The Influence of Politics on Chinese Musical Culture - Essay Example

THE INFLUENCE OF POLITICS ON CHINESE MUSICAL CULTURE THE INFLUENCE OF POLITICS ON CHINESE MUSICAL CULTURE Instructor name: Insert name: Course code: May 20, 2011 Introduction A background of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (1949 - 1964) and Western music in China The period between 1949 and 1964 in the PRC observed several state-level commemorations of western musical figures. It was an era that marked by political instability and change but with considerable development in economic expansion, public health, as well as social infrastructure. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) defeat of the Nationalist Party in 1949 resulted to the establishment of the PRC on October 1. The new government had a lot to do both domestically and internationally in the face of upcoming Cold War as well as the need to rebuild a nation destroyed by inflation and civil war, and shifting toward socialism and communism. Reflecting the instable history of the country, musical expansion in the PRC prior to 1966 went through related ups and downs. It was not by surprise that the CCP leaders were swift to marshal the musical forces to serve the socialist call. Music conservatories were built in most of the big cities, Western Orchestras were established, and the Chinese National Orchestra was constructed based on the Western models. The CCP’s embracing of Western-formatted musical assemblies requires being understood in the perspective of Western music in China. China is a country with a typical native musical custom that has integrated different forms of foreign influences at various stages of its progress. During the Nationalist period, members of the CCP quickly noted the probable power of ‘new music’ to extend socialist principles. This led the leaders of CCP to establish the Luxun Arts academy in Yan’an in 1938, the communist base camp, the breeding ground of socialist Chinese art. ‘Folk opera’ (yanggeju) and ‘new opera’ (xingeju) together with other musical genres like mass songs and large-scale choral works were cultivated at the Academy. Thus politics have greatly influenced the Chinese musical culture as we are going to see in this paper (Yang, 2007). The role of politics in China’s contemporary musical life Politics frequently plays an important role in China’s contemporary musical life. For more than four decades, the Chinese government has established the guide line in all fields of the arts “The arts ought to serve amateur politics,” which was the general idea of Mao Zedong’s speech at the 1942 “Forum on Literature and Art” in the communist capital Yan’an. This meant that music research had to serve revolutionary composition. The government in China sees itself as actively directing the advancements in the art fields and that those in the art fields ought to continuously handle the pressure from the government to follow its commands. These orders emanate from a border between particular circumstances (like flaccid industrial growth, the introduction of foreign animated art forms as well as rising political dispute) and a particular radical practice of handling these demands – a practice which, founded on a Marxism/ Leninism arbitrated through (and legitimated by) the expressions of Mao Zedong, provides both the means of tackling the particular situations as they crop up as well as explanations for making use of these means (Lane,1992). Following the Party guideline together with Mao’s thought; the legendary and arts society in Yan’an passionately worked on restructuring local conventional performing arts, together with folksong, narrative singing, theater and dance, making them more appropriate for the requirements of communist political propaganda. Such transformed arts were then presented to the affiliates of the Party, government and Red Army, in addition to the local folk. As a result, local people as well followed the government’s principle, intentionally changing the texts, content and even the mode of presentation of their traditional performing arts to some extent. A number of these new forms of the performing arts were maintained amongst the local citizens, and were later recorded, written down and published as folk forms of local performing arts. On the other hand, a substantial number of professional theatrical together with musical works were formed, drawing a great deal on fundamentals from the local customary performing arts. A number of these professional works even implemented, partially or wholly, original folk music and dance with little or no change, to be presented with new, revolutionary texts and substance. These kinds of music were warmly accepted by the local people, who were accustomed with and supportive of the forms in which they were presented. The mechanism therefore effectively served the goals of Communist radical propaganda (Mu, 1994). China began commemorating Western musical figures as a sincere gesture of showing her appreciation of the cultural legacy of the Western world. The early remembrances were frequently treated as states proceedings marked by ceremonial characteristics that bore levels of connotation. The success of CCP in 1949 denoted a new episode in Sino-Western relationship. The Western composition, which had earlier been recognized in china as an image of modernity, now turned out to be a cultural aspect that the PRC, with its assert to be putting up a contemporary social order could not disown, and especially in the initial ten years of the nation. There was a lot of emphasis on the reality that Chinese people had been exposed to Western music and that the youthful age group of Chinese performers was capable of performing Western music. China never remained to be the same state nation adhering to the customs of the ancient times, and Chinese people were no longer denied Western art. The commemoration of Western composers doubtlessly served a new national agenda – the chance for the recently founded state to reach out, and possibly, even to correct the West’s conceited stance toward as well as misinterpretation of China’s own musical culture (Yang, 2007). The formation of PRC denotes the commencement of a revolutionary alteration of customary Chinese performing arts on a countrywide level. During the era of KMT and its government, there were no much changes to the forms of traditional arts. The little pre-1949 changes never involved traditional performing arts, as compared to the sweeping transformation after 1949, and were neither severe nor extensive, let alone being radical. Moreover, those pre-1949 modifications were executed by academic modernist advocates instead of being imposed by the ruling KMT and its administration under any strategy relating to performing arts. The government at that time was busy dealing with the disorganized situation of persistent war and did not have time to be concerned with traditional performing arts or even consciously mess about with their development. When the PRC was founded, this process was however immediately substituted by sudden radical transformation. CCP established sweeping strategy and tradition of revolutionary demolishing the old and instituting the new in the whole field of traditional performing arts all over the nation. This transformation was a direct outcome of the policy of the CCP together with its government. Apart from the policies that directly affected the performing arts, there were other