This season (spring 1999) marks the ten-year anniversary of the student protests-turned-massacre in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. While many print and multimedia materials have been produced to help educators teach about the various aspects of this event, few explore its musical dimensions. Indeed, the true power of music during the demonstrations can only be relayed by one of its participants. It was our good fortune to discover one such individual in our own classroom! Thanks to Yang Fan, we now have a personal account of the power of music at Tiananmen Square. Since 1997, Fan’s story has offered an “insider’s view” into this devastating occurrence to more than one thousand undergraduates at the University of Maryland at College Park. From the beginning of the peaceful rallies, music fused the will and strengthened the determination of protesters. Footage shows participants strumming their guitars and singing familiar tunes together. What is less well documented, however, is the protesters’ plea for the government to “practice what they preach” through the performance of nationalistic songs. The Internationale, a Communist anthem, declares, “We will clean all the unfairness and the sun will shine on our country.”¹ Yang Fan’s account makes it difficult for us to deny the impact of singing The Internationale during the spring of 1989. He tells us, “The seriousness of the song reminded us of our responsibility,” and “It encouraged us to stand up to the highest authority in China.” Singing The Internationale with other university students helped Fan realize that, “I was ready to die for the great cause.” He concludes, “At that instant [when the song superseded all sound on the Square], I grew up and became a man.”

Yang Fan’s essay, “The Power of The Internationale,” reveals the undeniable connections among music, politics, and history. His personal account brought these relationships to life for our students at the University of Maryland, illustrating the wealth and breadth of information contained in anthems. By tracing the global movement of a single song, our lesson shows how these relationships uncover a history of the exchange and adaptation of ideologies and musical idioms. The Internationale, as it was sung in Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989, is inextricably linked to the development of labor movements, socialism, and communism around the world. Exploring this history helped our students learn why such a European-sounding song has become a standard in the musical repertoire of the average Chinese citizen. Yang Fan’s story is the core of this article and lesson. We present it in the spirit of Clifford’s “cultural poetics.” By focusing on a personal voice, it challenges analyses that treat history as mere texts or objects. Fan’s voice represents one of the many that “clamor for expression” in the shaping of history. While Fan’s memory of what happened may differ somewhat from the reports of others, we guard against the pitfalls of accepting one man’s story as the truth through a “specification of discourse.” That is, both article and lesson offer clear answers to the situational questions: Who speaks? Who writes? When? Where? With or to whom? Under what institutional and historical constraints?² Our intent, then, is not historical “accuracy” in the traditional sense of the word. To tamper with a personal story describing such a grave event would both defeat the purpose of this lesson and be presumptuous. Rather, we focus on the expression of personal experience as a means toward demonstrating the natural and seamless interconnections among history, politics, and music. With these goals in mind, we intentionally preserve Yang Fan’s actual words, however clumsy they may be at times, to a native speaker of English. Our lesson plan (which also may be implemented with high school students), along with Yang Fan’s original essay and his translation of the lyrics of The Internationale, follows this explanatory article. We have added some ideas for “companion lessons” to illustrate how our lesson might be expanded or used as an introductory activity to larger units focusing on various themes related to the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square.

POLITICS, MUSIC AND The Internationale AT TIANANMEN SQUARE

Music can play a variety of roles in politics, including mobilizing groups of people, enculturation, and serving as a tool for the expression of political views. When voicing particularly revolutionary views, this expression may be achieved through repudiation, or hiding a controversial message behind politically sanctioned statements. Yang Fan’s concise essay reveals the multiple political dimensions of The Internationale and how its meaning changes through the course of time on both national and personal levels. The ability of music to act as a unifying force is widely accepted and well documented. For example, the film, We Shall Overcome: The Song That Moved a Nation, presents the role of music in unifying protesters during the American Labor movement of the 1940s and 1950s and the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Compelling reflections, like those of Jamila Jones, attest to music’s part in solidifying and empowering communal efforts. She recalls a response to her activist group’s singing of We Shall Overcome when law enforcement officials came to break up their meeting. She says, “It unnerved them [the officials]. It just seemed like nature came into that room. The water on the outside and even the trees just picked up and we were just a part of that nature in tune with what was happening.”³ Though stories like this one reveal the effects of music, they rarely explore how music is able to fulfill this role. Insight into this process is offered by Herndon and McCleod, who draw upon the literature on ritual in Music As Culture. Noting that ritual is a common response to anxiety in societies throughout the world, the authors discuss the state of communitas. In this condition, individuals lose direct consciousness of self and move into a temporary unity with others. This change of consciousness may be partially attributed to the highly patterned behavior that typifies ritual. Herndon and McCleod point to both music’s role in these behaviors and music’s commonalities with them.⁴ Similarly, McNeill describes the movement of groups of people in highly patterned ways in Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History. He concludes that movement in unison can create a “blurring of self-awareness and a heightening of fellow feeling with all who share in a dance or drill.”⁵ The role of music in dance and drill is obvious. Further, music itself may be viewed as rhythmic movement. Yang Fan describes the effect of hearing and singing The Internationale in Tiananmen Square. He says, “It brought few thousands of people together from their differences.” His account reveals music’s power to promote social solidarity. He traces his transformation from being a single activist to becoming a part of a collective whole. The phases of Fan’s transformation parallel the alterations in the musical, natural, and emotional surroundings. Initially, the quiet singing of just a few people served as a gentle suggestion for others to reconsider the meaning of The Internationale. The sky became overcast. As the number of singers increased, so did the volume and force behind the song. It came to represent the determination of the protesters. This determination was intensified by their refusal to take cover from an oncoming downpour. As the rain began to pound, the sound of The Internationale overtook the Square. Then, according to Yang Fan, the “magic” happened. The strength of the singers surpassed the forces of nature. Fan claims, “Even the rain can be ‘stop’ by our song.” Contributing to this “magic” was the protesters’ previous experience with The Internationale. According to Blacking music can only express extra-musical ideas when participants possess preexisting associations with that music.⁶ Therefore, we should not be surprised when Fan tells us that he first learned The Internationale in elementary school. Just as singing united the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989, singing nationalistic songs in school facilitated a sense of collective identity among students. In the context of a public education fostered by the Communist Party of China, it clearly promotes collective, grass-roots support for the regime: “Raise all the people, we will have to solve the problem. Raise all the people, we must take the lead.” This shared experience provided the people in Tiananmen Square with a core set of common beliefs that they had considered from their childhood days. A “common denominator” of basic ideas imbedded in the song helped the demonstrators to declare their views with confidence. Yet, Yang Fan indicates in his essay, “I did not understand its [The Internationale’s] true meaning until the spring of 1989.” The context of the Tiananmen protests changed the meaning of The Internationale. For example, the lyrics refer to a “New World.” Whereas the “New World” of Fan’s childhood was a communist utopia, the “New World” of the spring of 1989 was predicated upon the ideals of the student pro-democracy movement. Although new meaning emerged from the song and accusations of hypocrisy reached the ears of Party leaders, the students themselves were shielded from charges of subversion. In fact, nothing on the surface of the song (i.e., lyrics, melody, rhythm) had changed. Only the interpretation of the song had changed. Consequently, the students could repudiate, or deny and defend, their musical critique as a patriotic act! In fact, students passed through police lines, and soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army refrained from firing at them as a result of the variable message conveyed by their singing.

