Music has a way of slipping through the fingers of politicians. In his memoir Along the Roaring River: My Wild Ride from Mao to the Met, the bass Haojiang Tian writes of the way certain songs of the Cultural Revolution, once force-fed to the Chinese population, became sentimental ear-worms, even for the persecuted. The role of music in contemporary Chinese society reflects the pivot toward capitalism of its government. At the airport in Beijing, a poster advertising a fancy private school exhorts parents to make their children “excel,” above a picture of tiny girls playing cellos. The theater in the National Center for the Performing Arts, the egg-shaped, moat-protected arts space near the Forbidden City, offers a VIP lounge. A luxury hand creme calls itself “La Mer.” But while “official” art is still being produced in China—a military officer slash composer wrote on an opera called “The Long March” which recently premiered at the NCPA (set models pictured above)—other composers are forging their own independent languages.
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