanding how and why fans consumed music. This article demonstrates how a more fan-centric approach can allow for more subtle understandings of the influence and role of popular music in the twentieth century. During the 1970s, progressive rock was an important part of life for many young music fans. It provided them with escape, entertainment and a sense of individualism, community and intellectual reward, much of which centred upon the idea that the genre was different, uncommercial and difficult to access and understand. Progressive rock also encouraged some debate around issues of class amongst the young and helped cement the importance of individualism in middle-class and educated circles. However, many of the values articulated in progressive rock, not least the discontent with contemporary society and the emphasis on intellectual values, were also shared by many within the broader social framework that fans wanted to rebel against. Moreover, other musical subgenres liked to imagine themselves as similarly ‘different’ and thus progressive rock shows that the real significance of popular music for historians is not the music itself but rather how it was consumed and thought about by the fans themselves.     

Gigging “classical” in Iran

ABSTRACT

The term “classical” is often applied to the genre of Iranian music known as musiqi-e sonnati (traditional music), normally identified by a form of music making involving extensive extemporization based on a structural framework called the radif, historically performed at length in intimate settings among initiated individuals. Today, classically trained musicians working the public concert circuit in Iran face a somewhat different picture of musical practice. Concert halls are typically much larger, audiences much wider, and performances much shorter. Many musicians tend to categorize themselves as classical, though they do not always perform according to the traditional parameters of the sonnati genre. This raises questions about new developments in classical music that fall just outside radif-based performance, and about the perceived conceptual relationship between sonnati and new-classical performance as the genre evolves. This article explores some of these dynamics through reflections among performers navigating Tehran’s classical concert circuit today.     

Mediating a compromised solidarity

ABSTRACT

This article explores popular media as resources for judgment in how settled migrants in Europe imagine solidarities toward newer arrivals seeking entry into the region. It discusses the news and entertainment consumption of Filipino nurses in London and how this figures in their imaginary of social and political bonds with refugees. Drawing on ethnographic interviews, I argue that these Filipino migrants can only articulate a compromised solidarity: one fractured between empathy with refugees and concern about what these newer arrivals might mean for settled migrants in the city. I then explain how the media contribute to this fracturing. One way is that the xenophobia in popular media content on social media leads the Filipinos to assert their difference with other migrants, including refugees. A second is that the Filipinos deploy popular media content, especially on British television, to assert that they belong to UK society more than other migrants, again including refugees.