These series were written by Cedric McCoy and republished here with the author’s and publisher’s consent. The 3-part series were originally published on The Michigan Daily webpage on Feb. 8, 21 and 23.
For Black History Month 2023, I will be publishing a mini-series of short music reviews under the title “Protest Music Retrospects.” The aim of this series is to both revisit some of the most pivotal moments in Black protest music history and to shed light on overlooked Black figures and musics, specifically those of Black women, that have contributed to socially-conscious popular culture. The reviews will be a mix of musical critique as well as historical and historiographical analysis of the works and their responses in media. I first highlighted Sister Souljah’s 360 Degrees of Power; for this next entry, I will continue the series with Tracy Chapman’s 1988 debut and self-titled album,Tracy Chapman.
Arguably, Tracy Chapman isn’t exactly “overlooked.” It is one of the best-selling albums of all time (having sold over 20 million copies worldwide and certified platinum six times over) and earned Chapman Grammys for Best Contemporary Folk Album, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (for “Fast Car”) and Best New Artist. However, I argue that the political themes and lyricism of Tracy Chapman is frequently missed in discussions of protest music of the era; released in the same year as N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton and Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the surviving narrative is that Black male rappers and emcees pioneered the new resistance. The intrigue of “Fast Car” quickly became what Tracy Chapman was known for, and in combination with the fact that she was a Black woman making folk music in the late 20th century, the politicization of her lyrics was lost on a majority of audiences. As a result of her commercial success, contemporary accounts strip Chapman of her evocative and powerful commentary.
Tracy Chapman is, at its core, an album that documents the experience of a working class Black woman. Chapman, in a traditional folk style, often positions herself as a narrator outside of the story actively being told; even so, she weaves her knowledge and experiences into the narrative. For example, in the lead track “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution,” Chapman discusses the rumblings of an impoverished and overexploited working class interested in a “revolution,” wherein “poor people gonna rise up / and take their share / poor people gonna rise up / and take what’s theirs.”
Raised by a working-class family in Cleveland, Chapman knows firsthand the challenges of working-class Americans and is able to dictate the experience with a certain specificity: “While they’re standing in the welfare lines” in the first verse becomes “I’ve been standing in the welfare lines” in the third verse. “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution” sets the tone for an album unmistakably entrenched in the struggle.
Every subsequent track on the album continues this thread of what Southern University professor Dr. Rasheedah Jenkins describes as “unabashed critique of the economic system’s virulence during the Reagan-Bush administration and its global influence.” In songs like the album’s lead single “Fast Car” and “She’s Got Her Ticket,” Chapman tells stories of women desperately seeking an escape from poverty and lack of opportunity; “Why?” and “Behind the Wall” comment on violence against women, both domestically and globally; “Mountain O’ Things” critiques American materialism and exploitative labor practices and so on. In each track Chapman addresses these issues with nuance and empathy, directly personifying the resistance of capitalist oppressions and state violence.
Even beyond her searing indictments of American society and western greed, there is something unique and admirable about Chapman’s lyrics that I find especially worth noting. In contrast to the hyper-masculine and chauvinistic aggression found in some of her male contemporaries, Chapman centers love and understanding in her narratives. She connects herself to the stories she tells — not to center herself, but to engage the reader in a more personal listening of her lyrics. In “If Not Now…” Chapman spends the first few verses presenting economic and social liberation as the ruling class’s unrequited love for the working class, but then presents this line in the final verse: “Now love’s the only thing that’s free / we must take it where it’s found.” Immediately this could be read as a continuation of her running metaphor, that we should seize opportunity when it finds us; I argue that Chapman intends a second, more literal meaning with the lyric. In the same way that she has humanized the working-class stories throughout the album, Chapman humanizes our fundamental desire to be acknowledged and cared for. I feel that the album’s final track, “For You,” can also be understood in this double-meaning framework.
Essentially, I encourage the reader to see Chapman’s debut album through a womanist lens – especially regarding the second definition ascribed to the term by its originator, Alice Walker:
“A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female.”
