At 10pm on July 31 at the Mountain stage of Taipei's Formoz Rock Festival in Yuanshan Park, singer Michelle Shocked, with her guitar and trumpet player Rich Armstrong, delivered a spectacular performance that captured the hearts of all the people in the audience.
She said in a preface to her performance that she is an American, and if we are pursuing freedom by regarding the US as our friend, that would be wrong; she urged the public not to forfeit each individual's prospects in the hands of war mongers and arms dealers.
It was not only her bold introduction that shocked the audience, but also her meaningful lyrics referring to sociopolitical issues, such as women's autonomy, love's ambiguity and young widows' war accusations, which fused easily and smoothly with diverse musical genres like street jazz, country music and folk ballads, to touch the audience and capture their hearts. Comparing such an emotional moment with the recent Beijing concert of Chang Hui-mei (張惠妹), also known as A-mei, which was full of incidents that were further sensationalized by the media, enables us to see the truth and hypocrisy of popular music.
Some people might say that Shocked is an intellectual, whereas A-mei is just a pop music singer seeking to perfect her performances; therefore, the two cannot be compared with each other. This argument can be refuted by the following examples:
When Shocked entered the mainstream music industry in the late 1980s, at the peak of her career, her recording company wanted to invest US$1 million to promote her to be a superstar, but she refused without a second thought. In turn, she demanded that the company use 90 percent of this amount to invest in relatively unknown creative artists. Furthermore, when the Bush administration went against public opinion to insist on the war in Iraq, getting the US involved in the terror of a new McCarthyism and patriotic chauvinism, Shocked toured the country with many local groups and pop musicians, singing and organizing workshops to make their anti-war voices heard.
Now let's look at A-mei, who has emerged as an "international superstar." She helped raise NT$1 million in a charity performance for victims of the flooding caused by Typhoon Midulle early last month. In their charity work, superstars like A-mei don't usually make donations out of their multi-million dollar income, but use their showmanship to attract media attention and "plead" for their fans to participate in the events. What's even more ironic is that, despite being of Aboriginal descent, A-mei never gets involved in public affairs under her tribal identity, but at the same time wants her fans in China to picket outside her Beijing concert to express their support for Taiwanese Aboriginals' demand for justice, and protest fiercely against Vice President Annette Lu's (
Five years ago, after the 921 Earthquake, A-mei's fame was at its peak, and the media portrayed her as an Aboriginal visiting disaster areas without ostentation of any kind. She was shown embracing Aboriginal children with tears in her eyes. When I was visiting the same Aboriginal tribe myself at the same time, I realized that the heart-wrenching scene had been rehearsed. I would rather believe that A-mei did not know about it, and hope it was simply an act orchestrated by her record company or agent along with the children.
Comparing A-mei with Shocked is not intended to defame the former and applaud the latter, but rather to demonstrate the fact that we often mistakenly regard politics and music as separate, and then discover connections between the two in the actions of various artists. But think about it: wasn't A-mei's "abject apology" in front of Chinese media a complete showing of her political stance? The NT$20 million performance and the media support, the clamor of her Chinese fans and the pressure on "green entertainers" all go to show that music is a part of politics. Being citizens themselves, aren't the performances of singers and their daily lives an indication of their political stances?
According to some people, this is an example of the difference between popular and rock music, with the former emphasizing "performance" and the latter "spirit." But over-generalizing could result in regarding popular singers as having no social or political consciousness and over-idealizing rock singers.
I believe that musical discernment can only be achieved through the cultivation of taste. But the audience created by this discernment will not be reflected in record sales. Audiences and performers should not succumb to the illusion of profits.
Sometimes it simply requires a guitar and a trumpet to make honest and touching popular music that greatly surpasses any quantity of political polemic and propaganda. Moreover, there is no need to spend millions of dollars to design a dazzling stage and emphasize carnal desires. The hypocritical charity of the pop music industry, which is totally geared around superstars, stinks of opportunism, in which fans are exploited.
Ho Tung-hung is an assistant professor in the sociology department at Fo Guang University.
TRANSLATED BY LIN YA-TI
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