From Colonial Culture To Culture Identity——the Spread And Changes Of Shanghai Christian Music

The spread of Christian music in modern Shanghai has its particularity which can’t be ignored, the western missionaries did missionary work smoothly with western countries’ colonial powers, therefore the spread of Christian music in China has multiple meanings and ineffaceable colonial nature. Western music played a crucial role in the spread and continuity of culture as a religious media. In contrast, music got more spreading space through the development of religious culture. The sacred music in Shanghai Christian church today has a succession of western traditional sacred music and adoption of modern Chinese nationalization of sacred music, and there are also new works to meet the needs of believers in new age. The style and use of music shows different characters between the Catholic and Protestant in Shanghai in these new developments.In this paper, the Christian music in two different periods including modern and today’s Shanghai was studied to explore the formation factors and cultural significance of Shanghai Christian music from "colonial" to "identity" through the narrative of music events of Christian music communicators in two different periods, the creation and style characteristics of sacred music. The author believes that both modern Western colonialist invasion and signing the unequal treaty made this religion spread attached with a strong political overtones. Thereafter the establishment of China’s independent churches and the implementation of new national policies on religion had an impact on the development of Shanghai Christian cultural in a certain extent. On the other hand, the psychological changes of Chinese people in face of western culture from rejection to acceptance, the thirst of the early Chinese believers for Christian Church with Chinese Characteristics and the Christian religious concepts today is one of the most important factors in the development of Shanghai Christian music.