An analysis on Chinese Literature in Pop Music Industry: 在梅边 Beside The Plum Blossom

Module code: GEH1006

Tutorial group: D3

Group number: 06

Introduction

Beside the Plum Blossom (在梅边) is a song composed and sang by Leehom Wang. The lyrics are filled by Mayday’s main vocalist, Ashin (Su, 2012), with rap lyrics written by Wang himself. The song is included in Wang’s album, Heroes of the Earth (盖世英雄), that was first released back in 30 December, 2005 in Taiwan. Although the song was popular, it has not been used in any of the films or in any television shows. Wang mainly performs this song in his own concerts. According to Wang, the inspiration of the concept of the album came from the prominent film, Farewell My Concubine (霸王别姬) (kknews.cc, 2016). After watching the movie for over twenty plus times, he noticed that Peking opera has a lot of potential to be incorporated into modern pop music (kknews.cc, 2016) As a result, he started composing this song based on that idea and integrated various components of Peking opera, Kunqu (崑曲), as well as Western Hip Hop into the music (Su, 2012). He also adapted the story of The Peony Pavilion (牡丹亭), which is a play written by Tang Xianzu back in Ming Dynasty, to be the theme of the lyrics (Su, 2012). This song has a special genre, which Wang referred to it as ‘Chinked-Out’. Through the song, Wang aimed to bridge the gap between the Eastern and the Western cultures, and to allow more younger generations to be familiar with the beauty of Peking opera and Chinese Literature (Su, 2012). In general, the song is very well taken by the public and was a huge hit when the album first came out.

Musical Style

Leehom Wang referred to the music style of 'Beside the Plum Blossom' as 'chinked-out'. To be familiar with the term, Chinked-out is a derogatory racial slur that is used towards Chinese people. By naming his style of music "chinked-out", Wang hopes to alter the idea of how people view the term and hopes not to offend anyone. Chinked-out is a style of music which incorporates both eastern and western styles of music. Some of the western style include hip-hop, jazz, and funk. On the other hand, some of the eastern style of music include Peking opera, ‘Kunqu’, as well as traditional Chinese orchestra music, all of which originated from China (Wu, 2017). Now let's take a closer look at each of the style incorporated.

Eastern Style

This song incorporates western and eastern style of music in order to create a unique mood that is pleasing to both western and eastern audience. During the intro of the song, the distinctive sound made by the Bangu is audible.

A percussionist playing a Bangu(Akasu, 2015).

Bangu is a Chinese percussion instrument that has a history of several hundred years old. When strucked, the instrument produces a high pitched and dry sound, like a woodblock. Another percussion instrument which could be heard is the clapper. It is an instrument that can produce a high pitch rattling sound and the instrument can be heard in the intro of the song. Clappers are audible in Chinese traditional music occasionally and it is used by a conductor to indicate the commencement or conclusion of an item, or even to signal a tempo change (Blades, 2005).

This picture shows a clapper(Zhong, 2016).

The player will hold the clapper by the bottom where the red knot is and rotate his/her hand repeatedly so that the wooden blocks will collide to produce the rattling sound.

Cymbals play an important role in helping to shape the music as well, making it sounds more Chinese-liked. There are a few cymbals which could be heard, one of them being a small gong, which produces the high pitched sound heard typically and distinctively in Peking Opera’s music.

A small gong (Kylie, 2011).

The small Chinese cymbals, which resemble a small top hat, can be heard before going into the verse. The small Chinese cymbals may be small in sizes, but they can achieve the same decibel as other bigger cymbals. The is why the sound produced by the small Chinese cymbals are very recognizable and they are often used in Peking opera as well.

Small Chinese Cymbals (Kylie, 2011).

Analysis of Chinese musical instruments is carried out with references to the 2 videos below (HKCO, 2015).

