Quotation songs

doi:10.1017/CBO9781107298576.004

3 - Quotation songs

Portable media and the Maoist pop song

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014

Andrew F. Jones

Edited by

Alexander C. Cook

Show author details

Andrew F. Jones: Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Alexander C. Cook: Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Singing Chairman Mao’s quotation songs, we think of Chairman Mao; singing Chairman Mao’s quotation songs, we remember Chairman Mao’s instructions; singing Chairman Mao’s quotation songs, it’s as if Chairman Mao himself is by our side.

People’s Daily, September 30, 1967

At the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China in April 1969, Chairman Mao’s wife Jiang Qing issued a surprising broadside against a form of music that had once seemed to embody the political passions of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: the quotation song. These songs, which had been promoted nationwide since September 1966, set the Chairman’s maxims to music, and were deliberately conceived as a musical analogue and mnemonic device for Quotations from Chairman Mao, more popularly known as the Little Red Book. Upon watching a televised song-and-dance program extolling the Chairman, Jiang Qing is reported to have said:

Don’t you believe that they are singing about Mao Zedong thought – that’s not really what it is at all. It’s yellow music. We’ve already dealt a blow to the emperors and feudal lords, and now they’re doing this sort of thing? In future, we need to get rid of folk tunes, we need to be rid of this swing music. They say they’re eliminating the old and ringing in the new. What’s new here? Some of their movements are based entirely on swing dancing.

She continued, “They’re wearing red stars and waving red flags, but they’re swing dancing. They may as well be naked.”

Type: Chapter
Information: Mao's Little Red Book
A Global History
, pp. 43 - 60

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107298576.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Burns, Gary, “A Typology of ‘Hooks’ in Popular Records,” Popular Music 6.1 (January 1987), pp. 1–20CrossRef Google Scholar

Chan, Anita, Madsen, Richard, and Unger, Jonathan, Chen Village: The Recent History of a Peasant Community in Mao’s China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar

Clark, Paul, The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)Google Scholar

Derrida, Jacques, “Signature Event Context” (1971), in Limited Inc. (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1988), pp. 1–24Google Scholar

Hodgson, Jay, Understanding Records: A Field Guide to Recording Practice (New York: Continuum Books, 2010)Google Scholar

Ziping, Huang, “Qishi niandai richang yuyan xue” [Everyday linguistics in the 1970s], in Dao, Bei and Tuo, Li, eds., Qishi niandai [The seventies] (Beijing: Sanlian, 2009), pp. 319–30; trans. Nick Admussen as “Practical Linguistics of the 1970s,” Renditions 75 (Spring 2011), pp. 72–88Google Scholar

Jones, Andrew F., Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001)CrossRef Google Scholar

Maochun, Liang, “Lun ‘yulu ge’ xianxiang” [On the quotation songs phenomenon] Huangzhong: Wuhan yinyue xueyuan xuebao 1 (2003), pp. 43–52Google Scholar

Maochun, Liang, “Lun ‘yulu ge’ xianxiang” [On the quotation songs phenomenon], part 2, Huangzhong: Wuhan yinyue xueyuan xuebao 2 (2003), pp. 91–94Google Scholar

Biao, Lin, “Zaiban qianyan” [Preface to the second edition], in Mao Zhuxi Yulu [Quotations of Chairman Mao] (Guangzhou: Zhongguo renmin jiefang jun zong zhengzhi bu, 1967), pp. 1–3Google Scholar

Liu, Alan, Communications and National Integration in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971)Google Scholar

McGrath, Jason, “Cultural Revolution Model Opera Films and the Realist Tradition in Chinese Cinema,” The Opera Quarterly 26.2–3 (Spring–Summer 2010), pp. 343–76CrossRef Google Scholar

Morson, Gary Paul, “The Quotation and its Genres,” Sun Yat-sen Journal of Humanities 21 (Winter 2005), pp. 125–39Google Scholar

Nathan, Andrew, Chinese Democracy (London: I. B. Tauris, 1986)Google Scholar

Wong, Isabel K. F., “Geming gequ: Songs for the Education of the Masses,” in Macdougal, Bonnie, ed., Popular Chinese Culture and Performing Arts in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 112–43Google Scholar

Yunxiang, Yan, Siren shenghuo de biange: yige zhongguo cunzhuang li de aiqing, jiating yu qinmi guanxi, 1949–1999 [The transformation of everyday life: love, family, and intimacy in a Chinese village, 1949–1999] (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 2006)Google Scholar

Yurchak, Alexei, Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar

Maochun, Liang, “Lun ‘yulu ge’ xianxiang” [On the quotation songs phenomenon], Huangzhong: Wuhan yinyue xueyuan xuebao 1 (2003), pp. 46–47. Jiang Qing’s comments were made on April 15, 1969.Google Scholar

Jones, Andrew F., Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).CrossRef Google Scholar

Biao, Lin, “Zaiban qianyan” [Preface to the second edition], in Mao Zhuxi Yulu [Quotations from Chairman Mao] (Guangzhou: Zhongguo renmin jiefang jun zong zhengzhi bu, 1967), p. 2.Google Scholar

Maochun, Liang, “Lun ‘yulu ge’ xianxiang” [On the quotation songs phenomenon], part 2, Huangzhong: Wuhan yinyue xueyuan xuebao 2 (2003), pp. 91–93.Google Scholar

Nathan, Andrew, Chinese Democracy (London: I. B. Tauris, 1986), p. 163.Google Scholar

Liu, Alan, Communications and National Integration in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 119–29.Google Scholar

Yunxiang, Yan, Siren shenghuo de biange: yige zhongguo cunzhuang li de aiqing, jiating yu qinmi guanxi, 1949–1999 [The transformation of everyday life: love, family, and intimacy in a Chinese village, 1949–199] (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 2006), p. 41.Google Scholar

Chan, Anita, Madsen, Richard, and Unger, Jonathan, Chen Village: The Recent History of a Peasant Community in Mao’s China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 84–85.Google Scholar

Derrida, Jacques, “Signature Event Context,” in Limited Inc (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1988), pp. 1–24.Google Scholar

Hodgson, Jay, Understanding Records: A Field Guide to Recording Practice (New York: Continuum Books, 2010), pp. 97–116.Google Scholar

Burns, Gary, “A Typology of ‘Hooks’ in Popular Records,” Popular Music 6.1 (January 1987), pp. 1–20.CrossRef Google Scholar

Yurchak, Alexei, Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 24–26.Google Scholar

Ziping, Huang, “Qishi niandai richang yuyan xue” [Everyday linguistics in the 1970s], in Dao, Bei and Tuo, Li, eds., Qishi niandai [The seventies] (Beijing: Sanlian, 2009), p. 324.Google Scholar

Book contents

3 - Quotation songs

Summary

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive