China with a Cut
Globalisation, Urban Youth and Popular Music
Distributed for Amsterdam University Press
During the 1990s illegally imported compact discs, known as dakou CDs, flooded into China, opening up the music world to Chinese youth and inspiring them to experiment with new sounds and new lifestyles. Quickly, dakou became the label for a new generation of Chinese, a vibrant generation no longer tied to the Maoist past. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, China with a Cut surveys the music that emerged in 1990s China and makes a case for its involvement in the rise of China as a cultural and economic global power.
“How does sound become local in the global age? This is the question posed by Jeroen de Kloet. As much an ethnography of the subjectivities articulated to pop music practices as it is an interrogation of the assumptions of sinocentricity, this book constitutes a provocative statement of ‘Chineseness’ at the crossroads of contemporary media, everyday life, and geopolitics.”
“Jeroen de Kloet provides a rich and fascinating account of the myriad forms of rock in contemporary China. This book transformed my understanding of contemporary Chinese culture—and of rock music beyond Europe and North America.”
“An authoritative, scholarly and up-to-date account of an important and fascinating field of popular music which sets a new benchmark in global music studies.”
Acknowledgements
Note on Romanisation and Publication History
Introduction: Global Longings with a Cut
Cosmopolitan Poses and Haunting Questions
From Liumang to Dakou and Balinghou
The Geography of Chinese Rock
This Book
1. Hard Scenes
A Scenic Move
Underground
Heavy Metal
Hardcore Punk
Hip-hop
Interim
2. Hyphenated Scenes
Multiplicity
Folk-rock
Pop-rock
Pop-punk
Fashionable Bands
Ending a Scenic Journey
3. Subaltern Sounds
Marginal Voices
Gendering Music
Southern Vices
Seductive Sounds
Femininity, Locality and Opacity
4. Musical Taste and Technologies of the Self
Music and Society
Youth in Fin-de-siècle Beijing
Music Preferences and Involvement
The Gendered Self
Generational Differences
Place and Belonging
Building Subjectivity
The Political Self
Technology and Control
5. Producing, Localising and Silencing Sounds
Seductive Narratives
Market Fantasies
Cultural Be/Longings
Silencing Sounds
Commercial Complexities
Conclusion: Paradoxical Performances
Mirrors
Deparadoxicalisation
Sonic Hierarchies
Binary Socialism
Notes
Chinese Glossary
Appendix I: Interviews
Appendix II: Factor Analysis of Singers
Appendix III: Popularity of Singers and Bands
Bibliography
Index
Asian Studies: General Asian Studies
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