Listening to World Music - Assignment 1

Q. Appadurai argues that modernity is a form of rupture in everyday life, and that the experience of modernity is now globally present.  Moving places is one such form of rupture.  If you are from a family or community that has made significant moves in the last several decades—from rural to urban areas, from one country or continent to another--ask members of your family/group, if music provided a means to maintaining a connection between past and present places of residence and how it has done so--live performance, recordings, human travel? Has music worked to maintain your language of origin? How else might it have worked as a connective tissue in the move or significant moment of rupture?

A. My mother moved from Mainland China to Hong Kong in 70s. She grew up in the Mainland and experienced the Cutural Revolution. She learned a lot of "Revolution Songs" at the time. The "Revolution Songs" are one of the tools for the communists to control the personal life and thought of the population, a way to educate the population of the ideology. However, my mother later immgrate to Hong Kong, which is a Britain Colony, from the post Cutural Revolution and pre economic reform of mainland China. From Community to Democracy, from the pre-economic reform China to a westernized Hong Kong. The move made her witnessed a massive different in politics ideology, wealth and hierachy in society from mainland China to Hong Kong.

With the economic reform and modernization in China, the "Revolution Songs" are still one of the main "genre" in China's official event performance. Also, recordings on the music are still processed. To her, the "Revolution Songs" connect her childhood and school life from the nowadays Hong Kong, which has big differences of her past. She had to learn and sing the "Revolution Songs" in school everyday in her childhood. The theme of the "Revolution Songs" are not what she could find here in Hong Kong. Yet, she would sing along to the songs, recordings or live performance, in Mandarin, which she doesn't speak it fluently now and never speak it in daily life at all. This connected her from the pre-economic reform Mainland China.

The life in Hong Kong is obviously a rupture from the pre-economic reform mainland China. However, the "Revolution Songs" connect my mother to that period of time. The "Revolution Songs" are the biggest connection she could have, as her daily life, her jobs, her experience on political issues are totally different and did not bring up any connection to the past. The "Revolution Songs" are the connection of her to the memory of the past.


Grade: (9/10)