Just finished reading BaoZhengShi by Xu Ben. Obviously it is not on Douban, so I am marking it here.

I seem to be bothered by this topic everyday, and reading it does not make things better. Other than seeing the same types of stories again and again, there’s nothing much you may do apart from remembering.

So let’s keep this at minimum amount, and talk about music. Title? It’s from a DLC of HOI4.

Music and Society, Episode 5

I mentioned some songs of Taiwan in Green Island. The last one I wanted to say is Island’s Sunrise by Fire EX. The songs was composed to pay tribute to the Sunflower Movement.

In the last few days, some people were commemorating the ten-year anniversary of Umbrella Movement in HK. A notable song of that event is Hold High Our Umbrellas written by Albert Leung_.

There are many other examples. Songs were created specifically for some incident or mission, and they were sung by the crowd, and they became a classic or icon for the future.

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that there seems to be a significant gap of new/contemporary songs of those kind on our side of the world. We do not lack incidents, we do not lack great musicians, but certain reasons prevent the stories and songs be known on a wider scale. Take that few decades ago as example, tons of songs were made to commemorate it afterwards, but no new song was made during that time that became popular enough, even though some great musicians were the front-line participators.

That feeling was strong during the covid years til the end of 2022. I have seen many songs sung during many occasions, but they were all old ones. Popular choices include “Do you hear the people sing“, Internationale, and multiple songs by Beyond. It could be the problem with the music industry or simply censorship, it’s been a while. We don’t even have any good ode songs.

Those songs have two types. One is what people may sing all together when gathering on the street or square: strong, rhythmic, straightforward lyrics. Those ones are responsible to become popular. The other is less popular, with more complex melody and lyrics. This type serves more artistic value.

Even tough we lack some first type, we had some great ones that belong to the second type during this century. I give one example here:

In the album Trip to Temple Fair II (2011) by Zuoxiao Zuzhou, there is a song about Qian YunHui.

There’s a lot more. And thankfully people are still producing more, no matter if they are trendy and making tons from concerts, or if they are censored and whispering in their friendly gatherings.

I enjoy looking at that type of songs during that time. Each song has a tragedy behind, but each song successfully marks an unforgettable memory. When you look at most cases, the song and the incident represent a significant milestone of development of economy or justice in our society. It was the time when we discussed the death of a poor vendor at politics class, and things were seemingly being addressed and moving in the right direction.

I want more.