While Chapman has never publicly disclosed information about her sexual preferences or identity, we do know that there is potential to see her life and work through a queer lens (ironically, as a result of Alice Walker herself disclosing her and Chapman’s affairs). I borrow musicologist Suzanne Cusick’s framework for understanding music through a lesbian lens from her article “On A Lesbian Relationship with Music” to extend this analysis. Cusick argues that a (assumedly oversimplified but fundamental in nature) lesbian relationship lacks the traditionally heterosexual power dynamic:
(A woman) is non-power: to be in love with her is to be in love with, to be fascinated by, to be drawn to that which is non-power. With her, a self who is also non-power is more likely to create a relationship based on non-power…No one in the relationship has been formed to be the power figure, although all can play at it.
In short, Cusick claims that queer relationships (but that specifically of lesbians) defy a hierarchical, vertical power structure in favor of a horizontal, fluid power structure. I find this lens, applied to music specifically as Cusick later does, useful in understanding Chapman’s work because it lacks that exact power dynamic protest music had come to embody in that moment: in contrast to a prophet or speaker for Black America to rally behind and listen to, Chapman simply tells her story as-is and lends her ear to her working-class comrades. Chapman, in the face of multiple jeopardy systemic oppressions, advocates intracommunal love and the liberation of all through mutual efforts. There is no appeal to violence or physical rage, as such devices are unnecessary in her approach; rather, it is more useful to understand one another and build solidarity in absence of hierarchical power structures, both in terms of race and gender but as well as sexuality.
Tracy Chapman will be remembered by, as it already is, Chapman’s transparent and relatable lyricism as well as her politically informed criticisms. In addition to the genre-defining musicality and emotion displayed throughout Chapman’s recordings, I hope that the album is revered for its revolutionary draw to love and its commitment to radical empathy within the canon of Black protest music for generations to come. The album is potent with themes, analysis and lyrics to pick apart for at least a few more decades.
MiC Assistant editor Cedric Preston McCoy can be reached at cedmccoy@umich.edu.
These series were written by Cedric McCoy and republished here with the author’s and publisher’s consent. The 3-part series were originally published on The Michigan Daily webpage on Feb. 8, 21 and 23.
For Black History Month 2023, I will be publishing a mini-series of short music reviews under the title “Protest Music Retrospects.” The aim of this series is to both revisit some of the most pivotal moments in Black protest music history and to shed light on overlooked Black figures and musics, specifically those of Black women, that have contributed to the socially-conscious popular culture of today. The reviews will be a mix of musical critique as well as historical and historiographical analysis of the works and their responses in media. For the first entry, I will be starting off with Sister Souljah and her 1992 album, 360 Degrees of Power.
Lisa Williamson, known professionally as Sister Souljah, is an activist, writer, film producer and musician. She first garnered attention as a campus activist while at Cornell University, before becoming a performing artist in the music industry. She was also a member of Public Enemy for a short period of time in the 1990s, serving as their minister of information.
360 Degrees of Power is raw, aggressive and confrontational. Sister Souljah’s delivery is somewhat arhythmic and doesn’t quite fit into the popular rhythmic and rhyme-informed styles of rap of the era; her lyricism is best understood as a continuation of the musical poetry of the ‘60s and ‘70s, popularized by The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron.
Sister Souljah engages with a multitude of difficult and nuanced topics by making direct commentary on white power structures, as well as the complacency of some Black people in systems of their own oppressions. The album produced two singles –– The Hate that Hate Produced and The Final Solution: Slavery is Back in Effect –– a satirical skit that imagines the re-institution of slavery in the 20th century. Both works encapsulate Sister Souljah’s militancy and Black-nationalistic philosophies. The first single yields this powerful stanza, framing the overarching messages of the album:
Souljah was not born to make white people feel comfortable
I am African first, I am Black first
I want what’s good for me and my people first
And if my survival means your total destruction
Then so be it!
You built this wicked system
They say two wrongs don’t make it right
But it damn sure makes it even!
Throughout the album’s tracks, Sister Souljah tackles the issues of domestic abuse, alcoholism and sexism within Black communities. For example, in the fifth track, “Nigga’s Gotta,” she includes another short skit wherein a Black man sexually abuses his young daughter. The interlude is hard to listen to even today, but serves to make real and audible an often shared experience of Black women. Sister Souljah further uses the track to problematize Black masculinity and its simultaneous attraction to materiality and dismissal of political education. She mirrors the form and cadence of The Last Poets’ Niggers are Scared of the Revolution, speaking to Black men through indicting and ironic third-person references.
