| Having developed for several decades, contemporary popular music in China has becoming the most active and most concerned part of Chinese contemporary culture and art. This dissertation argues mainly from a perspective of communication, focusing on the text of contemporary popular music among Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan within the context of the reform and opening in the past30years. The aim is to explore the development of Chinese contemporary popular music when interacting with its external factors, thus finding out its communication process, traits and laws.Communication is a comprehensive discipline covering many areas. It studies social information system and its operating law. So, it can serve as a theoretical instrument to understand the society, economy and various cultural phenomena. Communication is the bridge between music and social contact, for the essence of social music practice is to spread music. From the perspective of communication, a text of popular music is the information carried in the communication activity, and the spread of popular music is a process of information exchanging and sharing, which is an organic integrity composed of closely connected and interacted segments. It could help us further understand and discover the characteristics of popular music in its communication process via the communication perspective.Originated at the end of1970s, when reform and opening initiated, Chinese contemporary popular music has so far experienced more than30years’development. And its evolving path has witnessed the changes of Chinese social and political awareness, economic policy, cultural ethics, aesthetic taste, art conception. It is in the wrestling interaction of the above-mentioned factors, contemporary popular music moves forward. With its irreversible development and prosperity in recent years, popular music has drawn attention of more and more scholars, studying the important musical forms and cultural phenomena from various perspectives. Among which is mass-communication perspective. What follows is a brief summary of literature view:One is the study of the social, economic and cultural influence on popular music spreading; the second is the study of the relationship between popular music and communication; the third is the study of how medium affects the spread of popular music.This dissertation is to discuss the five elements in the process of popular music communication. Setting the communication activities of Chinese contemporary popular music against a broader social, economical, cultural and technological background, we are to comprehensively explore the communication process of Chinese contemporary popular music from the four aspects:communication subject, media, object, and effect. Meanwhile, popular music, as the information transmitted in the process of communication, will be the focus of discussion in the whole thesis:1. Communication subject. As the popular music is often restricted by factors like the dominating ideology and commodity economy in the production processes, its musical text assumes, therefore, the task of transmitting information, such as the dominating ideology, traditional folk culture and the fashion-consuming culture.2. Communication media:Traditional and new media as well as the evolving storage media have promoted the further development of the communication means and style of the popular music.3. Communication objects:The audience are no longer the passive receivers only in the spread of popular music, they participate in the production and reconstruction through interaction and negotiation with popular musical text.4. Communication effect:Communication effect is of two folds:macro-level centering on social control and micro-level focusing on audience.In chapter one, the history of Chinese contemporary popular music is divided into two periods:First, pre-modern period consisting of two phases (l.The emergence and development phase of Chinese popular music during1920-1949, among which city love songs and mass revolutionary songs are the representatives;2. The second phase lasts from1949to1970when mass revolutionary songs were dominating and the popular music in Hong Kong and Taiwan just enriched the city love songs). Second, contemporary period consisting of three phases:(1.Lasting from1970s-1980s, Hong Kong and Taiwan popular music has deeply influenced the development of Mainland popular music with its advanced creation idea and mature business mode. As a result of the influence, many famous singers and a large number of good works have come to the fore in Mainland China;2. The golden age of popular music from1991to1999:Both mainland and Hongkong popular music has marched into a golden age, with excellent singers and various subjects.3. Beginning from2000-, popular music from Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan has gradually mixed together and many grass-root stars have emerged with the help of new media). The negative effects of the commercial attribute of popular music, however, is becoming more and more obvious. In the long run, popular music has experienced initial debates on it, challenging and gradual accepting of its existence, and finally the active research and exploration. Recalling the development of it, we can see that Chinese contemporary popular music interacts with social factors and develops together with them. With its particular aesthetic characteristics and its tight connection with social life and mass medium, it has become trendy to study Chinese contemporary popular music from aesthetic and communication perspectives.Chapter two argues mainly about the restricting factors in the production of popular music, using cultural industry and cultural service theory and ideology theory as well. As an important part of cultural industry of mainland China, recording industry has been obsessed with piracy after a transient brilliant prosperity. And meanwhile, the application of modern communication technology and the emergence of cyberspace gave it a fatal blow, to make it