Chinese percussion's reference:

The combination of these instruments, along with the tune of the vocal style in some segments, shows that Wang’s performance actually draws inspiration from Peking Opera. The origin of Peking Opera traced all the way back to the 17th Century during the Qing dynasty. It is regarded as the representation of China’s traditional opera and is an art consisting of painting, dancing, literature, singing and even recitation (Han and Zhang, 2016). In the music video of Beside the Plum Blossom, one can see a character from the traditional Peking Opera, which is most likely a xiaosheng. A xiaosheng is a role of a young male, and unlike some character in the Peking Opera, xiaosheng does not wear a beard. Xiaosheng usually speaks and sings in a strong and masculine falsetto tone (Sundberg, 2012).

A side by side comparison between the Sheng in the music video (Bottom) and a Peking Opera Sheng (Top)(Hersey, 2015).

Western Style

As mentioned, Wang also incorporates western style of music into this song, making this song a classic Eastern poetry with a modern Western twist. During the intro, other than Chinese instruments, western-based instruments are audible as well. One such instrument is the synthesizer. Synthesizer is an electronic keyboard that is able to produce a wide variety of sound, such as percussion, piano or even church organs. Synthesizers are most prominently used in Western style of music, especially electronic music whose sound cannot be produce by conventional instruments.

Other than the synthesizer, another western instrument used in the song is a drum machine. During the verse, one can hear a typical modern drum beat which has the bass drum on the odd beat and snare drum on the even beat. However for Beside the Plum Blossom, instead of a snare drum, a clapping sound is heard. This gave the instrument away, that it is a drum machine that is producing the sound, and not a typical acoustic drum kit. A drum machine is a digital percussion instrument used to mimic the sound of a drum kit, and many more other sound which can't be produce by a drum kit, such as clapping or even other kind of percussion instruments. It usually comes in the form of a few drum pad, where the musician can set the sound of each different pad. Drum machine is used extensively in modern Electronic Dance Music(EDM).

In terms of vocal style, Wang performed the song in a style of rapping. Rapping is a form of vocal style that consist of speaking to rhyming lyrics, with accordance to a beat, usually from drum and bass. Rap gained popularity in the 1970s (Mize, 2014) and is popular among African American youth. By incorporating rap into this song, Wang may even reach out to these youth and help promotes the Chinese music scene in the west, raising awareness of the fact that Chinese music can be similar to western music as well.

Lastly, contrary to the aforementioned Peking Opera references and actor, Wang portrays a hip-hop artist, with jacket, jeans and a cap. The music video clearly shows the distinction between the traditional Chinese Opera and modern Hip-Hop.  

During one of his live concerts (Porepore1000, 2009), Wang performed the song in a different style compared to the original composition. Additional instruments were being played, particular other western-based instruments not used in the original version. In the live version, other than the aforementioned synthesizer and drum machine which were both heard in the original version, electric guitar and drum kit were new additions to the array of instruments used. The electric guitar heard was heavily distorted, this type of sound is commonly heard in Western rock and heavy metal genre. Just like in the original music, Wang also performed with a group of Hip Hop dancers, incorporating modern rock and dance into the performance.

A side by side comparison shows that one song can be performed in many different style. The music video shows a classical poetry with a modern approach, with references to the Peking Opera play which incorporates traditional Chinese Orchestra instruments and modern western instruments. On the other hand, the live version shows a totally different version, which incorporates rock and modern dances, and not much Chinese instruments are heard. Wang's approach to the song may arouse the curiosity or elder audiences, while drawing the attention of younger audiences. His professionalism towards this style of performance is unique and not many songs out there is just like 'Beside the Plum Blossom', which incorporates modern and traditional style smoothly.

Musical Key
The most typical scale used in Chinese music is the Pentatonic Scale (Lena, 2011). In 'Beside the Plum Blossom', Wang also uses the pentatonic scale with a bit of minor scale, particularly the G# Pentatonic scale. Even though the background music is very western-liked, the pentatonic scale makes the song sound very chinese-liked.