Sister Souljah also addresses American militarism and imperialism globally and domestically in her lyrical presentation, while holding absolutely nothing back. In the song Killing Me Softly: Deadly Code of Silence, she begins with this scathing critique that continues to reflect Republican leadership in the 21st century:
George Bush is a terrorist / He creates terror in the minds, hearts and neighborhoods of Black people.”
Later in the album, on the song titled Brainteasers and Doubtbusters, she includes the still-relevant reflection:
They give you scholarships to their schools / So you can learn to think and act like them / So they can use you against your own people / Like these weak pitiful Black mayors and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
All of these examples demonstrate Sister Souljah’s unique positionality within the Black experience: she combines her personal perspectives with her politically informed commentary to craft a narrative that both draws upon an intellectual tradition and pioneers a new space for Black women to participate in cultural critique. I find her lyrics potent even today, as we navigate conservative “anti-woke” movements and rejections of Black voices (especially Black feminist voices) in the teaching of Black histories.
Despite only publishing one studio album, Sister Souljah has had a prolific creative career. Shortly after the release of 360 Degrees of Power, she began a career as a writer and novelist. Her memoir, “No Disrespect,” was released in 1994, and her first work of fiction, “The Coldest Winter Ever,” was published in 1999. Sister Souljah remains an activist and author, having written five other novels and contributing to various journals and newspapers.
Under normal circumstances, a project such as 360 Degrees of Power would have been lost to obscurity: not only was it a debut from a widely unknown artist, but it also came at a time when Black women rappers were often disregarded for their political commentary and critique. However, in a 1992 interview with The Washington Post, Sister Souljah gave her now-infamous critique of American policing in response to the LA riots:
“If Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?”
The comment was widely and harshly received by the media (and largely white America). Bill Clinton — at the time a presidential candidate — criticized her language and sentiment, comparing her approach to that of David Duke (“had the words ‘white’ and ‘Black’ be reversed”) spawning the “Sister Souljah Moment” phenomenon. Sister Souljah’s “Sister Souljah Moment” forced her to the front of contemporary rejections of rap and signaled a new beginning in the respectability politics of the neoliberal ‘90s: an epoch where racially-charged political thought was reduced to “extremism” and dismissed by the conservative hegemonic culture.
Despite her short stint in the music industry, Sister Souljah represents the end of an era of protest music. The dominant cultural structure had already begun resisting the profane and deeply assertive messaging of political rap with Public Enemy, N.W.A. and others in the leading years. The early ‘90s did not bring an end to politically conscious rap; however, subsequent years were filled with more avant-garde, music-focused approaches to the medium that ultimately would remain at the forefront of the genre. Still, her contribution to the movement was unique and worth remembering and reflecting upon: so often are the voices of radical Black women ignored in favor of the hero-worship of their male contemporaries. Though overlooked, 360 Degrees of Power has earned its spot in the canon of 20th century Black protest music.
MiC Assistant Editor Cedric Preston McCoy can be reached at cedmccoy@umich.edu.
This article was written by Yaxue Cao and originally published on the China Change webpage on March 5th, 2023.
The first time I heard The Internationale sung in China as a protest song was when Shanghai went into lockdown for about a week last spring. At that time, I watched dozens of videos from Shanghai on social media every day. One clip left an impression on me. It was taken in a residential area populated by apparently middle-class families. Virtually every household had their lights on, illuminating almost every balcony as their occupants stood facing the outside. A brass-band performance of “The Internationale” resounded throughout the night; upon close attention, the sounds of people singing along were faintly audible. In the apartment of the person shooting the video (you can see an elegantly furnished room), a little girl asks an adult, possibly her mother or a caretaker: “Why is there…?” The woman responds, “They’re singing, do you know how to sing?” What you hear in this 30-second clip is the opening verse of The Internationale:
Arise, ye stricken by hunger and cold Arise, wretched of the earth Hot blood has begun to boil In struggle for the cause of truth Let us smash the old world to smithereens Slaves, arise, arise Say not that we own nothing We will become the masters of the world
Shangai, April, 2022
My first reactions were conflicted, as I was both drawn to and repelled by the song. The scene itself was quite striking: locked-down Shanghainese standing on their balconies in a display of unspoken unison to spontaneously sing out in protest. But this was a communist anthem, the iconic theme of the proletarian revolution. The Internationale is emblematic of the decades of indoctrination by the Communist Party, which imprinted those lyrics deeply into the minds of every Chinese. Any other song would be preferable.
