MEDIA, MARKET ECONOMY, AND CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION: QIN MUSIC IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA

The qin, historically recognized as an instrument of Chinese literati, has been presented in various forms of mass media for over fifty years. After the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, the government promoted public performances in a propaganda/persuasion media system; consequently, mass media started to play significant roles in reshaping aesthetic standards, performance practices, musical features, and meanings of the qin tradition. The mass media in China, however, went through a commercialization reform after the late 1970s and has shaped the current propaganda/persuasion model. This new media structure has hastened the emergence of new musical features and meanings of the qin in the commercial logic as opposed to the Party logic. Such interactions with technology have arguably constituted contemporary performance practices that have departed from traditional aesthetic standards held by literati practitioners who played the qin for self-satisfaction.This paper analyzes qin music as it has been produced and disseminated in different forms of mass media after 1950s, reveals the dynamic multiplicity of meanings of qin music, and unfolds a transformation through which qin music lost its aura that was handed down from antiquity, but is gradually conditioned in its new environment characterized by the tension between the political force and market forces. The paper focuses on one of the most active qin musicians, Li Xiangting, and his activities in the past decade, to show how a prominent qin player, by exploiting mass media technology, mediates his music and ideological theories to promote new perceptions of musical features, aesthetical forms, and social values of the qin. It is through collaboration with the development of mass media in China that many contemporary qin musicians carry on their practices via social conflicts, accommodations, and changing conditions of Chinese economy, society, and culture