This image shows the 5 positions of the minor pentatonic scale, played on a guitar (Krenz, 2011). As one can see, the pentatonic scale consist of only 5 notes, the only difference of each position is that the starting notes differs, where each starting notes correspond to the 5 positions. Therefore, by using the pentatonic scale in his music, it sounded simple yet friendly to common music listeners. Music written using the pentatonic scale is not as sophisticated sounding as jazz music where instead of the pentatonic scale, more complicated scale like the whole tone or chromatic scale is used. Thus, 'Beside the plum Blossom' is a song that is easy to listen to and not much musical knowledge is required in order to enjoy the music.

Lyrics 

(Please refer to the next blogpost for full Chinese and English lyrics)

Background Information on the Lyrics Writing Process

The lyrics of the song Beside the Plum Blossom is written by Mayday’s main vocalist, Ashin. According to Ashin, when Wang requested him to write the lyrics of the song, Wang passed him a set of ‘The Peony Pavilion’ DVD. The whole DVD opera lasted for twelve hours, and it took Ashin about one month to write out the lyrics, which Ashin commented: 'it is not an easy task to write out the lyrics' (Eceasy, 2007)

Background Information on the Lyrics Theme

Overall, the lyrics of the song make references to the famous ancient Chinese romance opera, The Peony Pavilion, written by Tang Xianzu back in Ming Dynasty and was first published in 1550 (Birch, 1980). It is traditionally performed as a Kunqu opera, which focused on the love story of Du Liniang and Liu Mengmei (Birch, 1980).

The story set in and staged in a peony garden with Du Liniang falling asleep. Liniang dreamt of a handsome young scholar, Liu Mengmei and she fell in love with him almost instantly. Upon waking up from the dream, she pined away from her love so much so that she fell sick and died. Before her death, she painted her own portrait as a legacy to the world and asked her servant to bury it under one of rocks in the garden. One day, when Mengmei visited the garden, he saw the portrait of Liniang by chance. He picked up the portrait and hanged it on the wall, praying the portrait like a ‘god’. As Liniang’s soul had not leaved the human world yet, her soul visited Mengmei in the garden. Liniang told Mengmei that her soul could be returned to her body if he removed her from the garden. Mengmei followed her instructions and Liniang miraculously came back to life. The two lovers finally united (Birch, 1980).

A poster of 'The Peony Pavilion' (Li, 2014)

Lyrics Analysis

First Stanza (line 1 – 6)

In the song Beside The Plum Blossom, the first line of the lyrics is a start-up talking about how much Liniang and Mengmei fell in love with each other. This is linked to the story The Peony Pavilion as described above. As we can see, Ashin used a technique of metaphor in this line of lyrics. He referred Liniang as a ‘god’. There are actually two underlying meanings in it. One is because in the story The Peony Pavilion, Mengmei kept the portray of Liniang and he prayed to the portray as if Liniang was a ‘god’. Another is actually describing that Liniang was as beautiful as a god, as suggested by the Chinese saying: 美如仙. It then followed by trying to display the type of love the people possessed back then when it was so memorable and romantic. This is subsequently compared to the second line which shows how the meaning of ‘love’ changed over time. Back then, people loved to death but now, the lyrics describe this type of ‘love’ as no longer on-trend, and it is less commonly seen today. This is continued by a two-lined description of what defines ‘love’ in today’s world which summarizes as follows: sparks fly when you get closer; woo when you like the person; then break up when you are tired of them. The lyrics then included some personal feelings of the narrator of the lyrics towards his lover in the last part of the stanza which basically says: “despite all these false-hearted love, I am different from others. I am crazy for you, I am willing to change for you, I will love you like how the classic love is.”

