2 Popping the myth of Chinese rock
Studies of rock music are frequently dominated by preconceived notions regarding the subversive nature of rock. In areas such as cultural studies these notions are tied in with more general theoretical frameworks which portray youth and/or popular culture as essentially subversive. This situation becomes further complicated with regard to the analysis of Chinese rock music, as it seems to be something of an unwritten law in the Western academic field of Chinese studies that Chinese culture only warrants investigation if it is legitimated by its antiquity or if it challenges the legitimacy of the current regime. An analysis of English-language texts on Chinese rock, both academic and journalistic, reveals the extent to which Western views of Chinese rock music are firmly grounded in Western discourses concerning the resistance value of rock. In this chapter I will discuss some of the reasons why this reproduction of Western rock mythology is so prevalent in discussions of Chinese rock, and suggest the analysis of rock's role in processes of social distinction as one way of avoiding this reductive tendency to view rock music in terms of its resistance value. This is not an attempt to depoliticise cultural issues, but rather to open up the scope of analysis to a broader understanding of the multifaceted construction of social groups and their cultural affiliations.
Central to my analysis and argument is the assumption that the mass media play an essential role in cultural construction and the distribution of cultural knowledge, for it is only through eliding these essential roles of the media that many cultural, and sub-cultural, studies have sustained arguments for the resistance value of their objects of study. The aim of this chapter is thus twofold: first, to argue against the common portrayal of Chinese rock music as necessarily subversive,1 and, second, to discuss how recognition of the role of the media in cultural construction, and an analysis of Chinese rock music in terms of processes of social distinction, can contribute to a more productive, and less reductive, framework for the analysis of Chinese rock music.
The view from the West: the popular as subversive
Much of the study of popular culture is based on theoretical social frameworks built around sets of binary oppositions: the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, the reactionary mainstream against the progressive popular, and hegemony met with resistance. A common problem with the utilisation of such frameworks is that the popular tends to become equated with progressiveness. Youth subcultures are interpreted in terms of their symbolic resistance to hegemony, soap operas and romance novels become sites of subversive readings, and acts of consumption become acts of resistance. A number of commentators have brought similar approaches to the analysis of Chinese rock music, a prominent example being Andrew Jones's application of highly specific and problematic theories of Birmingham School-style subcultural theory to the analysis of Chinese rock in Like A Knife: Ideology and Genre in Contemporary Chinese Popular Music (Jones 1992). Despite a growing academic interest in Chinese rock music, Like A Knife is still the only full-length English language work on Chinese rock.2 As such, and also because Jones's reductive approach can be considered emblematic of many Chinese studies accounts of popular culture, the main theoretical and methodological flaws of the text warrant discussion.3
One of Jones's main strategies is to present the Beijing rock scene as a subculture, along the lines of subcultural theorists such as Dick Hebdige, Stuart Hall and Michael Brake (Jones 1992a: 115–21). He draws particularly heavily from the work of Hebdige, suggesting that the appearance, language and behaviour of Chinese rock musicians and fans should be understood as ‘symbolic challenges to a symbolic order’ (Hebdige, quoted in Jones 1992a: 117). This suggestion is used to support one of the main claims of the book: that the central concern of Chinese rock musicians and fans is the self-conscious reclamation of a subjective voice, and that rock music provides ‘authentic self-expression and emotional release in the face of political and/ or cultural oppression’ (Jones 1992a: 91).
Jones's transposition of British subcultural theory to the Chinese situation leads to a number of problems,4 the most serious of which is the replication of problems already existing in Hebdige's work,5 which is part of a tradition that seeks to find resistance to hegemony in the cultural practices of working-class subcultures. In such literature there is a tendency to present an oversimplified view of the role of popular culture, and thus too readily find ‘resistance’ in working-class, or in supposedly ‘non-mainstream’, cultural practices. Models which consider the popular to be inherently oppositional not only blind us to other uses of cultural texts, they also disregard the fact that even when a cultural practice may be considered ‘resistant’, it is not necessarily resistant to ‘hegemony’, or resistant in any overtly political sense.
Jones's use of British subcultural theory to present a vision of Chinese rock as subversive fits in neatly with common Chinese studies understandings of the relationship between popular culture and the ‘official’ culture of the CCP-led state. Presenting the popular as resistant or subversive is a popular trope in Chinese studies, and particularly in presentations of Chinese rock music. Linda Jaivin, for example, describes Chinese rock as ‘a secret language defying comprehension by the adult establishment and a shared code for self-expression that implicitly rejects the values of official culture’ (Jaivin 1991: 41). In a similar fashion Gregory Lee, in a reading of Chinese rock lyrics and video clips, declares that ‘[w]hat is certain … is that the noise of late twentieth-century popular lyrics, in particular rock songs, can disturb the State’ (Lee 1995: 105). And Tim Brace concludes his article on popular music in Beijing with the statement that:
Having adopted the Party's mandate for modernisation, the people now reject its lack of progress toward this goal; having been asked to be (and taught to be) angry about life's conditions (so that they would get involved in the revolution), they now direct this anger at the Party itself. Rock’n’Roll music, and especially that of Cui Jian, best expresses and gives objective presence to this anger — and the anger empowers the music in its opposition.
