Cui Jian Review

As with all music within China, most of their music is always under heavy censorship, only leaving a small amount of the same recycled music that protrudes around China. However, one man, by the name of Cui Jian, dubbed also dubbed the father of China Rock and Roll, dared to transcend outside the lines of "conventional" Chinese music. He, with his accompanying band, amassed and moved thousands of listeners to stand up for their rights.

I would say, as most music does and has, it has moved my life just with simple musical notes. Comparable to Bob Marley or John Lennon, Cui Jian is one of these individuals because just through musical notes, he moved millions within a nation. As with how John Lennon's song Imagine, with Cui Jian's song "Nothing to my name", during the times of the Tinamanem Square protests and problems that are ravaging the country, Cui Jian empowered the youth and followers with this song to fight the oppression and stand up for what was right or "right". His message/ music has moved millions as for America, the hippie movement has moved millions towards peace, where Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, John Lennon has sent their messages to the masses.

As with all subcultures in any world American or Chinese, they first are challenged with much adversity. For instance, hippies in American are comparable to Cui Jian's rock revolution, where both has faced much adversity in their inception and pre-maturity. The hippie movement, of course, was heading in the right direction- peace for all, but at the same time, faced adversity, among "regular" Americans. In addition, Cui Jian was in the same position in regards to rock music in China. Basically, rock music in China developed in underground networks, accumulating mostly underground music listeners, that wouldn't partake in the mainstream CCP media. His music was vastly filtered among the masses, where CCP would block out his music, fearing it was motivation against the communist party(which it was motivational- he became the posterboard boy for the movement).

With that said, I hope along with this review, I want to change peoples' perceptions against subcultures, where it seems that they are always disturbing the peace. It's sad to see that the ones with the right messages are always being marginalized, such as Martin Luther King, Cui Jian, Jimi Hendrix. Everyone should just lend to ones that have messages, and even more at times, they have something insightful to say.