Second Stanza (line 7 – 10)

The second stanza starts with an illustration of Liniang’s wait for Mengmei, whereby Ashin used the technique of imagery on the four seasons – spring, summer, autumn and winter. He first used the image of ‘spring water’ (春水) whereby it can be actually referred to the waterfall or water in the valley during the spring. It is known that during this season, water streams steadily and it is unlikely to stop flowing. Together with “望” which means hope or wish, and “断” which means stop or break off, “春水望断” put together generates the meaning of hoping the spring water to break off. Next, he referred to summer flower “夏花”. Flowers in the summer are usually very beautiful and well-blossomed due to the warm and nice weather. However, “夏花宿妝殘” is describing that the summer flower is being wilted. Following summer, Ashin wrote “誰聞秋蟬”. “蟬” refers to cicada, which only appears in the summer. However, here, he added a word in front of the cicada- “秋蟬”, which means the cicada in autumn. How could one hear the cicadas in autumn? And lastly, he made reference to the winter. “誰知冬來” actually means: “who knows when the winter is coming?”. This sentence has actually two interpretations. In the past, when people were speaking about winter, they usually referred to the coldest day of the year. But they cannot forecast when the winter was, unless after they experienced the whole season. Another interpretation is that winter is the last season of the year. Thus, it takes a long time before it reaches winter, which implies an underlying meaning of waiting. If we study closely, we will be able to see that all these four imageries are improbable to happen, or cannot be helped with human act, thus, the only way out is probably to wait for it to happen. Ashin used these four imageries to draw our attention on what love was supposed to be like then back in time - wait.

In the second line of the second stanza, “冷秋千　笑声似犹在” directly translates to “cold swing, but laughter can still be heard”. Usually when we sit down on the swing, the seat will be warmed by our body heat. In this case, the swing is described as ‘cold’ which infers that the swing had not been taken by anyone for a very long time. It is then added that ‘laughter can still be heard’, meaning that even though there is no one at the swing, memory formed still remains at the swing. This is actually describing Liniang’s non-existence in the world. Although she was no longer here in the world in the story, it felt like she was still present and people had not forgotten her yet.

Ashin carried on the lyrics by adapting a line from the poem “相见欢。无言独上西楼” written by Li Yu (李煜). The poem reads as follow:

“无言独上西楼，月如钩。寂寞梧桐深院锁清秋。剪不断，理还乱，是离愁。别是一般滋味在心头。”

As we can see, 剪不断 思念欲理还乱 is a line modified from the poem above. It translates to “one wants to stop thinking and missing another, but fails to do so; one wants to tidy up, but things got worse”, showing how bad Liniang was missing Mengmei and she was unable to forget about Mengmei.

Next in line, the lyrics is saying how Liniang and Mengmei were fated to meet and love each other even after Liniang’s soul left her body, and until she was reborn. The main message Ashin wanted to bring across here is that, ‘love’ can be across distance and across live and death, and shall it be, it is a very long-awaited love.

Third Stanza/ Chorus (line 10 – 16)

Ashin again used the technique of imagery in the chorus. In the first line of the chorus, he brought us into a scene whereby ‘the plum blossom is falling just like snow’, and in the second line, ‘wind blows against suspended memories beside the willow tree’. These depicted a very romantic and dreary sight. The aim here is to mainly portray the sadness and loneliness that the couple suffers when they wait for each other, and the heart pain that they experienced for a thousand years. Ashin then further described that nowadays, there are no more people who will encounter this type of ‘love’ and no one will understand the story of Liniang and Mengmei. He also commented that he is nostalgic about the type of ‘love’ in the past, and hope to let the legendary story to be passed down to next generation, and may them be moved and deeply understand it.