(Brace 1991: 61)
As a full-length text, Like a Knife can be differentiated from other English-language works on Chinese rock in that Jones at least attempts to present and develop his ideas within a broader theorised framework. However, Jones's basic line is much the same as that of other proponents of the ‘rock as rebellion’ view of Chinese popular music: his use of cultural theory does not take his analysis beyond the limitations of Chinese studies, but instead consolidates a fairly typical ‘Chinese studies’ position on the role of contemporary popular cultural forms.6
Jones replicates another common weakness of many Birmingham School sub-cultural studies in underemphasising the role of the media in cultural, or subcultural, construction.7 In many subcultural studies, arguments for the subversive nature of particular subcultures could only be maintained by eliding the involvement of media and commerce in their construction and maintenance. For example, Hebdige (1979) envisages subcultures, such as the punk movement in England, as ‘genuine’ cultural formations which are later ‘incorporated’ by media and commerce, ignoring the fact that media coverage of the punk movement was essential to its formation. Similarly, studies of rock music in China tend to ignore the essential role of the media and commerce in the construction of notions such as ‘rock’ and ‘pop’, and in the distribution of cultural knowledge.8
Another factor facilitating Jones's construction of Chinese rock as inherently subversive is his unproblematic deployment of terms such as ‘individual’, ‘rebellion’ and ‘authenticity’. Jones makes much of the way such terms are used by Chinese rock musicians in discussing their music, and redeploys them himself in arguing that rock music is ideologically different from other forms of popular music, and hence creates opportunities for emancipatory uses. However, Jones does not interrogate the biases he brings to his understanding of them. As one reviewer of the book asks -in reference to Jones finding particular significance in Cui Jian's wearing of People's Liberation Army (PLA) clothing — ‘Why should one regard a PLA jacket worn by a rock singer as more “authentic” than the spangled dresses and neat suits worn by pop singers?’ (Lang 1995: 364). Jones's understanding of these terms in fact owes more to the rhetoric of ‘rock ideology’ than to any clearly explicated and/or theoretically sustainable understandings.
Rock ideology
One of the main reasons why Western commentators on China so readily pick up on the idea of rock as authentic rebellion, and make a sharp distinction between rock and other popular music forms, is because they are heavily influenced by what can loosely be referred to as rock ideology. This term refers to a body of ideas and beliefs about rock music held and propagated by fans, musicians and critics. While rock ideology cannot be considered a unified or temporally stable concept, it is possible to make some general statements about what it incorporates.
Simon Frith and Howard Horne, for example, trace ‘rock ideology’ to British art school roots, claiming that, according to the ethos of the 1960s: ‘Rock then, unlike pop, was to be serious, progressive, truthful, and individual’ (Frith and Horne 1987: 90). Peter Wicke similarly identifies the key features of 1960s rock ideology as creativity, non-commercialism and communication (Wicke 1990: 98). Frith views rock's claim to aesthetic autonomy as resting on a combination of folk and art arguments: ‘as folk music rock is heard to represent the community of youth, as art music rock is heard as the sound of individual, creative sensibility’ (Frith 1987: 136). At the core of rock ideology is the all-important notion of authenticity, which is defined in terms of these two arguments. A key accompaniment to these values, and in part drawing from the rhetoric of individualism, is the notion of rock as rebellion, a notion which contains varying degrees of political connotation. Also central to notions of rock ideology is a particular construct of ‘pop’ as the other of rock.9 Thus in contrast to rock, pop is often negatively defined — either explicitly or implicitly — as (popular) music which is not authentic, creative or rebellious.10
Despite internal contradictions in the discourse of rock ideology — for example, the contradictions between the notions of individual creativity and of representing the community, and between rock's claims to be non-commercial and its status as part of the music industry — its basic tenets have persistently informed ideas and beliefs about the nature of rock music. While the discourse of rock ideology was at its strongest and arguably most coherent during the ‘classic rock’ period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, it has, in various guises, remained the driving rhetoric not only behind understandings of ‘mainstream’ rock, but also behind understandings of the punk, alternative, and indie scenes of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Far from being the sole preserve of one particular rock genre, rock ideology is used by musicians, commentators and fans in power struggles between genres. For example, although punk broke away from the classicist notions of virtuosity prevalent in hard and progressive rock in the early and mid-1970s, supporters of punk used similar ideological arguments about authenticity, non-commercialism and non-conformity to differentiate punk from ‘mainstream’ rock as supporters of rock have traditionally used to differentiate rock from ‘pop’.
Although ‘rock ideology’ draws mainly on popular conceptions of rock, its allure has also pervaded academic texts and discourses. It was partly the influence of rock ideology that led Hebdige to believe that the parade of colourful subcultural characters he presented in Subculture: The Meaning of Style (Hebdige 1979) were truly rebels with a cause. Indeed, most of the Birmingham School subcultural studies were focused on masculinist, rock-based subcultures, with ‘pop’ music largely ignored.11 Many commentators on rock outside subcultural studies also struggle to find the balance between academic objectiveness and their ever-niggling conviction that there is something special about rock. Even Larry Grossberg, despite professing the death of rock,12 finds the fact that rock rarely challenges political and economic institutions an ‘obvious but painful truth’ (Grossberg 1994: 51, my italics).
Despite such reluctance, however, commentators on Western rock such as Grossberg and Frith are intent on deconstructing the mythologies and constructs surrounding rock music. In contrast, most commentators on Chinese rock seem determined to transpose exactly those structures to China, and rediscover a rock’n’roll restored of its mythological powers. Commentators who are presumably under no delusions about the capacity of rock to change their own societies, have no such clear mind when it comes to viewing rock in China. Andrew Jones, for example, sees rock as an authentic voice for Chinese youth, and Linda Jaivin, in an article called ‘Beijing Bastards: The New Revolution’, claims that the members of a newly formed rock band are ‘at the vanguard of a whole new cultural revolution’ (Jaivin 1995: 103). Unlike Grossberg, who recognises, albeit painfully, that the ‘rock’n’roll dream’ is an unrealisable desire, many commentators on Chinese rock simply project that desire onto the other, onto China.
Rock’n’roll is alive and well and living in Beijing
Why do English-language texts on Chinese rock reproduce Western rock mythology, depicting Chinese rock in terms of rebellion and authenticity? Iain Chambers argues that now that local roots, histories and traditions in the West have apparently been dispersed and destroyed, we search for ‘authenticity’ elsewhere. We ‘seek to return to the beginnings, no longer our own, but that of an “Other” who is now requested to carry the burden of representing our desire’ (Chambers 1994: 72). I see the search for ‘authentic’ rock in China as an updated version of this search in the ‘other’ for what we now lack. Not only do we scour other cultures for the ‘authentic’, if quaint, folk music, handicrafts, and religious beliefs we have lost in the West, we can now find ‘authentic’ rock-as-rebellion, long after its supposed ‘death’ in the West.13 It is even possible, in this age of ‘bubble-gum punk’ such as Green Day and the ‘inauthenticity’ of the reformed Sex Pistols, to find ‘authentic’ punk music in China. As the American writer of a fanzine on the Beijing punk scene puts it:
I see punk on the [Chinese] mainland becoming just as played out as it has elsewhere, but in the time that we share now in the next couple of years, we have the control to share the original feelings directly from the sources that created them here on the mainland.
