This interesting and clear text tells us about the use of music that the PCC made and continues to use to expand.. Music is a primary factor in uniting people and the Chinese Communist Party is ending it. They label the vast majority of Tibetan songs as reactionary or counterrevolutionary, silencing all Tibetan collective representation.
El uso de "canciones rojas" As the author of the text expresses emotionally, they have done and are doing a lot of damage.. People are forced to memorize them without knowing the meaning. That is why this war cry is used for Tibetans to stand up and sing the songs that anger the CCP..
Tibetan Blog Station
3 July 2012
When I was a boy growing up in Tibet under China, The first song I learned was El Oriente es Rojo. It was one of the most popular songs, praising Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (el PCC). This was adapted –like most communist propaganda songs- from a traditional farming song from the Chinese province of Shaanxi. My father who could read Chinese, He taught the words to my mother so she could recite them., when the commune leaders made random inspections to check whether the villagers had memorized the letters.
“The east is red, the sun is rising.
China has given birth to Mao Zedong.
He has brought happiness to people
Hooray ¡he is the great savior of the people!
An old woman from a nearby village had once by chance sung a traditional song with the lyrics: “O white mountain of the west, “Move to the side so the sun doesn’t set too soon.”. She was accused of singing a “reactionary song.”” in praise of Western imperialism and was discussed in an athamzing -fighting session- during which the accused were publicly humiliated and often beaten.
When the People's Liberation Army first marched into Tibet in 1949-50, the newly victorious CCP had already perfected propaganda songs as a means of educating the masses about the virtues of their version of socialism., and legitimize their occupation of Tibet. Music could overcome the language barrier and had the power to immediately transmit the political message. Taking the example of Lenin, who said that literature and art were “a screw in the whole machine”, The Chinese Communists have used music as a central component of state propaganda to great effect..
One of the first “red songs”” specifically composed to celebrate the “liberation” of Tibet from feudal servility and the “imperialists” It was the Laundry Song. Like all the other propaganda songs, The Laundry Song was performed at mass gatherings throughout Tibet and played incessantly through loudspeakers installed in strategic public places.. A music video by 1964 of this song was widely exhibited and distributed.
These massive song and dance campaigns were organized to disseminate political ideology through letters and convince people of the supposed benefits that the PCC had brought..
dance groups –most composed of young Tibetans brought to China and trained to sing in the style of Chinese opera- were trained in all Tibetan districts, and these groups traveled to remote Tibetan villages and nomadic camps to perform Chinese-style versions of traditional music.. They were (and they are still) dressed in hybrid costumes posing as traditional Tibetan clothing.
I remember a dance group coming to our village in central Tibet. We all had to meet in the village square, where the group performed several very theatrical songs with very high-pitched singing accompanied by loud gongs and cymbals. One of the songs they performed featured an old white-haired Tibetan and a few young people singing to him.:
“The sun has shone on the snowy mountains
And a New China has emerged
Grandfather, come quickly, come quickly”
In response, the old man said:
“¡oh yes! ¡Yeah!
A new China is born
¡Excellent!
¡Excellent!
After my almost three decades in exile, I still remember the lyrics of this song in public performances, the only entertainment we had in those times of deprivation. This was the most insidious assault on Tibetan identity. This imprinted on Tibetan minds the idea of a New and Better China under the benevolent leadership of the CCP through repetitive and simplistic songs..
During Mao's Cultural Revolution (1966-76), every aspect of Tibetan culture came to a standstill. Traditional performing arts were completely banned. Even dance groups were forced to sing only communist songs approved by Beijing. It was during that time that I remember my mother memorizing out loud the lyrics to El Oriente Es Rojo.
like my mother, Generations of Tibetans have grown up singing these songs without even knowing what the lyrics meant.. But through continuous singing and daily attendance at political meetings, after every day of work, they were made to find meaning in these words.
While their own traditional songs and music were disappearing, Tibetans have been unconsciously programmed to find meaning in this barrage of propaganda songs that they learned to sing in Chinese.. It's this instilled habit of finding meaning in what has no meaning., which now poses the most serious danger to Tibetan identity.
The impact is particularly insidious for the new generation of Tibetans who have not experienced the terror of the Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet in the 1990s. 50 nor the daily horror of the Cultural Revolution. Yet they are continually bombarded with the Party's version of history.. They see Mao as a benevolent leader who united China and “liberated” to Tibet from the “feudal lords”. I have had some painful and heated debates with friends who have recently escaped from Tibet. They accuse the Tibetan aristocrats and the monastic community of running a corrupt and oppressive social order that somehow authorized a “liberation.”” military by a foreign power.