worse. Thus, the future development of recording industry depends on efforts to adapt to changes in the external environment so as to seek for a breakthrough. Taking texts of popular music of CCTV from1983to2008as examples, this chapter tries to interpret that the official discourse and the mainstream ideology is established with the help of CCTV Spring Festival Gala and the image construction of a nation, a society, and a family is completed as well. In the making and producing of popular music, pop-stars are of indispensable and mass media plays a decisive role in the producing of pop-stars. Taking TV program "Super Girl" as an example, the tremendous function of mass media in the production of pop-stars is self-evident.Chapter three discusses the impact of mass media and media technology to the popular music communication from the point of media theory. Judging from the evolving path of the storage media of popular music like magnetic tapes, CD, MP3, we can see that in the long run of technical development, each kind of new medium is a useful supplement to its precedent. The development of media technology has not only enhanced the influence of disseminator, but also improved the audience creativity and productivity. At present, the most common popular music communication technology includes mainly the following types:One is based on printing technology of music transmission; another is based on electronic technology like record, radio, and television transmission; and the third one is based on digital technology and cyber-communication, among which the television medium has turned popular music into a more direct and integrated art. In addition, the ambiguity and commodification of popular music texts are characteristics attracting attention from advertising. Meanwhile, it is also affected by consumerism and violent pornography and other unhealthy tendencies. Along with the increasingly maturity and development of the digital techniques, the network medium has brought many unprecedented changes to popular music communication. Presently, popular music in cyberspace generally demonstrated in three forms:Originality, Cover and Kuso. Breaking the related meaning reference and referee in its traditional context, Kuso provides people with a collective carnival of entertainment.Chapter four mainly studies the characteristics and changes audience experienced while they are reading, reconstructing, and producing the popular music texts from the perspective of the audience theory. Two basic stands are:"media centered" and "audience centered" understanding. The perspective of cultural studies places audience in a grand social context and historical process, paying more attention to the initiative of audience in using medium mainly based on the information requirement, the need of association and the emotional needs. With the development of society, the progress of science and technology, and the constant emergence of all kinds of new media, the audience of Chinese contemporary popular music are demonstrating some new characteristics:they are more and more diverse, difficult to understand, with longtime experience in medium and wide age span....... In the process of popular music communication, the audience are no longer just passive receivers and consumers. They are involved in the process of meaning production and reconstruction of the music text. Adolescent audience are of eye-catching in this aspect:they participate in the production, challenging authority, breaking through taboo, adapting classics, though they will finally be incorporated by the commodity economy and the mainstream ideology. With specific traits of groupment, active participation, and discrimination, fans have become the focus in the audience. They are excessive consumers, making the market discourse as a lead in their consumption; they are, meanwhile, producers, allocating a new meaning to the original popular music texts through production activities.Chapter five presents how the popular music be influenced by the information source, the communication skills, the medium technology, and the audience from the perspective of medium communication effect theory, believing that media transmission is the process of negotiation between the media and the audience and that the effect emerges from the interaction between them. In macro-effect research of the popular music, taking Wenchuan earthquake (2008) and the Beijing Olympic Games as examples, this dissertation tries to explain the decisive role popular music plays in support of strengthening the medium agenda-setting function and participating in social grand narrative. The sociality and its positive participation has made many media agenda the theme of popular music. And in return, the agenda get further highlighted and strengthened by the rendering of popular music. Theory of using and satisfying is adopted to explore the audience from a micro-scope perspective, regarding the audience as individuals of various demands. In fact, the audience singing in KTV and bars will meet their needs of socializing, emotional catharsis, and time killing.Mass industrialization has brought with it a large social productivity, enabling people today to have more leisure time. As a result, popular music, as an important cultural consumption product, plays an increasingly important role in people’s daily life. However, within the context of consumerism, there exist standardization and flashy tendency in the commodity of popular music. Therefore, it is necessary to set popular music against a wider social, economical, cultural circumstances, analyze it through the perspective of communication theory, combining with the cultural studies, music historiography, music sociology, and music aesthetics disciplines, so as to explore and study how popular music has realized its desired communication effect in the interaction with external factors. It is also the purpose to seek an effective way of dissemination and healthy development of Chinese contemporary popular music. |
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