government policies in other fields, though not having direct effect, significantly affected the practice and development of traditional performing arts (Mu, 2003). The economic policy effects on Chinese musical culture The very initial step that the PRC government took in early 1950s to transform china into a socialist nation was to establish a socialist financial system all over the nation. A number of policies were formed and implemented. Private ownership was done away with from the whole financial system of the country. This had an instantaneous effect on the traditional performing arts. Customary, Chinese artists made their income by working with clandestinely owned proficient dramatic groups or small non-professional bands, or working as freelance individual street musical group or artists. They mainly performed in accordance to the desires and requirements of the community market and their repertoires were wholly traditional and had nothing to do with Chinese revolution and politics. However, under the new policy and practice of the socialist financial restructuring in the PRC, private possession of professional bands soon gave way to the state possession, with government management and full control by Party. Freelance individual street performers and small bands soon disappeared. They had to either join the nationalized professional performing arts ensembles or change their occupation to earn an income through other means. What to perform and how to perform it then became an issue to be determined or approved by the Party authorities. This greatly affected the culture and the tradition of music in China. The traditional performing arts were forsaken and neglected since the folks that were presented were now compromised so as to spread the CCP propaganda. The PRC government also introduced Western style institute to train music teachers some Western methods of teaching and learning music. This transformed the Chinese performing arts to one that had Western taste and fashion. Unavoidably, all over the state new artistes taught in such educational institutes soon altered the traditional performing arts, in both political and artistic facets, to a great extent. The policy of state ownership affected the development of professional performance as well as the performing arts among the folk in the general society, like folksong and dance people’s daily lives (Mu, 2003). Chinese Revolutionary Folk Song For the last forty years, the term geming minge or ‘revolutionary folk song’ has been widely used in mainland China to refer to folk songs that praise socialism, communism, the government as well as its policies, together with the Communist Party and its leaders. The lyrics of all these songs had revolutionary references. For instance, a traditional love song text, “ I love you because you are handsome and strong,” was recomposed as, “I love you because you love the Party and work hard to construct socialism,” and was then regarded as ‘revolutionary’. The notorious ‘Great Cultural Revolution’ led by Mao Zedong began in 1966. It officially lasted for ten years until 1976 when Mao’s wife was arrested barely one month after the death of Mao Zedong. Throughout those ten years, all customary collections were firmly forbidden and everyone who violated this ban faced harsh chastisement combining public disgrace, detention, hard labour and afflict. All over the nation, several performers of customary performing arts were mistreated and banned from any type of creative practice and performance, just because of their prior ‘crime’ of readily mastering and performing the old gamut which ‘poisoned’ the people’s minds. Consequently, all customary or non-revolutionary gamut of any type of conventional performing arts basically vanished from people’s daily lives (Mackerras, 1984). Renaissance of traditional theater Following the strategy of eliminating private ownership of enterprises, all theatrical ensembles in the PRC since the early 1950s were owned and administered by the state and controlled by CCP. Instantaneously this was followed by the implementation of the theater reorganization guidelines. Traditional gamut were substituted with socialist radical ones, or modified to serve the requirements of the Party’s political propaganda. Nevertheless, this condition altered with the establishment of the new ‘open door’ financial reorganization strategy in the early 1980s. Mainland China has from that time seen a regeneration of its conventional theater – the continuation of traditional gamut and a return to traditional methods of business, association, management, staffing, trading and presentation. The fact behind this renaissance is that these developments have escaped the CCP’s political control and interference. After thirty years of strict practice of socialist financial system, the PRC government allowed and endorsed private ownership of business. This as well affected the growth of conventional performing arts. All over the country privately owned traditional theatrical troupes have been established. These are organized and operated in traditional ways; they are small and highly mobile; they perform traditional repertoires in the traditional way; and they thrive by meeting the demands of the consumer market (Mu, 2003). Conclusion We have seen how government control on the conventional performing arts in the PRC has differed since 1949. In observance with the strategy drawn at the Yan'an Forum, the socialist government has time and again managed the performing arts as a misinformation tool. What has differed is the level of management applied. Originally the level of government intrusion grew progressively, reaching its maximum in the period of the Cultural Revolution. It has from that time declined once more, and this tendency appears probable to persist, as financial deliberations become more and more prevailing over ideological ones, and as the pressure and consequences of global entrepreneurship as well as globalization on China become increasingly tougher. While the conventional performing arts in the PRC have logically experienced certain transformation as a result of these big strategy dangles, generally they have revealed an extraordinary flexibility, displaying how intensely rooted they are in the awareness of the Chinese people and how deeply the cultural practice is rooted in their community (Mackerras, 1984). References: Lane B. T. 1992. Modernization and Music in Contemporary China: Crisis, Identity, and the Politics of Style. Pp. 78 – 91. Viewed on May 19, 2011 from http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:mRUxp3U2vyMJ:www.magnoliaarts.com/brace.pdf+effects+of+politics+on+Chinese+musical+culture&hl=en&gl=ke&pid=bl&srcid Mackerras, C., 1984. “Folksongs and Dances of China’s Minority Nationalities: Policy, Tradition and Professionalization”. Modern China 10/ 2: 187-226. Mu, Y. 1994. Academic Ignorance or Political Taboo? Some Issues in China's Study of Its Folk Song Culture. Monash University, Melbourne. VOL. 38, NO. 2. Pp. 303 – 320. Mu, Y. 2003. Government Policy and Traditional Performing Arts in the People's Republic of China. Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore. University of New South Wales. Pp. 58-91. Yang, H., 2007. Power, Politics, and Musical Commemoration: Western Musical Figures in the People’s Republic of China 1949-1964. Par. 5. Viewed on May 19, 2011 from http://www.music.ucsb.edu/projects/musicandpolitics/archive/2007-2/yang.html Read More