Kunqu Portion

To better bring out the scene of The Peony Pavilion and let the listeners immerse into the culture of kunqu, Ashin and Wang incorporated a small part of kunqu from the original The Peony Pavilion into this song. It is constantly featured in the beginning of the song, middle of song and towards the end of the song

Rap Portion

The first part of the rap is saying that, the love story of Liniang and Mengmei is perhaps something that we can only dream of. This type of love story is unrealistic and will no longer happen in today’s world. Wang also used the term "brand new kind of person" to contrast the people today with the people in the past. Wang then continued to explain how he defined ‘brand new kind of person’ by describing the lifestyles of the people today: too busy; no time to eat; go online until our eyes hurt; technology being so efficient that our pace of life is ten thousand times faster than it was in the Ming Dynasty; and we will never be satisfied and happy. He commented that children nowadays have no time to sit down and watch The Peony Pavilion for nineteen hours. In addition, he also put an exaggeration on the duration of the opera- ‘so long till all the audiences have turned old’. To summarize, Wang was trying to convey the idea that: due to the technology advancement in today’s world, we are fast and more efficient, and time is so valuable that it is like money to us. So, rather than spending time watching The Peony Pavilion, the norm would rather do something else that is more productive.

Before Wang managed to continue writing the lyrics, he was already fed up by the attitude of the ‘brand new kind of person’. Thus, he inputed his own feelings into the lyrics by saying ‘before I get out of control, let’s take a deep breath’.

After he came back to his senses, he moved on to talk about how much things we can learn from Tang Xianzu (the author of The Peony Pavilion). He praised and admired at how Tang can write such romantic and loving fantasy which has been passing down for over 400 years.

Wang then expressed how he felt about the whole story of The Peony Pavilion. He stated that his life was indeed getting easier but strangely, he was still unable to find that kind of love held by Liniang and Mengmei. He did not want to be like the norm in the fast-paced society, but he wished that he could be in the era of Liniang and Mengmei so that he could experience the slow-paced life and understand the mysterious love life. He ended by ‘requesting’ Tang to ‘bring back’ all of us to the pavilion that was filled with love, meaning to say that he hoped to see more productions themed on this kind of unforgettable romantic love story.

Lyrics Summary

Overall, the lyrics is criticizing on how most people define ‘love’ today. Nowadays, people usually experience short-term relationships. If we compare it to the past, it is like we're just ‘playing with love’ in modern society, meaning people usually do not give a hundred percent to their relationships and are unable to dedicate their lives for only one person. It is so different from the past whereby people loved with all their passions, suffering the worst of loneliness and sadness.

Lyrics & Music Interactions

In the rap portion, we can actually hear that it started out with a slow tempo. This is to illustrate the slow pace of life in the past. However, the tempo gradually increases. This shows the transition of the pace of life in the past till today. The pace of life is getting faster. As the song is ending, the tempo is getting back slower again. Wang made use of the change in tempo here to convey that he wished that we could return back to the slow-paced era.

Conclusion

From a listener's perspective, the song sounds very different from other Mandarin pop music. The way Wang constructed the song is peculiar. Various instruments used makes the song sound noisy at times. Without doing further analysis on the song, it is hard to tell why someone would like this music. Even after listening to it for over a dozens of times, it is still difficult to get used to the strange rhythm of the song. On the other hand, Beside The Plum Blossom is unique in a way that it incorporates both western and eastern styles of music, which Wang refers to as 'chinked-out'. Most of us today are introduced to an era of modern, mostly western-dominated musical genres. Beside the Plum Blossom made traditional Chinese music known to us. As mentioned by Wang, the reason he produced this particular style of music is to alter the view of audience regarding the derogatory term 'chinked-out', which may be seen as an insult to Chinese people. As a hip-hop artist, by incorporating traditional style of Chinese music with modern style, it raises the awareness of modern listeners. It's trying to send a message that traditional Chinese music is not in any way inferior to modern popular music. Listeners from the west may even acquire a new taste in traditional Chinese music. The song also conveys the idea that traditional Chinese music still has a place in the music industry today.

Word Count (including titles & in-text citations): 4175



Content REFERENCES

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Sundberg, J., Gu, L., Huang, Q., & Huang, P. (2012). Acoustical Study of Classical Peking Opera Singing. Journal of Voice, 26(2), 137-143. doi: 10.1016/j.voice.2011.01.001

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In-blog Image REFERENCES

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