But on the other hand, what else could they sing? Virtually every Chinese knows this tune, myself included. I can’t think of any other song that would allow everyone to join in as a collective expression of anger and protest. Of the some 3,000 clips I reviewed from the Shanghai lockdown last April and May, this clip was among the most memorable, so I included it in the first of the two-part Shanghai lockdown compilation of montages posted on China Change. In fact, spontaneous choruses of The Internationale occurred not just in Shanghai but in multiple other Chinese cities during the course of the pandemic. On Douyin (抖音, the Chinese app that TikTok is copied from), there are “relays” of the song accompanied with anti-government expressions flashing across the screen.
In the months that followed, The Internationale gained currency with Chinese protesters as a resistance hymn. Last October, shortly before the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Congress, the lone protester Peng Zaizhou (彭载舟) unfurled banners and ignited a smoke beacon on Sitong Bridge in Beijing, playing a pre-recorded message through a loudspeaker to demand liberty, democracy, an end to the zero-COVID policy, and that Xi Jinping step down from leadership. His singular act of defiance sparked similar protests across the country. People wearing disguises and moving at night spray-painted or put up stickers in public venues such as restrooms, bus stops, bulletin boards, or even on rental bikes with simple slogans echoing Peng’s words: “No to lockdowns, yes to freedom, no to dictatorship, yes to elections.” On social media, Chinese widely shared the song Warrior of the Darkness to salute him, but it was quickly blocked by censors.
In the evening of October 22 in a bustling Shanghai street, seven or eight young people held up a white banner, blank but for the four loaded words “No, Yes, No, Yes” (不要，要；不要，要) referring to the demands Peng had made. Their banner was the precursor of the idea of blank paper. Together they sangThe Internationale in an ad-hoc, uneven chorus. The sight of them moving along the vehicular traffic caught the attention of passers-by, many of them stood to watch.
A month later, on November 26, the Blank Paper protests began in Shanghai. Several hundred young people gathered at Urumqi Middle Road (乌鲁木齐中路) to mourn the victims of the residential fire in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, who perished in the flames due to the strict lockdown measures that kept them prevented them from running for their lives. Over the last three years, especially by 2022, many Chinese had reached the breaking point under zero-COVID, and the daily stream of outrageous tragedies on social media, or which had occurred to themselves or those with whom they were personally familiar, tested their nerves. That night at Urumqi Middle Road, the protesters sang The Internationale as they faced down the police officers forming a wall before them.
This is the final struggle Let us gather together, and tomorrow The Internationale Will be the human race
At the end of the song, the crowd chanted in thunderous unison: “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!”
Urumqi Middle Road, Shanghai, November 26, 2022.
The next night, a similar scene repeated itself at Liangma Bridge (亮马桥), near the enclave of foreign embassies in the third ring of Beijing. The area was flooded with demonstrators, numbering minimally in the several hundreds. Mostly young people, they held up blank sheets of white A4-sized paper, singing The Internationale in the light of the streetlamps and their smartphone screens.
Mirror mourning events and protests — featuring the same song — played out on Chengdu’s Wangping Street, in Yunnan’s Dali autonomous prefecture, and in numerous other cities throughout China.
Hot blood has begun to boil In struggle for the cause of truth Let us smash the old world to smithereens Slaves, arise, arise Say not that we own nothing We will become the masters of the world
Liangma Bridge, Beijing, November 27, 2022.
