'Humanism in Red: A New Mainstream Narrative in the Pop Songs in 1980s’ China'

The rise of humanism in 1980s China brought forth a set of new narratives in pop-song composition that is under-recognized in Western scholarship. Songwriters collaborated with a rising music industry to develop in mainstream popular culture a home-nation ideology, like that formerly found in the Chinese literati tradition. Meanwhile, the music, lyrics, topics, instrumentation, and vocal deliveries of these songs express individual pain, sadness, worry, and loss in response to Chinese people’s spiritual suffering during the Cultural Revolution, in ways that echo the newly imported existential humanism of Jean-Paul Sartre. Extending their reach significantly beyond the minority musical spaces occupied by rock music in the same period, these musicians projected emergent articulations of individualism and self-direction in finding and building a new future for the nation and for themselves.