Abstract
The production of the Uyghur version of The Red Lantern (Qizil chiragh; Chinese: Hongdeng ji) in the 1970s marked a crucial moment in the history of the musical involvement of minority nationalities during China’s “Great Cultural Revolution” (medeniyet zor inqilabi, 1966–76) in at least two important senses. First, the opera was played and sung entirely in the Uyghur language, with musical materials drawn extensively from traditional Uyghur music, and was accompanied by a mixed orchestra of Uyghur and European musical instruments. This represents a carefully controlled experiment for model Chinese (Peking) operas to be “transplanted” (özleshtürüp ishlengen; Chinese: yizhi) into minority languages and operatic genres to further the dissemination of “revolutionary messages” and to advance the principles and practices of socialist realism in minority performing arts. Second, to minority musicians involved in the project—many of whom had lately been labeled jin-sheytan (demon, Satan) and suffered different extents of abuses during the most violent phase of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s—the production of the opera came as a long-awaited opportunity to safeguard their national performing arts. This was achieved via means that were often modernist and reformist.
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Notes
Zhu Peimin, Ersbi shiji Xinjiang shi yanjiu (Research on Twentieth-century Xinjiang History) (Urumqi: Xinjiang renmin chubanshe, 2000), 308–325.
A pioneer work on the transplanting of model operas is Bell Yung’s study on Cantonese opera Sagabong, transplanted from the Peking opera Shajiabang. See Bell Yung, “Model Opera as Model: From Shajiabang to Sagabong” in Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People’s Republie of China, 1949–79, edited by Bonnie S. McDougall (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984), 144–164.
Michael Clarke, Xinjiang and China’s Rise in Central Asia: A History (New York: Routledge, 2011), 54–58
Donald McMillen, Chinese Communist Power and Policy in Xinjiang, 1949–1977 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979), 92–94.
Tian Liantao, “Cong Weiwu’er shier mukamu de sange banben kan Xinjiang de minzu yinyue jipu zhengli gongzuo” (Three Versions of Twelve Muqam and the Transcription of Ethnic Music in Xinjiang), Renmin yinyue 6 (2002): 32–35.
See Zhou Ji, Mukamu (Muqam) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 2005), 215–216.
June Teufel Dreyer, China’s Forty Millions: Minority Nationalities and National Integration in the People’s Republie of China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 214.
Michael Friederich, “Uyghur Literary Representations of Xinjiang Realities,” in Situating the Uyghur between China and Central Asia, edited by Ildikö Bellér-Hann et al. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 102.
See James Millward, Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 274–275
Wang Lixiong, Wo de Xiyu, ni de Dongtu (My Western Region, Your East Turkestan) (Taipei: Lotus, 2007).
James Millward and Nabijan Tursun, “Political History and Strategies of Control,” in Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland, edited by S. Frederick Starr (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2004), 97.
Interview, March 2013; see also Héytem Hüseyin, Hijran mungliri (The Sorrow of Separation) (Qeshqer: Qeshqer Uyghur neshriyati, 2007), 225–232
Héytem Hüseyin, Libie qing (Feelings of Separation) (Beijing: Zhongguo wenlian chubanshe, 2011), 141–145.
Zhongguo xiqu zhi, Xinjiang Juan, bianji weiyuanhui, ed., Zhongguo iqu zhi: Xinjiang juan (Chronicle of Chinese Operatic Music: Xinjiang), (Beijing: China ISBN Center, 1995), 29–67.
Paul Clark, The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 76.
Uyghur Opera The Red Lantern), in Difang xi yizhi geming yangbanxi hao (The Adaptation of Revolutionary Model Operas for Local Operas is Good) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1975), 48–55
Héytem Hüseyin and Ablimit Sadiq, “Yan geming xi; zuo geming ren” (Play Revolutionary Opera; Become Revolutionaries), in Difang xi yizhi geming yangbanxi hao (The Adaptation of Revolutionary Model Operas for Local Operas is Good) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1975), 62–63.
The Chinese musicologist Zhou Ji (1943–2008) was also on the team as a composer. He wrote about his involvements in Zhou Ji, Mukamu, 71–74; and Zhou Ji, Zhou Jianguo, and Wu Shoupeng, “Xinjiang geju shilue” (A Brief History of Opera in Xinjiang), Xinjiang yishu xueyuan xuebao 3(1) (2005): 38–48.
Héytem Hüseyin, “‘Qizil Chiragh’ chaqnighan yillar” (The Shining Years of Red Lantern), Part 2, Shinjang Sen’iti 2 (2005), 26–38
Wang Mei, “Weiwu’er yu gejü Hongdeng ji de chuangyan ji qi yinyue chuangzuo” (The Performance and Musical Composition of Uyghur Opera The Red Lantern), Yinyue yanjiu 6 (2010): 78–88
See Rachel Harris, The Making of a Musical Canon in Chinese Central Asia: The Uyghur Twelve Muqam (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 81–86
Nathan Light, Intimate Heritage: Creating Uyghur Muqam Song in Xinjiang (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2008), 200–206.
See Chuen-Fung Wong, “Reinventing the Central Asian Rawap in Modern China: Musical Stereotypes, Minority Modernity, and Uyghur Instrumental Music,” Asian Music 43(1) (2012): 34–63.
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© 2016 Chuen-Fung Wong
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Wong, CF. (2016). The West is Red: Uyghur Adaptation of The Legend of the Red Lantern (Qizil Chiragh) during China’s Cultural Revolution. In: Clark, P., Pang, L., Tsai, TH. (eds) Listening to China’s Cultural Revolution. Chinese Literature and Culture in the World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137463579_8
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