Cui Jian: The Unkown

Shakeib Siddiq
Chinese 157
7.08.10

On a cool night in 1986, I was invited to take part in an unprecedented concert held at the Beijing Workers' Stadium. The place was packed. I sang an original tune, Nothing to My Name, which people seemed to like. When the concert ended and I stepped outside, I saw some kids on the street imitating my moves. Few Chinese really knew what rock 'n' roll was back then. But we knew it was something that gave out energy. It was music with a message. – Cui Jian

Oftentimes we are captivated by the unknown and oftentimes we are scared to venture into the abyss of the unknown. Many have been forgotten and many haven’t been able to claw their way out of the eternal abyss of the unknown, but some have and some have been able to rise the light at the end of the abyss to the sky and be a guiding light for their generation. It is those people that we strive to be, it is those people that risked it all to become legendary.

Cui Jian, rightfully coined as the “Father of Chinese Rock,” was an unknown, alienated like so many around him by the restraints of society. As a classically trained musician, Jian played in the Beijing Symphony Orchestra for many years. While in the BSO, Jian learned the electric guitar and soon enough, he became known.

In 1989, Jian performed at Tiananmen Square, “a couple of weeks before the crackdown.” He sang A Piece of Red Cloth, with his eyes covered by a red cloth to symbolize his feelings. It was his way of paying homage to the students involved. He said in an interview with Time Magazine, “I covered my eyes with a red cloth to symbolize my feelings. The students were heroes. They needed me, and I needed them.”

It is times of peril that we are faced with grand decisions, decisions that have outcomes, which oftentimes are unknown. Amidst a time of severe alienation, Jian exuded courage and love by alienating himself a bit more than the rest. He saw the monotonous square of Chinese traditional music and decided to alienate himself further by stepping outside of the square. At a time of two-dimensional music in China, he created a new dimension, as he puts it, “Rock: Music with a message.” The square transformed into a box and a young man gave birth to Rock in China.

A Piece of Red Cloth: In this piece Jian explicitly drives home the thought of ignorance. Jian uses repetition, as his guiding force in this song. Jian drives home the message of the song within the first lines; he starts and ends the piece with, “That day you used a piece of red cloth//to blindfold my eyes and cover up the sky//You asked me what I had seen //I said I saw happiness.” The beauty of his work is the complexity it reaches through its message, although he slams politics to the floor throughout the song, he hints at love and its similarity to politics. In this piece it becomes evident that love to Cui Jian is the ability to find comfort in the presence of one another, even when blinded. With love, he was capable of forgetting everything, even the fact that he had no home. Now, the tricky thing about reading deep between the lines an arena of uncertainty is that we can find parallels to many things. Another parallel I found was the songs relationship to religion. It is through ignorance that religion thrives and because of that gives one a sense of security and comfort.

Furthermore, it is through the action of covering his eyes with a red fabric that he portrays the importance of piece in relation to politics and more importantly, communism. As Jian sings, the fabric transforms into communism, which blinds his vision and covers his sky with emptiness, and/or blood. The Sky becomes a metaphysical property in this song now as, perhaps, global opportunity. In this song he drives home the message that it is easy to be comfortable and happy when you aren’t really taking a look at the World because one is only in control of their circumstances, and that is being generous.

The power of an artist has been diluted with the massive expansion of instantaneous technological power. Nowadays, we are stuck listening to heaps of waste rather than hearing songs of cry from the likes of Bob Dylan, Tupac Shakur and the John Lennon’s of the world.To dig back into the crates and into another culture and unravel Cui Jian has been a gift. Jian embodies the truth that artist’s should be expected to be responsible for. His every breath was a step for the youth and his every word was caught in stride with the youth movement. Sometimes the unknown is scary and an endless pursuit, but sometimes it is glorious and groundbreaking.