Ever growing list
In today's globalized and interconnected world, the CCP still dictates daily to Tibetans, Which songs are they allowed to listen to and which songs should they not sing?.
While they shamelessly promote “patriotic” singers, such as Tseten Dolma, the veteran “nightingale”” communist and Sonam Wangmo, a fashionable and stylish Tibetan mascot for the People's Liberation Army of the new generation, the PCC leaves no stone unturned in the reduction, persecution and imprisonment of those who fail to reinforce their message.
In January of 2010, authorities sentenced singer Tashi Dhondup to 15 months of “reform through work”” for his music album, Torture without a Trace. Dhondup was released in February 2011. Before, In March of 2008, another young Tibetan singer, Dolma Kyi of Golog in Eastern Tibet, She was arrested for composing and singing “reactionary songs”. Dozens of singers have been arrested since 2008 with such charges. In May 2010, 27 Popular songs in Tibetan language were classified as banned in Tibet, either in audio format or video discs, or digital files or on cell phones. “Anyone found in possession of illegal music or videos will be dealt with severely.”, authorities warned.
Like the list of words blocked on the Chinese Internet, the list of songs banned in Tibet gets bigger every year. Starting this year, includes Shabalep, banned by the Information Office of the State Council of China on 2 April, and The Sounds of Unity. Tibetans are prohibited from listening to these songs or storing them on any electronic device..
Shabalep, a rap sensation on YouTube in praise of a popular snack (Shabalep also means “slap on the butt.”) It seems like a harmless expression of Tibetan identity that one could wish for., while Sherten's Sounds of Unity, a renowned musician from Amdo in eastern Tibet, calls Tibetans to unity. ”If you care about the future of our people/The three provinces should unite…” canta Sherten.
The battlefields in which the CCP tries to control the thoughts of the Tibetan people, and make them believe in the legitimacy of their control over Tibet, have moved to this level of micro-management of representation and symbolism. Beijing claims that any single identity that goes against Marxist-Leninist thought and that of Mao Zedong is “reactionary.”” and “counterrevolutionary”. In this sense, Beijing has repressed Tibetan Buddhism, to Falun Gong and spent enormous amounts of energy and resources to rewrite entire Tibetan and Chinese history to fit the “ideals.”” communists. She further , in its quest to become a world leader on par with the United States and Russia, the PCC does not tolerate any challenge to its official narrative and image.
Chinese leadership's reactions to songs such as Shabalep, and the extent to which they are ready to end any collective Tibetan voice and representation, anyway silenced, indicates Beijing's paranoia and ridiculous nervousness, which is inappropriate for an aspiring superpower. This approach also makes itself surprisingly vulnerable to subversion and ridicule at this level..
While the PCC celebrated its 90thº anniversary on the 1stº July, the entire apparatus of the propaganda department is in action to repackage and bring those “red songs” from the beginning of the 50 and from the era of the Cultural Revolution back to life. These songs are remastered and mostly re-sung by a new generation of state-approved Chinese and Tibetan singers..
The relaunch of these “red songs”” on a massive scale and making Tibetans of all levels memorize the letters by playing them ad nauseum, remains preferred and is Beijing's perfect propaganda method in the digital age. just like my mother, who memorized the words of The East is Red, without understanding what the words meant, a new generation of Tibetans is being pushed to do the same. Indeed, this is another cultural revolution. My niece and nephews, who live in the same town where I was born more than three decades ago, They still sing the laundry song at school.
¡Hey!
¿Who is going to help us with the barley harvest??
¿Who is going to help us build new houses??
It is the beloved People's Liberation Army
The saving star of the Communist Party
Thank you so much, Communist Party you save life
Without the freedom to know their culture and without access to their rich traditional music, that is disappearing fast, children in Tibet today are left to stumble around in a “New Tibet”” dominated by “the New Majority”.
The fight for freedom is a fight for representation, identity and culture that unites a people. In this sense, music is a primary factor uniting people to resist the occupation. There is a real danger that in a generation or two, youth in Tibet can no longer listen to songs about mountains, the rivers and stunning landscape of Tibet, in your own language.
That is why the Tibetans, both inside and outside Tibet, they now need to compose, sing, Share and distribute as widely as possible, songs of freedom and resistance, songs about snow-capped mountains, the blue rivers and the high plateau. We need to sing more songs that not only enrage the CCP but also put their entire propaganda machine on alert., to block word after word and phrase after phrase, and that his entire security apparatus takes up arms, trying to ban song after song, after song.
When that day comes, the Tibetans will be speaking in a language that Beijing cannot and will not understand and singing songs that the CCP will never understand.-
TIBET OFFICE, New York.
Email: phuntso@igc.org
