Media file:
mus. 2.7
Title:
Tang Chao cover the Internationale
Source:
Heidelberg catalogue entry, DACHS Archive
Courtesy:
Heidelberg University Institute of Chinese Studies
Keywords:
The Internationale, contemporary China, Cui Jian, Tang Dynasty, Rock, Tian’anmen

Tang Chao cover the Internationale

Next to Cui Jian the rock concert performed “on a truck” on Tian’anmen in early June 1989, featured a heavy metal group Tang Dynasty (唐朝 Tangchao) performing their particular version of the “Internationale” to be heard here. Not unlike the pop and rock medleys of songs in praise of Mao, this version of the “Internationale” keeps the original melody and text but reconceives the song within the context of a new type of sound. Like many Chinese musicians—Cui Jian being perhaps the exception to prove the rule—vocalist and band leader Ding Wu 丁武 (1962–) says he is not really interested in politics. It is also difficult to envisage how and why his version of the “Internationale,” doggedly faithful to the lyrics and melody of the original in spite of its radically new musical reconception, could possibly be condemned and criticized (Xue 1993, 25; Steen 1996, 174–75). In any case, in the later months of 1989 the Party did attempt to “regulate” the singing of the “Internationale,” because, according to them, it had been “defiled” through its use by those who had now been termed “counterrevolutionaries” (Wasserstrom 1991, 322). In spite of bans on the public singing of the “Internationale,” however, its power appeared quite invincible: in December 1991 it rose again, now in published form (if through a Taiwanese firm) on an LP by Tang Dynasty that soon hit record sales.