CULTURAL REVOLUTION REMOLDS MUSIC IN CHINA
-On December 31 all the newspapers in Peking took their entire front pages to réproduce the facsimile of the script of a poem composed in 1963 by Chairman Mao Tse-tung. A poem by Mao. Tse-tung is, of course, always newsworthy in China although in this in-;
: at stance it took the papers two
. ’ years to get around to giving
5 & K ff] Es Ww At K ‘L v) it front-page prominence. Evi-
dently it was to make up for
ME this procrastination that all
of them featured it on the
same day and devoted their
entire front pages to it.
XIN LI LIANG
LING DAO WO = MEN SHI YE_ DE
“a FS hk g ew 8 NS a gz The poem is unusual in
: . ‘several respects. Besides be-
ing in Mao's own handwriting,
it is a polemical reply to
- Kuo Mo-jo, one of China's
leading literary lights.
in addition, Mao set the poem
to music, using the melody of
Man Chiang Hung. The reply
thus has something of the im-
pact of the singing telegram
that gained wide appreciation
in the United. States. some
years ago. $ e o# *, ih S # ff zhong guc gong chan Gang . zhi dao we omen
: This fine example set
: = ' , by Chairman Mao seems to have
T # He. RPE De EER TD: caught.on. The January 2 Pek-
ing Review reports that "A
8 new revolutionary song move-
iment is in full swing. through-
. out the country. More.and more HP MH FR: ee F 8B F BH Ft BH FB people are singing scores. of gong chan dang wan sus mac zhu xi warn sui wan sur wan sul wan wan sui new songs made up of texts
. oh oo ; Se from Chairman Mao's quotations English translation of the quotation: - — . set to music... The new songs, The force at the core leading Gur cause forward is the Chinese composed by revolutionary mu-
Communist Party. . ie :
° f aa: inking ic Marxis inis Sicians during the current he th tice asi ding cur thinking is Marxism-Leninism. c The theoretical basis guiding our 8 great cultural revolution,
are being sung by the masses He mung zhu yt . eng chai: dang wan su mao zhu xi wan su”
with rousing revolutionary fervour."
As explained by the. Peking Review the masses are heeding: Lin Piao's advice that to really master Mao Tse-tung's thought, "it is necessary to study many of Chairman Mao's basic concepts. over and over again, and it-is best to memorize some of his important passages and study and apply them repeatedly." Thus a new cultural need arose in China; or, as. the Peking Review puts it: . a "Hence the public demand for Chairman Mao's instructions to be set to music so that they can be sung everyday and at any time, the better to imprint them in one's mind more deeply and express them in action." ; To meet the "revolutionary mass demand," continues the Peking Review, “revolutionary composers already before National Day last year, began to set quotations from Chair-— man Mao to music."
Here is one of Mao's tuneful lyrics cited by Peking Review: "All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. .From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are.really powerful." . Is this new wave of music, inspired by the singability of Mao's quotations, merely a passing fad? This would hardly seem to be the case in view of the rich-resources still to be tapped in the four volumes of Mao's Collected Works. As the Peking Review concludes: "The emergence of these new songs shows clearly that in energetically propagating Mao Tse-tung's thought and serving proletarian politics and the workers, peasants: and
soldiers, our art and literature will be warmly acclaimed by the broad masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, and have the most brilliant prospects. The scores of new songs with text from Chairman Mao's quotations are just a beginning. It can be confidently expected that the wave of mass enthusiasm in studying and applying Chairman Mao's works in a creative way and the efforts of revolutionary musicians will carry these songs far and wide throughout China in ever greater numbers.
‘MAO'S