(The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, unpaginated)
In Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies, Rey Chow refers to a ‘special sibling’ of the Orientalist, whom she calls the Maoist (Chow 1993: 10). For Chow, the Maoist is typically a cultural critic who, disillusioned by capitalism and the betrayal of the Marxist promise in the West, found hope in the Chinese Communist Revolution. In contrast to the Orientalist who blames the ‘third world’ native for the loss of the ancient non-Western civilisation, the Maoist ‘applauds the same natives for personifying and fulfilling her ideals’ (Chow 1993: 12). The Maoist thus stands as ‘a supreme example of the way desire works: What she wants is always located in the other, resulting in an identification with and valorisation of that which she is not/does not have’ (Chow 1993: 10). Perhaps what we are dealing with now is the hedonistic offspring of the Maoist: with the death of rock and the failure of the ‘rock’n’roll dream’ in the West, they locate what they lack in the other: rock’n’roll is alive and well, and living in Beijing.
Getting serious about popular music: critical pop magazines
As discussed above, Western commentators have paid scant attention to the role of the media in creating understandings of rock music in China, with studies of Chinese rock continuing to focus on live performances and the rock ‘subculture’ in Beijing. However, rock music in China cannot be viewed only as a cultural form produced and consumed by a subcultural elite, for it is also a mass-mediated commodity. Far more people have access to rock music via the mass media than through attendance at underground rock shows in Beijing, or even through large-scale concert tours. A national audience for Chinese rock music — and popular perceptions of what rock is — can only be constructed via the mass media. It is thus important to consider how notions of rock music are being created through the mass media.
While the coverage of rock on television and radio is still rather limited,14 rock music has had an ever-increasing visibility in the Chinese print media since the late 1980s. Discussion of rock and rock artists, both Chinese and Western, can be found across a wide range of print media, from academic journals and specialist books to newspapers and magazines. One of the most interesting — and influential — developments in the Chinese ‘music media’ since China began its market-based economic reforms in the late 1970s has been the development of a variety of popular music magazines. Such magazines play an important role in constructing popular understandings of popular music forms, and it is to a discussion of this that I now turn.
Chinese popular music magazines have their origins in ‘song books’ — booklets containing the lyrics and sheet music of songs — which were a common medium for song transmission in the pre-cassette era. Some of the main popular music magazines in China began as monthly ‘song magazines’ in the mid- and late 1980s, containing very little, if anything, in the way of photographs, news items, interviews and other such information.15 Audio & Video World (Yinxiang shijie) claims to be China's first ‘informative’ (zhishixing) popular music magazine,16 and began publication in 1987 with the aim of catering to the need for a popular music publication containing more than just song lyrics and musical notation (Zhang Lei, interview 1998). There were few other such ‘informative’ popular music magazines until the 1990s, when a large number of popular music magazines began to appear.17 There is now a huge variety of popular music magazines available throughout urban China, including both nationally and locally distributed publications.
Chinese popular music magazines can be roughly divided into pop magazines and ‘critical pop magazines’. The former refers to publications similar to Western ‘teeny-bopper’ magazines: magazines featuring pin-ups of pop stars, short articles focused on the star rather than the music, gossip columns and pop charts. Such magazines sometimes have information on rock, but generally focus on more mainstream pop, both Chinese and foreign. There is a huge range of such magazines in China, aimed predominantly at teenagers. Popular titles include Current Scene (Dangdai getan), Fan's World (Gemi dashijie), Pop Songs (Tongsu gequ), and Pop (Qing yinyue).
Critical pop magazines can be differentiated from pop magazines in that they aim to bring a critical edge to the discussion of artists and music forms, and also to ‘educate’ readers on issues regarding popular music, and in particular rock. Magazines of this kind generally have longer articles, less focus on ‘gossip’, and an older readership.18 Examples of such magazines are Audio & Video World (Yinxiang Shijie), Music Heaven (Yinyue tiantang), the ‘new’ Popular Music (Tongsu Gequ)19 and Modern Sky (Modeng Tiankong).20
Although the use of the terms ‘pop magazine’ and ‘critical pop magazine’ in this context is my own innovation, the distinction is not entirely my own invention. Such a distinction is also made by both editorial staff and readers of critical pop magazines. Zhang Lei, an editor of Audio & Video World, argues that Audio & Video World is a ‘quality’ magazine with ‘critical’ content, and cannot be compared with ‘cheap’ magazines like Current Scene. In discussing its target audience, Zhang Lei specifically distinguishes Audio & Video World from pop magazines:
Those students who are ‘star chasers’ [zhuixingzu] probably go and read magazines like Current Scene [Dangdai getan]. That type of magazine is aimed at the tastes of that sort of young pop fan, and has a lot of Hong Kong and Taiwanese content, lots of stuff on pop idols. They’re also pretty cheap, and have more gossip. In comparison, we have more depth. We have quite a lot of critical content.
(Zhang Lei, interview 1998)
Zhang sees Music Heaven as being a similar type of magazine to Audio & Video World, and, in fact, as its main market competitor (Zhang Lei, interview 1998). Similarly, Zhang Qin — the chief editor of Music Heaven — makes a clear distinction between the readers of Music Heaven who, he argues, want ‘content’, and those readers of magazines such as Current Scene who, he suggests, are more interested in image and fashion. He views magazines such as Audio & Video World, Pop Songs (Tongsu gequ) and Modern Sky (Modeng tiankong) as being similar to Music Heaven in having ‘content’ and covering ‘progressive’ music (Zhang Qin, interview 2000).
Many readers of critical pop magazines read them, at least in part, for their critical and ‘educational’ functions. In an analysis of a reader survey in Audio & Video World, it was claimed that readers considered it to be a publication which combines ‘auth-oritativeness, guidance, informativeness, entertainment value, and collectability’ (Audio & Video World 1/95: 28).21 This claim is supported by many of the comments published in the sections of Audio & Video World set aside for readers’ comments. One reader wrote in to express his hope that the magazine would ‘continue having high quality articles with original musical views, introducing musicians who have musical and cultural significance, and not just long articles on pretty guys and girls which don't even touch on music, like XXX magazine (magazine title deleted by editor)’ (9/96: 45). Another reader mentioned Audio & Video World's ‘perfect blend of professionalism, comprehensiveness, knowledge and entertainment, which is so much better than other “gossipy” magazines’ (11/98: 74). A third reader also compared Audio & Video World favourably to other pop magazines, claiming that ‘the difference between Audio & Video World and certain entertainment magazines which focus on gossip about artists, lies in its objective and straight-speaking critique of albums, artists and hi-fi equipment’ (3/99: 82). Readers also often comment specifically on the ‘guidance’ role of Audio & and Video World, with one saying that the ‘critical nature’ of the record review column As We Hear It’ (Suiting suijiang) provides guidance for readers (2/95: 28), and another stating that ‘as I am in the early stages of my music appreciation, I still require guidance and materials’ (3/99: 82). In interviews conducted among Chinese tertiary students in 1998 I found that those students who had particularly earnest approaches to music, and especially those who emphasised that they were fans of rock music, were most likely to be readers of ‘critical pop magazines’.
Similar comments can commonly be found in other critical pop magazines, particularly in Music Heaven, whose stated aim is to ‘mainly focus on Western music as the source [of popular music]. We want to deeply analyse its essence, so that it's no longer a mystery, and so we can open up a channel for cultural and artistic communication’ (Wang Chunyan 1996: 1). Hence a distinguishing feature of ‘critical music magazines’ is that they quite explicitly aim to guide and educate their readers, and, indeed, many of their readers are looking for just such ‘guidance’. These publications thus play a particularly important role in the construction of popular music forms, and the contrasting constructions of rock and pop in Audio & Video World are the focus of the next section of this chapter.22
Learning the difference between rock and pop23
One of the common features of critical pop magazines is that they present a construction of rock music as being of particular cultural value and social significance. This particular construction of rock is by no means unique to magazines of this kind, being present in Chinese academic journals since the 1980s,24 and also being found in newspapers, general interest magazines and specialist books on rock and popular music. However, it is in critical pop magazines that this particular construction of rock is presented most consistently and coherently.
While it is a trait of critical pop magazines that they feature articles on rock music, they do not necessarily solely, or even predominantly, feature articles on rock. Audio & Video World, for instance, has a great deal of material on Hong Kong and Taiwanese pop singers, and also at times has articles on Western artists who would generally be considered pop rather than rock. A distinguishing feature of such magazines, however, is that different music styles are approached in different ways. Music which is considered to be ‘of value’ is discussed in terms of its musical and artistic content, social relevance, and more broadly in terms of the artists’ artistic development. On the other hand, music which is not considered of particular creative value is not discussed in great detail, with attention focused, instead, on issues such as the artists’ popularity or personal life. Very broadly speaking these two different approaches can be termed the ‘rock approach’ and the ‘pop approach’: the former being used predominantly for rock music25 and the latter for a variety of popular music forms, sometimes homogeneously referred to as ‘pop music’ (liuxing yinyue).26
Pertinent examples of the ‘pop approach’ and the ‘rock approach’ can be found in a January 1995 article on the pop singer Yang Yuying (Yanzi 1994) and a March 1995 article on Beijing rock singer Zang Tianshuo (Wang Xin 1995). The article on Yang Yuying clearly takes the pop approach, discussing the problems of fame, Yang's views on her fans, and the importance of packaging oneself. Musical discussion is limited to a few comments on the ‘sweet’ singing style she has developed. In contrast, the article on Zang takes the rock approach, with emphasis on his musical background rather than his popularity. As such, it discusses the music he has composed for television and cinema (a venture which is described as having ‘rock precedents’ in artists such as Pink Floyd and Eric Clapton), his talent for writing and performing songs in widely differing styles, the various rock bands he has been involved in, and the high demands he sets for himself in his work.
The contrasting terms in which the two are described are reinforced by quotes given from each of them. Yang is quoted as saying, in response to ‘certain knowledgeable people’ who dislike her ‘sweet songs’, ‘I don't know how other people think, but it is a fact that a lot of “sweet song stars” are very popular. I think that the reason sweet songs are so popular is that their sweetness gives life a bit of sugar, so people don't have to think too much’ (Yanzi 1995: 5). Zang, on the contrary, is quoted in an appropriately ‘serious’ tone, as saying that rock music ‘should express all the good things and all the bad things in your experience, should express those things that you and the common people are most concerned about, and tell them what they should do. Our future is made through actions, not words’, adding that he hopes his music ‘can be of help to all Chinese people’ (Wang Xin 1995: 16).
The ‘rock approach’ and the ‘pop approach’ are also noticeable in record reviews. Artists considered to be of a ‘serious’ nature are reviewed in more detail and more critically than less ‘serious’ artists. This difference was made even more obvious with the introduction in 1994 of ‘Record Street’ (Changpianjie), a column providing even more in-depth (half or whole page) reviews of particularly ‘worthy’ releases, virtually all of which are rock, or similarly ‘serious’, albums. The notion that rock music and its performers are to be taken more seriously than pop was made even more explicit in 1999 when a section of the magazine focusing on Western artists, previously under the English title ‘Pop and Rock’, was divided into two sections which were renamed, again in English, ‘Rock Musician’ and ‘Pop Star’ (my italics).