The Communist Party’s Internationale
From Red Square to the Congress of Soviets; from Beijing’s Great Hall of the People to the conference hall of the Korean Workers Party in Pyongyang, my ears spent several days on a bizarre tour that reeked of a musty smell. Following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, from 1922 to 1944, The Internationale was the national anthem of the Soviet Union. In 1941, after the Soviet Union came under attack by Nazi Germany and joined the Allies in World War II, Winston Churchill instructed the BBC not to include The Internationale in its repertoire of National Anthems of the Allies that played before daily news broadcast at 9 p.m. The Brits proposed to replace The Internationale with a segment of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, and the Soviets said no. To avoid having to play the communist hymn, the BBC simply canceled the entire anthem segment, until Churchill relented six months later. The Americans likewise censored The Internationale in the production of the 1944 short documentary Hymn of the Nations until, in 1988, the Library of Congress restored it to its original version.
That says all about the free world’s misgivings about the communist anthem at the dawn of the Cold War.
The Internationale traces its origins from the Paris Commune, and became an anthem of international socialism and communism by the late 19th century. In 1923, the song was translated into Chinese and played during the closing ceremony at that year’s Third National Congress of the nascent Chinese Communist Party — a tradition that has been followed ever since. During the Mao Zedong era, the morning and evening news programs of the Central People’s Radio Broadcasting at 6:30 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. all began with The East Is Red and concluded with The Internationale. At those two slots, this program was the only voice on all channels throughout China.
Chinese during the Mao era were destitute. Everything was in short supply but not The Internationale. From what I heard, the first step at the oath-taking ceremonies when joining the CCP is to play or sing The Internationale. In the ocean of suffering created by the Party’s endless political campaigns, this music equivalent of the Communist Manifesto has never been absent. One video clip from 1965 that I watched shows a massive chorus of ten thousand singing The Internationale in the Great Hall of the People. Such scenes were common fare in the Mao era, except that unlike today they could not be so conveniently recorded. In Maoist “revolutionary films,” whenever a Party member is executed by the Nationalist government (Kuomingtang), The Internationale is bound to appear in the soundtrack. Here is a compilation of clips to give you an idea of how it looks:
On July 1, 2021, when the CCP celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding, The Internationale was played in the presence of the thousands of performers at Tiananmen Square, and Xi Jinping sang along piously. And last October, it played at the closing ceremony of the 20th Party Congress, as is customary, with Xi Jinping personally announcing “Perform The Internationale!” All delegates stood as a military band blared out the tune.
In the 2021 movie “The Revolutionary” (《革命者》), which follows the early Chinese communist revolutionary and CCP founding member Li Dazhao (李大钊), when Li is brought to the gallows, the theme song The Internationale, performed by singer Na Ying (那英), plays in the background. In an ahistorical dialogue, Li Dazhao tells a young uniformed man: “Promise me you will live until the day that the revolution succeeds. For my sake, see what that day is like.”
The Internationale in 1989
There are many eyewitness accounts from the 1989 student protest movement describing how demonstrators at Tiananmen sang the Internationale, the Chinese national anthem, and the then-pop hit Nothing to My Name (《一无所有》) by rising rock star Cui Jian. Of these songs, The Internationale clearly predominated among the protesters. An example can be seen in the clip published by ABC, “Chinese protesters sing anthem The Internationale.” In an audio recording from the scene in Beijing, student leader Chai Ling (柴玲) cried herself hoarse shouting, “Defend Tiananmen to the death, to the last man! Fellow students, please join us to sing The Internationale!”
In this clip from the BBC archive, Kate Adie reported from the scene on the night of June 3rd, 1989: “A line of soldiers were strung out facing a huge crowd. The air was filled with shouts, ‘Fascists! Stop killing!’ We were in the line facing the troops. They were about 250 yards away. Young people were singing The Internationale to the background of gunfire.”
As many witnesses would recall, at 4 a.m. in the morning of June 4, the lights at Tiananmen Square were suddenly turned off. To the thousands still left on the square, it was becoming apparent that the final moment was fast approaching, and they sang The Internationale. Shortly after the lights went out, columns of tanks and other armored vehicles moved in from Jinshui Bridge in front of the Tiananmen, crushing tents in their rapid advance to the Monument to the People’s Heroes, where the students were gathered. Columns of soldiers moved into the Square and closed in around the students.
