Title:
Song of the Grass-Mud Horse (Cao Ni Ma)
Composer/Performer(s): Protesters of Chinese censorship of free speech (2nd video: plus Ai Weiwei, influential Chinese artist and political activist)
Culture: Chinese
Orchestration: Voices (either children or altered (pitch-raised) adults. I’m not sure.); some typical western traditional orchestral instruments (synthesized, I think) including flute, xylophone, and percussion.
This piece
seems, on the surface very benign—nothing more than some children’s song (at
least if you can’t speak Chinese and have only read a very literal translation
of the lyrics). However, the song
is filled with phrases that sound
much like Chinese profanity.
Censorship and barring of free speech are currently huge issues in
China, and this song is a means of protest; real
profanity would be censored by the Chinese government, but something that
sounds like profanity but isn’t, makes it through. This is a great example of the people of a culture making
music meaningful and useful for them.
The song is useful for protest and venting frustration, and it means, to
those who understand spoken Chinese, something very different than what it
says.
The second
video is of artist and political activist Ai Weiwei singing along with the song
as repayment to numerous supporters who helped to pay a fine slapped on him by
the Chinese government. At one
point in 2011 Weiwei “disappeared” and was interrogated in secrecy by Chinese
officers concerning his protest of the government…for 81 days. To find out more about Ai Weiwei and
issues in China, see the website
for the documentary recently done on him, Never
Sorry, or, if you have the option, the documentary itself on Netflix (DVD
also available?).
Here’s the
YouTube description of the first video:
“According
to the New York Times, "The Grass-Mud Horse" is a mythical creature
whose name in Chinese sounds like "fuck your mother". These horses
face a “problem: invading river crabs that are devouring their grassland. In
spoken Chinese, river crab sounds very much like harmony, which in Chinas
cyberspace has become a synonym for censorship. Censored bloggers often say
their posts have been harmonized — a term directly derived from President Hu
Jintaos regular exhortations for Chinese citizens to create a harmonious
society.
“While grass-mud horse sounds like a nasty curse in Chinese, its written Chinese characters are completely different, and its meaning —taken literally — is benign. Thus, the beast has dodged the Chinese governments efforts to censor information over the Internet that is seditious or inflammatory.
“Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, said that the grass-mud horse is an icon of resistance to censorship.
童声合唱：草泥马之歌”
“While grass-mud horse sounds like a nasty curse in Chinese, its written Chinese characters are completely different, and its meaning —taken literally — is benign. Thus, the beast has dodged the Chinese governments efforts to censor information over the Internet that is seditious or inflammatory.
“Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, said that the grass-mud horse is an icon of resistance to censorship.
童声合唱：草泥马之歌”
Though the point about censorship is clear, I am not sure that this is a powerful example of music. Sound seems extraneous here. Perhaps another example of music and its role in protest might be more effective.
ReplyDeleteHmm, good point. The musical experience seems less important than the message in the case of this song. But then this sort of gets at another topic discussed by Wade in the beginning of Thinking Musically: who should be considered musicians? Does someone have to be formally trained in a given style? Do the listeners count? As implicitly asked by "Song of the Grass-Mud Horse (Cao Ni Ma)," are protesters, who are only using song as a vehicle to get around censorship, musicians? In my opinion, yes.
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