The tendency to present rock as more worthy of serious consideration and discussion is also reflected in the topics chosen for Audio & Video World's ‘educational’ articles. By this I am referring to two types of article: first to articles presented in one or two instalments which introduce various sub-genres of Western popular music, and second to longer-running articles spread over 12 or more issues, usually introducing important rock artists. The majority of the former introduce styles of music which would usually be categorised as genres of ‘rock’ in the West,27 and discussion is almost always presented in terms of the ‘rock approach’. The latter are most commonly about major rock figures, and have included serialised pieces on John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, and REM. Similar types of systematic, educational articles include a series of articles published from June 1992 to October 1994 called ‘Rock Conversations’ (Duihua yaogun), and an ongoing series, begun in 1999, called ‘Stories of Rock History’ (yaogun shihua), both presenting a history and discussion of rock genres and major artists.
One of the functions of such educational articles is to create a history of rock for the magazine's readers. This ‘creation’ of rock history is also carried out — or perhaps reinforced and normalised — through a section called ‘Yesterday Once More’ which presents old black and white photos of ‘classic’ rock musicians, mainly from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s,28 and also through the regular quizzes which focus on ‘rock knowledge’. While regular interviews and articles feature Western ‘pop’ artists such as Madonna, Wet Wet Wet and The Spice Girls, they are seemingly not considered worthy of being presented in a systematic, ‘educational’ way, or of being reworked into Audio & Video World's re-creation of rock history. Hence the impression is given that certain ‘serious’ artists and genres — usually ‘rock’ artists and genres — are of particular cultural, artistic or musical significance.
While other critical pop magazines differ from Audio & Video World in format and content, they all similarly attach particular cultural value to rock. This is done by granting rock music a privileged position in the hierarchy of popular music, implicitly defining it as of greater value than pop music. The relationship constructed between rock and pop music is somewhat similar to ‘traditional’ Western rock/pop distinctions of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some of the traits attributed to rock music in this process — creativity, musical virtuosity, and artistic and cultural value -are similar to traits attributed to ‘high’ cultural forms in both the West and in China, and these traits supposedly make rock worthy of serious, considered listening. While pop is not explicitly presented as an inferior form, the ascription of such traits almost exclusively to rock implicitly presents pop as being of lower cultural value. The next section will discuss ways in which such distinctions of cultural value are reflected in the views of Chinese tertiary students.
Popular music and social distinction
The cultural distinctions implicitly made in critical pop magazines — namely that rock is of particular social and cultural significance compared to pop music — were replicated in many of the responses to a survey I conducted into the music tastes and listening habits of university students in Beijing in 1996. In response to a question asking for definitions of the terms rock and pop,29 a number of respondents referred to rock's greater capacity for artistic statement and self-expression vis-à-vis other popular music forms. For instance, some defined rock music as: ‘Music with definite connotative meaning, touching on a wide range of things’, and ‘music with good musicians as its core, which can fully express the character of musically creative people’. A number of people who indicated elsewhere in the survey that they were not rock fans gave definitions of rock which seemed to indicate that they had also internalised the discourse of rock as higher in terms of cultural value, with responses such as: ‘[Rock is] music that your average person can't appreciate. It is a form which destroys the fetters on your mind’; and ‘rock is a type of music I really don't understand, but really want to understand’.30
Such responses were offset by a smaller number of respondents who seemingly saw all popular music as ‘low culture’ in the worst sense of the word, and rock music as its lowest form, with one respondent describing rock as being ‘[t]he hoarse and exhausted catharsis of a group of disappointed people, with no options left, who are starting something new in order to be different’. Only one respondent expressed the attitude — often considered ‘typical’ of rock fans in the West — that rock was of great significance and pop music unimportant and superficial. This respondent described pop music as ‘[a] money-making tool for people who are deceiving both others and themselves. Garbage which only knows repetition and formalism’. In contrast he described rock as ‘[t]he only method for attaining the most primeval desire and aesthetic feeling. Beneath its noisy exterior it has the magic to make people's souls feel at peace’.31
While the majority of respondents claimed to enjoy pop music, it was never described in terms of creativity, musical skill or as a tool of expression. Rather, it was frequently referred to as easily understood, spreading quickly in popularity, and limited in terms of its time span. Typical comments about pop music were: ‘music for the people’; ‘music that the people like and can spread easily’; ‘music that is generally enjoyed by everybody within a definite time span’; and ‘a momentary joy’. One response which encapsulated all three of these common points was that pop music ‘can spread among the broad masses. No matter whether the listeners' personal quality is high or low they can all accept and sing it. It has time constraints’. Although not necessarily negative per se,32 such comments do indicate that pop music is not constructed in the terms of cultural and artistic value that are commonly used in reference to rock.
The responses to my surveys thus indicate that while there is no consensus on rock's position within the cultural hierarchy of popular music, a significant number of respondents do reproduce the notion that rock is of higher cultural value than pop music.33 In discussing contemporary British dance culture, Sarah Thornton claims that dichotomies like mainstream/subculture and commercial/alternative do not relate to the way dance crowds are objectively organised as much as to the means by which many youth cultures imagine their social world, measure their social worth and claim their ‘subcultural capital’. Clubbers thus define themselves against a constructed notion of the mainstream (Thornton 1995: 96). Similarly, many Chinese rock fans, as well as many who are not fans, define Chinese rock music against a constructed notion of pop music. Discourses surrounding rock and pop music in China are thus best considered to be ‘ideologies’ positioning the speaker in terms of their tastes.34 Hence I am not proposing that we understand rock music itself by comparing it to pop music, but that we can understand more about media constructions of, and popular discourses about, rock by looking at how it is constructed against other forms of popular music. The rock/pop distinction should not be seen as a ‘real’ relationship, but as a process whereby they are constructed against each other. This process is evident not only in the print media but also in popular perceptions of popular music, and is multidirectional — for example, some respondents specifically referred to pop music as ‘not rock’. Understanding how such processes function is essential to understanding the processes of distinction which take place within popular music.