In a clip broadcast by CCTV later that day — and the only time that state media broadcast such footage to the nation to show the military’s victory in clearing the square and “suppressing the riots,” you can see crowds of surviving students packed together and hear them singing The Internationale: “This is the final struggle/let us gather together, and tomorrow…”
Thirty years of Rock & Roll Internationale
Newly out of Mao’s era in late 1970s and early 1980s, urban Chinese for the first time began to peek into the world through a crack in the newly opened gate to the outside world. Western cinema, art, literature, and pop music, accessible only to a very small, enterprising number of people in the capital and other major cities, shocked Chinese sensibilities. Take music for example. What captured the eyes, the imagination and feelings of a small number of young music-lovers in Beijing was not the pop music from Hong Kong and Taiwan, but Rock & Roll from America and Europe: The Beatles, Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, and more.
“I was washing clothes and listening to music, so excited like I was about to cry. As I washed clothes, I said to myself, How could there be such wonderful music in the world?”, said Ding Wu (丁武). At the time, there was only one store in in Wangfujing (王府井) selling string instruments, and the store had only one electric guitar, made in China. Ding Wu was the young man who bought it with 400 yuan, which was his entire savings, working as an art teacher for a year and a half. Soon he quit his job and began to play Rock & Roll with music friends, starting from imitating the songs of European and American rock bands. They rehearsed on rooftops of apartment buildings, in warehouses, factory workshops, any place they could find. And they borrowed from each other rare or hard-to-find instruments. They performed in restaurants serving Western food or small parties, making little money and getting by eating ramen noodles and milk powder. In 1988, Ding Wu and his friends formed a band and named it “Tang Dynasty.” Beijing was the birthplace of Chinese Rock & Roll, and Tang Dynasty was one of its few early bands.
Every day in Beijing of the 1980s, people were discovering new and exciting things, and exposed to what they had not known before or could not have imagined. But Rock & Roll, in the most direct way, awoke the sleeping volcano in the hearts of young people.
On February 17 and 18, 1990, “90 Modern Concert” was held in the Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing (北京首都体育馆), and six rock bands were invited to perform. Outside the ticket office, the queue stretched several blocks, and for a 5-yuan ticket, a scalper ticket sold for ten times more. That concert of 18,000 audiences was dubbed Beijing’s Woodstock, and Tang Dynasty was an instant hit. Between 1990 and 1991, the band recorded its first album, also the first Rock & Roll album in China, with a Taiwanese label called Magic Stone (魔岩唱片), and sold half a million copies the first year. Starting with A Dream Return to Tang Dynasty (梦回唐朝), also the title of the album, the first ten numbers were the band’s own creation, and the last was The Internationale, a choral piece and the band’s first-ever rendition of the song.
In KTVs throughout China, when you select The Internationale, Tang Dynasty’s hard-rock rendition shows up on the screen.
Reverberating in the air on the April night in Shanghai that I described at the beginning of the article was Tang Dynasty’s performance of The Internationale.
On Zhihu (知乎, a question-and-answer forum similar to Quora), a netizen wrote, answering to the question “How to evaluate Tang Dynasty’s Internationale” in 2020, “Speaking of dissemination, there is nothing that can compare with Tang Dynasty’s version. It’s been almost thirty years, people are still listening to it, singing it; it’s still considered one of the iconic songs of Chinese Rock & Roll. I found that many of my students have memorized the lyrics of The Internationale because of the band.”
Tang Dynasty, 2021.
A specter to haunt the CCP
Over the past two years, especially in the past year, The Internationale has seen a resurgence of popularity in China. “One internet user said that he came across the song five times in one day [on WeChat], including existing versions by professional singers, choral performances, and people singing along with recordings [of the tune]; some of the videos had gotten thousands or tens of thousands of likes and reshares.”
From a rock band on the streets of Xi’an (西安), to the solo of an old man on the street of Dandong (丹东), and even in some unexpected venues and niches, such as the CP28 Shanghai Comic-Con in July 2021, The Internationale was sung.
Of course, some do use it as part of the repertoire of “red songs.” One singer in his twenties set up a “thousand-member online choir project” to sing The Internationale in celebration of the CCP’s 100th anniversary. Between the end of 2020 and July 2021, over a thousand people participated.
