Conclusion: Breakthrough as a “New” Mainstream
The emergence of individualism in the pop songs of the 1980s marks the rise of humanism in China, and shows that it extended significantly beyond the minority musical space of rock music. In contrast to a collectivist ideology in which all were expected to behave in set ways, putting the homeland and the party line above their personal doubts or desires, the pop musicians created a new narrative that offered comfort with regard to the painful memories and spiritual wounds of the past. The songs explored in this chapter—“Blood-Stained Dignity”, “Fill the World with Love”, and “My Beloved Hometown”—indicate how these musicians projected their feelings of sadness, confusion, and worry in a calm, soft, and direct way, and their emergent articulation of self-direction can be seen as an important indicator of how Chinese intellectuals of that period hoped to find and build a new future for themselves and for the nation by enlisting mainstream expressive and political channels. They thus stand apart from songs like “I Have Nothing” which shared the same ideological analysis but did not present collaboration with mainstream state forces as a means forward.
With events in June 1989, these collaborative dreams were for the most part shattered, and the pop music mainstream in China turned slowly but inexorably toward commercial entertainment ends, but, for a few years in the late 1980s, pop musicians’ songs pushed onto the political stage. They enabled young people to assert their equality with the older generation and began to take over the function of revolutionary songs in embracing social issues, ideological connections, and spiritual guidance. For instance, immediately after the premier of “Fill the World with Love” on May 9, 1986, an official newspaper assessed the performance as a political articulation of important social issues, gathering together pop singers who, it claimed, usually behaved like “a heap of loose sand”.30 Following this official statement on the song, music critics and scholars started to re-evaluate the role of pop songs. For instance, scholar Liang Maochun claimed that “Pop [tongsu ] songs are best suited to expressing the key issues of the times, including political issues” (Liang, 1987).
The content assessed here may help address Western misapprehensions of the history of Chinese music, which can both overestimate the social impact of rock and under recognize the progressive political content of certain mainstream songs in the mid- and late 1980s. It also suggests that it may be worth a close look at the mainstream popular musics of other periods and the ways it reflects (or denies) the ideologies of its creators or draws together (or apart) contrasting generations of listeners. The Chinese intellectuals may no longer be setting the pace in mainstream songwriting and the social disruption of the Cultural Revolution is certainly receding, but this does not automatically mean that those writing and performing subsequent sets of repertory possess less complicated ideologies or future ambitions.