These distinctions are those of cultural hierarchy within popular culture. Distinctions such as those traditionally made between high and low culture — that is, expressions of cultural value — are also being continually made within popular culture. The positions and terms of such distinctions are constantly formed and re-formed through continual processes of struggle and negotiation. It appears that as with the ‘traditional’ rock/pop and mainstream/alternative distinctions common in the West, there are sections of the popular music audience in China who want something different, who want to define themselves in different (although related, if not mirrored) ways. This process is ongoing, with the terrain always changing. For example, punk rock emerged in China during the 1990s, supposedly defining itself against mainstream Chinese rock, which supposedly defines itself against pop music, which supposedly defines itself against ‘government-approved songs’. The situation is far more complex than this, however, with each ‘genre’ further breaking down into various sub-genres, each with their various media discourses and supporters. There are numerous influences on such developments, including social, musical, commercial and presumably political ones. The acts of social distinction involved in such matters of taste should not, however, be assumed to contain any direct political significance. Indeed, it is more important to understand the processes of struggle within popular culture than it is to see popular culture per se struggling against high culture, or hegemony, or some other suitably monolithic, repressive ‘other’.35
As Sarah Thornton reminds us: ‘[t]astes are fought over precisely because people define themselves and others through what they like and dislike … Youth, therefore, often embrace “unpopular cultures” because they distinguish them in ways that the widely liked cannot’ (Thornton 1995: 164). Rock music — and its various sub-genres — is still a fairly new cultural form in China, and to many ears still particularly ‘unpopular’; hence in some ways it could be considered an ideal vehicle for social distinction. Perhaps choosing to be a fan of rock is more likely to be a ‘considered’ act of social distinction in China, as it is not the seemingly ‘natural’ choice it is for most fans in the West. This, however, does not mean that there is any inherent subversiveness in choosing to be a rock fan.36
Conclusion
The mass mediation of Chinese rock opens it up to a multitude of uses. The use of rock in processes of social distinction is one of these, but to focus on this particular use alone would be just as reductive as taking the ‘rock as rebellion’ approach to the analysis of Chinese popular music. More in-depth research and analysis would surely reveal a plenitude of different understandings and uses of rock, particularly if the study was taken beyond the confines of the urban tertiary campus. Such steps are obviously beyond the scope of this particular chapter, however, and the main aims here have been to argue against the common portrayal of rock as necessarily subversive, and to indicate the importance of understanding rock in terms of its construction in the mass media.
My media analysis and surveys have shown that, rather than being defined against mainstream culture, or hegemony, or some such extra-musical ‘other’, rock is continually being defined against, and in the context of, other forms of Chinese popular music. To overlook this is to decontextualise rock, and it is exactly this sort of decontexualisation that has enabled commentators such as Andrew Jones and Linda Jaivin to provide a view of Chinese rock as necessarily subversive. By removing Chinese rock from its contexts we open it up to our preconceived understandings of it. The Western eye focuses on what it thinks it can comprehend, and in the field of Chinese popular music this is rock. This is perhaps why Western commentators have neglected such important areas of Chinese popular culture as Chinese pop and karaoke, for we have no ‘model’ by which to understand them, and hence they are beyond our comprehension. It is ironic that while discussion of Chinese rock is couched in terms of subversion and dissonance, it is the stylised mimesis of karaoke and the dulcet tones of Chinese pop which subvert the Western gaze and are dissonant to the Western ear.
The major obstacle to our attempts to comprehend Chinese popular music and contemporary popular culture is that we still have not come to terms with a Chinese modernity. Chinese studies provide an academic tradition which offers ways of ‘knowing’ ‘traditional’ China, but with contemporary Chinese culture we only feel comfortable — or competent — with those aspects which we feel we can understand on our own Western terms. Aspects of Chinese culture which are both ‘Chinese’ and ‘modern’ remain alien to us, as we have no models or traditions of thought by which to understand them. Until we can comprehend the notion of a non-Western modernity (or postmodernity) our attempts to analyse Chinese rock music, and indeed any field of Chinese popular culture, are condemned to continue to be reproductions of Western ideas of modernity; to be continuations of the master narrative Dipesh Chakrabarty calls ‘the history of Europe’ (Chakrabarty 1992: 1).
Andrew Jones's construction of Chinese rock in Like A Knife is just such a reproduction of European history. Encouraged by Western ‘rock ideology’ and the common desire to locate lost ‘authenticities’ in the other, Jones utilises problematic theoretical models of British subcultural theory and overlooks the importance of the media in cultural construction, thus unavoidably providing a vision of Chinese rock as subversive. Such a line fits in so neatly with common Chinese studies understandings of the relationship between popular culture and the CCP state and its ‘official’ culture, that it has been uncritically adopted by most of the commentators who have followed on from Jones in examining Chinese popular music. Given that academic interest in this area is unlikely to wane in the near future, it would be expedient if we could shake off the romantic and reductionist notions of rock as necessarily subversive, of the popular as necessarily progressive, and of difference as necessarily good.
Notes
This chapter is based on various sections of my PhD dissertation. See Stokes (2002). Some sections of this chapter also appear in Stokes (1999). Thanks to all YUCCS members for their comments on early drafts of this chapter: David Bray (thanks for the title), Peter Micic, Kaz Ross, and, for services above and beyond the call of duty, Elaine Jeffreys.
1 In Chapter 1 of this volume Michael Hayes similarly argues against ‘the tendency in much Western cultural studies to see popular music as transgressive’.
2 Two full-length books on Chinese rock have been published in German. See Steen (1996) and Heberer (1994). For a review of Steen, see Chong (1997). There are a number of English language articles on Chinese rock. For examples see Chong (1991), Friedlander (1991), Jaivin (1991), Micic (1994a, 1994b and 1995), Lee (1995), Brace (1991), Jones (1994), Wong (1997), Stokes (1997), and de Kloet (2000). For a somewhat different take on Chinese popular music see ‘Listening Otherwise, Music Miniaturised: A Different Type of Question About Revolution’, in Chow (1993): 144–64. For examples of journalistic work on Chinese rock see Asiaweek (1995), Jaivin (1994), Jones (1992b), Mihalca (1991), Schell (1992), Tannenbaum (1998) and Wehrfritz (1998). There are also a number of internet sites dedicated to Chinese rock. A useful site which gives access to a large number of other Chinese rock sites is the Chinese Rock Music Black List: http://balls.hypermart.net/rock.html
3 Jones's text has been very influential among commentators on Chinese rock. Thomas B. Gold draws directly from Jones to refer to rock as being explicitly subversive (Gold 1995: 272). Andreas Steen's MA thesis, ‘Rockmusik in Beijing — Aspekte von Subkultur und Wertewandel in der urbanen Jugrendzene Chinas’, is partly based on Jones's Like A Knife (see announcement in Chime Journal 8 (Spring 1995): 149). Of various reviews of Like A Knife, Lang (1995) is the only one which raises concerns about Jones's presentation of rock as an authentic voice of Chinese rebellion.
4 Grossberg et al. point out that the British concept of subcultures is particularly ‘historically entangled’, and hence particularly difficult to transpose to other situations (Grossberg et al. 1992: 8).
5 There are many critiques of Hebdige and of Birmingham subcultural theory in general. For example, see Clarke (1990), Cohen (1980: particularly ‘Symbols of Trouble’, i–xxxiv), Gelder and Thornton (1997), and Thornton (1995). Hebdige himself has revised many of his early ideas. For example, see Hebdige (1988: particularly 17–36). While not a specific critique of his earlier work, his reconsideration of it, particularly the relationship between commercial culture and subcultures, is evident.
6 This is not to say that this particular concept of rock has received blanket approval in Chinese studies. Chinese studies is generally quite a conservative discipline, and popular culture is considered by many not to be an area worthy of study. However, the type of line described here is pervasive among the minority who do take an academic interest in Chinese popular culture.
7 Jones does admit the importance of the portrayal of rock in the print media as an influence on the way in which rock is perceived and used by ‘the larger youth culture’, and includes a section entitled ‘Rock in Print’. Unfortunately this section is very short and only includes discussion of two articles. See Jones (1992a: 125–8). In a later text Jones pays more attention to the role of the media, but discusses this in terms of the ‘commodi-fication’ of Chinese rock, which is reminiscent of many early subculturalist works which see the media as becoming involved ‘after the event’ and incorporating and defusing subcultures. See Jones (1994). For a critique of Jones's ‘commodification argument’ in this text see Stokes (1997: particularly 59–61).
8 For discussion of Chinese popular music in the print media see Micic (1994a and 1994b). Unfortunately both these articles are brief and are not part of a broader project connecting discussion of print media material on Chinese popular music to a broader discussion of popular music in China.
9 As Lawrence Grossberg says: ‘Rock and Roll is, from its own side, not merely a subset of “pop”, and there must always be music that is not rock and roll. Such “other” music is “co-opted”, “sold-out”, “bubblegum”, “family entertainment”, and so on’ (Grossberg 1997: 38).
10 This of course is only one particular construction of pop, and is a particularly ‘rockist one. Throughout this chapter I use the term ‘pop’ predominantly to refer to this particular construction of pop as the ‘other’ of rock.
11 One exception to this was the work of Angela McRobbie. See McRobbie and Garber (1993) and McRobbie (1991).
12 Grossberg discusses what it means to talk about the death of rock in Grossberg (1994: particularly 41–4).
13 For example, Dennis Rea claims that many in the audience at a Cui Jian concert in Seattle in 1994 remarked that ‘the music possessed a passion and vitality that has all but disappeared from corporate Western rock’. See Rea (1994: 98).
14 This is very much the case with Chinese rock, but less so with Western rock.
15 Three magazines which have such beginnings are Pop (Qing yinyue), Pop Songs (Tongsu gequ) and Pop Music (Liuxing yinyue). All three began as monthly song magazines in the mid-1980s, gradually changed their formats over the 1990s, and now predominantly contain articles, photos, record reviews and suchlike items.
16 In interview, Zhang Lei, one of the editors of Audio & Video World, frequently used this term in describing the magazine (Zhang Lei, interview 1998).
17 Popular music magazines to begin publication in the 1990s include Music Heaven (Yinyue tiantang, 1992), Fan's World (Gemi dashijie, 1993), Current Scene (Dangdai getan, 1994), Chinese Broadway (Zhongguo bailaohui, 1994), The East Music (Dongfang gesheng, 1997) and Pop Star (Xingzuo, 1997).
18 According to survey results published in Music Heaven in August 1998, 50 per cent of their readers are aged 16–20 and 46 per cent are aged 21 and over. Their largest readership group is university students, followed by senior high school students, and then by junior high school students (Music Heaven 27 (8/98): 39). According to Audio & Video World's Readers’ Opinions Survey Statistics from 1998, 77.5 per cent of their readers are aged between 20 and 30. ‘Pop magazines’ such as Current Scene tend to have a readership made up predominantly of junior and senior high school students.
19 Over the late 1990s Tongsu gequ moved away from being a pop magazine to being a critical pop magazine, with longer, more critical articles, and a focus on rock and alternative rock rather than pop music. By late 1999 it was claiming, on its cover, to be a ‘specialised rock publication’.
20 In surveys and interviews I conducted among tertiary students in Beijing and Nanjing in 1998, Music Heaven and Audio & Video World were the two music publications most commonly reported as being read.
21 All references in this paragraph are to sections of Audio & Video World with no individual author.
22 My decision to focus on Audio & Video World is because it has maintained a ‘critical pop magazine’ role over a sustained period of time, and because, through my surveys and interviews and through general observations, it appears widely popular both among tertiary students and the wider youth community, including many young people involved in music-making.