But The Internationale has undeniably become a hymn of resistance for multitudes of Chinese. One poem by a Chinese internet user reads:
The whole internet sings The Internationale
Our people suffer but with no way to tell
Dark clouds cover all the sun in the sky
Evil prevails to steal goodness away
It’s the New China in which we live today
Don’t force us to cry these rivers of tears
One young woman observed that The Internationale enjoys the popularity it does because it “expresses the hopes and voices of so many working-class people” and their discontent towards those with capital. A response on Zhihu says: “As the pandemic has dragged on for over two years, nationwide economic growth has slowed down, inflation has placed considerable financial pressure on the people, and the three mountains of medical care, education, and pension [decline] directly impact the survival and livelihood of the common folk. Coupled with the corruption of certain unscrupulous officials, the law enforcement agencies’ [crackdown] on various cyber financial frauds, food safety, people are experiencing unprecedented anxiety about the future. Moreover, there is no way for the people to vent their feelings of dejection. Singing The Internationale is for them a means to call for justice and fairness. This may be the reason why The Internationale has become so popular on the internet.”
However, The Internationale going viral has caused disquiet among the CCP and its supporters. A widely shared clip from the Shanghai lockdown in 2022 shows four police officers donning the “big white” full-body hazmat suits as they knocked on the door to a young couple’s flat.
The police say: “somebody [made a police report], and we’ve also heard you playing The Internationale. We ask you to cooperate with our investigation.” The response: “When did we play The Internationale?” The police continue: “That’s what our investigation is for, we need to ascertain the facts. Right now we are making an oral summons, and hope that you’ll cooperate.” The husband said that he would comply, and the police asked him to come with them. The man said: “Now it’s a crime even to play The Internationale.” His wife protested, “What’s wrong with playing The Internationale?” An officer dismissed her: “It’s okay to play The Internationale, but we need to investigate.”
An article posted on WeChat expressed concern of incitement by far-left Maoists: “These days The Internationale is performed only at the conclusion of Communist Party meetings. How is it that this song has suddenly proliferated all over the internet in all stripes and colors? Some even match it with displays of red flags that suggest mass rallies and parades. It seems to me that there are some hands acting behind the scenes to intentionally stir up the emotions of the masses.”
In a Chinese-language community on Reddit, someone commented in a post titled “Beware of foreign forces singing The Internationale at CP28 [the Comic-Con in Shanghai] and spreading mistaken left-wing thought” wrote: “A group of well-fed people at a cosplay-themed anime and manga exhibition sang The Internationale. Are they saluting the revolution, or are they cosplaying Valvrave the Liberator? …The spirit of communism cannot be cosplayed.”
Another article posted on WeChat takes a threatening tone: “Playing The Internationale to incite people and cause trouble is not only illegal, you could be committing a crime. You have to be aware of the setting when you play the song: who is playing it, where you play it. The Internationale is not a free pass for you to disturb public order.”
On Douyin, people discovered that the comment and share sections on many videos featuring The Internationale had been disabled.
It’s not just the young who have discovered The Internationale as a protest hymn. This February, retirees in Wuhan and Dalian came out en masse in front of government buildings to protest the reduction in healthcare benefits. They loudly sang The Internationale, and some even called out “down with the reactionary government!” Some of these seniors described how they had lived through the political campaigns of the 1950s, the Great Famine, and the Cultural Revolution, only to be laid off in the 80s and 90s. They got hit with all the miseries, but didn’t get to enjoy much of the prosperity associated with the reform and opening up. Now in their old age, they’re not only worried about their healthcare, but also their pensions and even their funeral arrangements.
From 1989 to 2023, from the students at Tiananmen Square to the middle-class Shanghainese, from the “blank paper” youths to the “white-haired” seniors, The Internationale has apparently become the go-to song of protest in China. Everyone knows it by heart, and it sparks resonance from all quarters: “Slaves, arise, arise/Say not that we own nothing/We will become the masters of the world!”
This is awkward for the Communist Party, as their own ideological anthem is stolen from them in broad daylight to become the hymn of an eclectic revolution directed at the regime. Should the trend continue, we can expect the CCP to designate “singing The Internationale with malicious intent” as the newest item on the list of banned activities in the People’s Republic of China.
The Party may decide to expand its censorship and suppressive measures, but the problem is: they have no way to delete The Internationale from the collective memory of the Chinese people.
Yaxue Cao (曹雅学) is the editor of China Change. Cover photo credits: Shanghai, 1973. Photo: Bruno Barbey
