Illustration:
ill. 2.5 b (set: 2.5)
Date:
1990s
Genre:
CD cover, music
Material:
photograph, colour; original source: CD cover, colour
Source:
Red Jazz 红色爵士 (Private copy/photograph), 1990s.
Courtesy:
Barbara Mittler
Inscription:
红色爵士
Keywords:
Red Sun Fever, red sun, radiance, sunrays, Mao Zedong, popular culture, Chinese pop music, Mao Cult, hero, nostalgia

Red Jazz (Hongse jueshi 红色爵士)

Pop and rock versions of the old revolutionary songs praising the sun began flooding the Chinese music market since the late 1980s, a trend which culminated in the so-called “Red Sun Fever,” 红太阳热 around the centenary of Mao’s birthday in 1993: millions of tapes and CDs with pop, rap, jazz and rock versions of the old songs in praise of Mao were being published almost by the day. Within a few months in 1991 more than one million copies sold, 14 million by 1993, 72 million by 2006 and 80 million by 2008: the movement has not subsided, to the contrary (Barmé 1999:186; Lee 1995:99).