23 In this chapter I am not concerned with musicological distinctions between rock and pop, but with how the terms are used in the print media and popular discourses. The term ‘rock’ refers to the Chinese word ‘yaogun yinyue’ (literally ‘shake roll music’). This is a Chinese translation of the word rock (or rock’n’roll) and is used to refer to both Chinese and non-Chinese rock. The term ‘pop’ refers to the Chinese word ‘liuxing yinyue’. Liuxing yinyue’ has the meanings both of popular music in general (hence including rock) and of ‘pop’ music, referring to a variety of popular music forms including — but rarely exclusively referring to — the style of music sometimes referred to as Canto-pop. This use of the word can sometimes include rock, but in the types of discourses I am concerned with here, ‘liuxing yinyue’ generally would not include rock. ‘Liuxing yinyue’ also refers to both Chinese and non-Chinese music. My use of the term ‘Chinese pop’ in this paper is as a cover-all term for non-rock styles of mass-mediated Chinese popular music. For a discussion of different popular music genres in China see Micic (1995).
24 For a discussion of what I term the ‘reconstruction of rock mythology’ in Chinese academic journals see Stokes (2002: particularly Chapter 2) and Stokes (forthcoming).
25 Particular non-rock artists and genres at times are discussed in terms of the ‘rock approach’. An example of this is the feature on world music in the January 1997 edition of Audio & Video World, which includes discussion of the Chinese ‘world music’ album ‘Agu Jie’ (Sister Drum) by Dadawa.
26 Rock artists are nearly always explicitly referred to as such in Audio & Video World. Singers of other popular music forms are sometimes referred to as singers of pop music, or of particular styles of pop music, but often no particular reference is made to the style of music they perform.
27 Topics of articles introducing styles of music in Audio & Video World in 1995 and 1996 included ‘England's New Wave of New Wave’ (on bands such as Elastica, These Animal Men, Echobelly, Shed Seven), ‘20 Years of Punk’, ‘Roots of Alternative Rock’ (on The Velvet Underground, The MC5, The Stooges and David Bowie), ‘Women in Rock’, ‘Southern Californian Rock’, ‘Industrial Music’ (on bands such as Kraftwerk, Big Black, Ministry, Godflesh, Nine Inch Nails) and ‘The New York Sound in Rock History’.
28 The first instalment of Yesterday Once More’ (April 1998) contained photos of the Jam, Freddie Mercury, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Peter Gabriel and Linda Ronstadt; the second (May 1998) of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Pink Floyd, Elvis Presley, a young Michael Jackson, Prince, the Yardbirds, Rod Stewart and Chrissie Hynde; and the third June 1998) of the Sex Pistols, the Rolling Stones, Debbie Harry, Tina Turner, David Bowie and Joy Division. Later entire instalments have been devoted to the Beatles (March 1999) and to the Rolling Stones (June 1999).
29 In initial surveys I left out this question so as to avoid artificially introducing the rock/pop distinction to my respondents. It became clear from other questions, however, that this distinction was already firmly established among most respondents.
30 This is reminiscent of Pierre Bourdieu's working-class respondents accepting the legitimacy of ‘high culture’ (Bourdieu 1984: 318). Sarah Thornton similarly gives examples of females accepting their own taste as inferior (‘It's crap but I like it’) (Thornton 1994: 179) and Robert Walser describes heavy metal fans as accepting the superiority of classical music (Walser 1994: 235).
31 While it is sometimes assumed that rock is ‘anti-pop’, this is not supported by the tastes of the majority of respondents. In response to the question of what type of music they liked, virtually all respondents who indicated that they liked rock indicated that they also liked other music forms, and these nearly always included pop music. In fact, only 1 respondent out of 47 indicated that they only liked rock music, and of the total of 21 who included rock among the types of music they liked, 19 also liked pop music.
32 Indeed, in the context of both ‘traditional’ and contemporary Chinese views concerning the social functions of music, and especially in terms of the Communist belief that culture must be accessible to all, traits such as being easily understood and spreading easily can be seen as quite positive. I discuss this issue in more detail in Stokes (2002).
33 In my doctoral dissertation I demonstrate an important difference between the ‘othering of pop and rock taking place in the print media and that taking place among my survey respondents. In the print media the othered constructions of pop and rock commonly involve a ‘demonising’ of pop: pop is presented as being not as good as rock. However, among the vast majority of my survey respondents this othering process is not as judgemental: rock is seen as having particular social and cultural value, but pop is still considered relevant and seen as having important functions. See Stokes (2002: particularly 154–7).
34 Thornton stresses that discourses of dance culture are not innocent accounts of the way things really are, but ‘ideologies fulfilling the specific cultural agendas of their beholders (Thornton 1995: 10).
35 One of the key features of Thornton's work on British dance subcultures is that by analysing ‘club cultures’ in terms of the distinctions within their internal cultural hierarchies, she focuses on the processes of struggle within popular culture, rather than on the opposition between popular culture and hegemony. This approach avoids the use of rigid top-down models of social structure — such as those associated with many of the Birmingham School-style subcultural studies — and the associated reductive notions of popular culture as essentially subversive.
36 In keeping with Thornton's reminder that difference is not necessarily progressive, it is important to note that, from the record industry's perspective, difference can make good economic sense. One could argue that the desire of fans to distinguish themselves through their non-mainstream tastes is exploited by record companies and encouraged by the media. The print media effectively play as great a hand in creating the rock/pop dichotomy as anyone else in China. A particularly cynical view would see the music industry creating difference, the mass media promoting and legitimating it, and the ‘non-mainstream audience/consumer obtaining their social distinction though consuming it. From such a perspective the media's construction and dissemination of a notion of ‘rock’ in China could be considered to be educating people to be good consumers, rather than encouraging them to embrace a rebellious ideology. Steven Connor describes a similar situation in the West in his convincing critique of notions that ‘marginal rock music’ is particularly subversive or liberating, describing the rock music industry as
probably the best example of the process by which contemporary capitalist culture promotes or multiplies difference in the interests of maintaining its profit structure. If there is a dominant in contemporary rock music, it is the dominance of multiple marginality … Far from decentring or undermining the structures of the rock industry, each eruption of cultural difference only serves to stabilize this culture, by spreading and diversifying its boundaries.
(Connor, quoted in Frow 1995: 62, footnote 6)