• もっと見る
« 2011年06月 | Main | 2011年08月»
Blog Profile.jpg
Yohei Sasakawa
Profile
Twitter
Google
this blog www
<< 2011年07月 >>
          1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31            
What's New?
Categories
Monthly Archive
Comments
Links
https://blog.canpan.info/yoheisasakawa/index1_0.rdf
https://blog.canpan.info/yoheisasakawa/index2_0.xml
Wind Makes Profitable Musicians [2011年07月27日(Wed)]


“Red Song Campaign” launched at the Chinese Communist Party’s 90th Anniversary



Wind Makes Profitable Musicians



This is from a Japanese proverb; “wind makes profitable cooper”.
The readers might be puzzled at this proverb but it goes like this;
When the wind blows, dust is stirred up. Dust makes people blind. Blind people buy more shamisen (three-stringed Japanese instrument. In the past many blind people were professional shamisen players.) More shamisens would sell. Shamisen is made of cat’s skin and therefore the number of cats decline. When the number of cats decline, there will be more mice. Mice gnaw on wooden pails; therefore, demand for wooden pails increases and coopers will make more money.

This proverb is a metaphor of a seemingly unrelated cause and effect that bring about unexpected impact.

July 1 was the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party of China and the entire nation was in a celebration mood. The special feature of this year’s anniversary celebration was none other than the “Red Song” Campaign.

The campaign originated in Chongqing, where it was launched by Bo Xilai, elite of the Crown Prince Party (Taizi Dang) and the Party chief of Chongqing, the largest city in southwest China, The Red Song is a song that pays homage to the Communist Party and to the history of the People’s Republic of China and its development. The campaign was started on a large-scale by Chinese officials and encouraged companies, organizations, groups and schools to follow along, and it rapidly dominated the nation in a great fad, as it was imitated in different provinces and municipalities.

When Chongqing sent a huge choir, composed of its 1000 citizens, to Beijing in June, it became the talk of the town. Chongqing was ridiculed and nicknamed “Tomato”, or Xi hongshi in Chinese, which is a homonym for “the western red city”.

As many as 46 choirs were formed in each section of the state agency which is the counterpart of the Chinese project of the Sasakawa Japan-China Friendship Fund. They were all immersed in intensive rehearsals, two to three times a week, sparing time from office hours, from as early as the beginning of May, two months prior to the finals of the competition. The selected teams were to be provided with brand new costumes that were designed in line with the verse of the song that they selected and would continue to prepare for the finals with genuine dress rehearsals, in rented music halls and auditoriums.

Twelve teams were selected to advance to the finals at the preliminary contest held in mid-June. After that, the trainings to prepare for the finals became even more intensive and heated than ever before. There were even teams that took their entire team of fifty singers, lodged together in a “training camp” style in the suburbs, and invited professional teachers. The finals that took place on June 28th was wild with excitement as all the leaders of the state agencies were present, professional singers were invited as panel of judges, and was even aired on television.

This “Red Song” Campaign made unexpected professionals profitable. They were the teachers of music.

Choirs were formed one after another at different state agencies, groups, schools, local communities, in a single spell of time. There was a sudden increase of requests for professional music teachers who were invited to coach the teams to improve their quality of performance. Our counterpart, that I have aforementioned practiced twice a week and invited professional teachers who were members of music bands, from two months prior to the competition. The quoted training fee for these teachers was 1,000 Yuan/hour with a car provided. So a two-hour practice would cost 2,000 Yuan (approximately \25,000). The grand total for the two-months training of two-hour session twice a week totaling to 16 training sessions would come to 32,000 Yuan (\400,000). The winner was to receive a prize in cash of 5,000 Yuan (\63,000), so it would be a sizable deficit for the teams.

But this is not the end of the incurred cost. The regulation stipulates that the members of each choir are limited to official staff and therefore there is a very strict screening in order to prevent substitutes from taking part, with the exception of conductors and the accompanists who are allowed to be professionals. This means that together with the professional music teachers, many music bands and choirs were in great demand and they have apparently earned quite a lump sum income.

The 90th Anniversary of the Communist Party of China has ended.
The “Red Song” movement has also quieted down for the time being, but it is uncertain whether this would be the end of the movement or not. One thing is almost certain that musicians will not become “coopers” for another 10 years when the centenary anniversary will be celebrated.
Posted by Y.Sasakawa at 09:00 | URL | comment(0)
| next