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Pop Music in
Asia
Red Sonic Trajectories Rock in China
Let's get dakou'ed!
By the end of the twentieth
century a new generation emerged in urban China, named after the cut
CDs available at illegal markets in Chinese cities. The cut on the margin
of these 'dakou' CDs, as they are called in Chinese, has brought this
young generation to the centre of global music culture. One of its followers
writes on a website1: 'When Americans fiercely give themselves
a cut, they also give the world a possibility of communism and unity.
Our government doesn't encourage 1.3 billion people to listen to rock
and roll. "Dakou" products usher a million Chinese youth into a new
wave, a new listening sensibility, a new awareness, a new mind and a
new set of values.' 'Dakou' stands for far more than just CDs that infringe
copyright legislation; it stands for a lifestyle very much in vogue
among China's urban youth.
* By JEROEN DE KLOET
To be dakou
is to be both global in terms of music and local because of the cut.
The cut deforms the circle; something is missing yet, as a listener,
you get more, because you enter a domain of illegality. Dakou
is not just a metaphor for the ambiguity of globalized popular music.
The CDs also open a new era for what is termed in Beijing the New Sound
Movement. Rock, as we know it, already has an established history in
China, with Cui Jian its 1980s pioneer. Later, in the early 1990s, bands
such as Tang Dynasty and Black Panthers broadened the sonic spectrum.
Dakou CD
By the mid-1990s, the disturbing noise of electric guitars had somehow
faded away, as had the long hairdos of Chinese boys (-- to have your
own e-mail account is now a more convincing ticket to high modernity).
Fuelled by the new sounds that entered China's illegal doorways, and
driven by a desire to move beyond the stereotypical hard rock idiom,
new bands started to experiment with different sounds. Local record
companies such as Modern Sky and New Bees quickly captured the moment,
producing albums from the New Sound Movements' protagonists such as
Sober, Supermarket, Hu Mage, The Fly, and NO. Today, sounds ranging
from hardcore punk to deep house can be heard from Urumqi to Beijing.
China rocks, but what exactly is being rocked?
Travelling
mythologies
It is tempting to interpret rock in China in terms of political
rebellion. Communism might have faded away, yet the role of the Chinese
Communist Party has anything but diminished. Can rock be considered the
renewed rage against the Party machine? However attractive such a romantic
reading might sound -- it is after all nice to see dominant ideologies
subverted while safely seated in our academic chairs -- the world of rock
in China is not univocal.
The rebellious aura of rock is produced by what I call 'rock
mythology'. The narratives that constitute this mythology includes the
ideas that rock is tough, is subversive, is a subculture, is authentic,
is anything but pop and is non-commercial. These narratives are constantly
reproduced by musicians, audiences, producers, academics, and journalists.
The mythology is not quintessentially Chinese. Since the West is regarded
as the centre of rock music in popular and academic discourse, the mythology
has its imagined roots in the Western (and in particular, British and
American) soil. What happens when such a mythology travels to China?
In order to trace the politics of rock in China, I will
briefly introduce the hardcore punk band 69 and the Britpop band Sober.
Revealing the importance of the West to rock in China, these generic labels
are used by the bands themselves. But, while 69 argues for a Sinification
of rock to claim a difference with the West and thus secure its authenticity,
Sober opts for a post-modern and cosmopolitan image devoid of Chinese
characteristics. Both bands, however, share a similar goal: to put China
on the global map of pop music.
The scene that might come closest to the ideal embodiment
of the rock mythology is hardcore punk. 'Chinese people need punk,' says
singer 
Peter from 69. 'They need punk to fight for what they want. If you don't
want to be a slave, you should be punk.' In Peter's view, punk liberates
the obedient Chinese self, and allows one to scream out (as he does, singing
angrily that it's 'all fucking bullshit'), unhindered by notions related
to musical talent or by suffocating cultural traditions. You can simply
do it yourself. But then, British punk bands did this years ago. According
to Peter, the music needs a touch of Chineseness to make it real: 'Our
music is British punk combined with the Cultural Revolution. I also use
traditional Chinese music, because I think punk is white music.' Here,
Peter retreats to the safe and common ground of cultural essentialism.
In order to authenticate his rock under the scrutinizing eyes of Western
journalists, film crews, and academics, he adds Chinese elements. He recalls
ancient China (reprising the cliché of a long tradition) and communist
China (the revolutionary past), images that have proved fruitful sources
for the Sinification of rock culture. But bands that rock less hard -- such as Sober -- are not
as eager to make their sound Chinese. Instead, they express a desire to
join a global sonic world, with competitive sounds that just happen to
come from China. In the video for their single 'Very Good?!', the band
dresses up like the Beatles, adding an element of pastiche and irony to
their image.
The lyrics are playful, rather than confrontational. Singer
Shen Lihui sings cheerfully 'To whom do I give Monday and Tuesday?' Reflecting
on the current pace of change in Beijing, Shen comments: 'I don't think
it is necessary to add elements like an erhu
(spiked fiddle). Beijing has become very internationalized. I feel some
foreigners are simply interested in something strange, something exotic.
Music should be true to modern life.' Shen is critical here of the Western
gaze on China, and in his desire to counter this gaze he developed his
Britpop sound by the early 1990s. In 1997, he founded the record company
Modern Sky, which not only hopes to promote Chinese rock internationally,
but also to invert the global power imbalance by contracting bands from
London.
To be local sells globally, while to be global sells locally.
Hence, the punk of 69, with its Chinese characteristics, has frequently
caught the attention of Western media, whereas the cosmopolitan sound
of Sober sold well in China, but less so in the West. What links virtually
all Beijing rock bands is their dislike of pop from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
New Pants' vocalist Peng Lei's comments on pop are widely shared by his
colleagues: 'Cantonese Pop is not real music. There must be something
in the lyrics that touches the audience, there must be something authentic
and sincere.' Cantonese Pop is considered fake and commercial, the sweet
and profitable sound favoured by record companies. In saying this, rockers
reify the stereotype that Hong Kong and Taiwan are merely places of commerce
that lack real culture.
Their critique resonates with the widely shared image of Beijing as the
true centre of Chinese culture.
The paradox
of rock
Two key dichotomies underlie the politics of rock in China:
the West versus the non-West, and rock versus pop. The rock mythology
travels well to China, given the insistence of bands to make real music
that comes directly from the heart. What is being rocked in China is not
so much the political, but more the notion of rock itself and the construction
of Chineseness. Rock opens up a domain for a generic and cultural war
of positions.
Rock in China is thoroughly dakou'ed:
it is both 'typical' Western and at the same time 'typical' Chinese. Sober's
insistence on making international music challenges local uniqueness,
yet their wish to market rock beyond the Chinese mainland echoes the Party
desire to place China back on the map of world politics. The punk of 69
challenges prevailing norms on obedience and harmony, yet in their insistence
of making punk with Chinese characteristics, the band comes closer to
essentialist ideas on Chinese uniqueness, ideas fervently promoted by
the Party. Rock in China is both rebellious and compliant. It is as global
as it is local. Only when we seriously consider such paradoxes will we
be able to understand the power of rock, a power that is far more ambiguous
than the accompanying mythology wants us to believe. *
Notes:
Dr Jeroen
de Kloet recently defended his dissertation Red Sonic Trajectories
Popular Music and Youth in Urban China at the University of Amsterdam.
He currently works as a researcher at the International Institute of Infonomics
at Heerlen, the Netherlands.
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