HISTORY, CONTEXT, AND MUSIC Global Musical Connections

Clearly, the power of music is multifaceted. One of its most interesting dimensions is the ability of a single melody to simultaneously express several meanings. In Tiananmen Square, students who had accepted the pro-communist sentiments of The Internationale as children added new meaning to the song by associating it with their pro-democracy movement. In fact, the students of China were not the first to reinterpret The Internationale. Dating back to the nineteenth century, The Internationale’s origins are foreign to China. Indeed, the melody has been sung and performed in a variety of contexts around the globe. While a song like The Internationale has the power to influence and affect the outcomes of events such as the 1989 demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, it is also true that these events leave their mark on the song. A pair of sensitive and patient ears should have little trouble “hearing” the song’s history in a recorded performance. In the classroom, without providing any information about The Internationale or the 1989 rallies in Tiananmen Square, we asked our students to listen to a recording of it from a collection of Chinese conduct songs. Instead of offering a song title, a country of origin, or any type of history, we asked them to use their ears and describe what they heard. The results were incredible! College freshmen, with little or no musical training, were able to recreate and realize much of The Internationale’s history with minimal guidance. Our students were quick to identify the “voices”—a large choral group, trumpets, drums, and violins—included on the recording. When we asked them to use these observations to speculate about the song’s place of origin, they associated this choral style and instrumentation with European nations like France and Germany. They further supported their guess by pointing out that the lyrics were in a language other than English. The students soon learned that their ears could in fact tell them much more than they had realized. Their associations were amazingly accurate. Indeed, The Internationale’s origins are in Western Europe. In 1871, Eugene Potter, a member of the Paris Commune, wrote the lyrics to the revolutionary song. Several years later, the melody was added by Pierre Degeyter of Lille, France. The song quickly gained popularity among the European Socialists, and by the 1890s, it had become a symbol of the European labor movements. One hundred years before the Tiananmen Square massacre, European workers were singing The Internationale at their demonstrations and strikes. Furthermore, the song has a history in the Soviet Union. A song of socialist revolution, The Internationale was later introduced to Russia by Lenin, where it became the battle hymn of the Bolshevik Revolution.⁷ Just when we were about to present this history to the class, one student suggested that the song might be Russian. This led another student to associate the song with a movie soundtrack. Many students agreed that the song bears resemblance to many of the Russian choral tunes selected by Hollywood music producers when making films like Red October. We continued to ask, “What else do you hear in the song? What other images come to mind?” The students returned to their observations about instrumentation. Many students associated the sounds of trumpets and drums with power. Images of trumpets and drums on the ancient battlefields of Europe came to the mind of some. For others, the slow, march-like pace of the music created images of a military parade. Because bands of the U.S. military perform our patriotic songs like The Star Spangled Banner and Stars and Stripes Forever, the students proposed that this might be an anthem. One student suggested that it was the Soviet Union’s national anthem. Another student corrected him, indicating that she had watched the Olympics many times as a child, and this was not the national anthem of the Soviet Union. In fact, both of these students were correct! After the Bolsheviks won their revolution, The Internationale became the national anthem of the Soviet Union. (Note how meaning of the song is altered in this new context. In addition to fostering social revolution, it took on the overtone of nationalism.) However, in 1943 the Soviet Union joined efforts with the Western democracies to defeat Germany in World War II. The country’s leaders were concerned that the song might hinder cooperation among the Allied Forces, since it was perceived as a symbolic threat to international capitalism. At that time, the USSR dropped The Internationale in favor of a new national anthem.⁸ Our students continued to support their assertion that the music is either patriotic or nationalistic by citing the characteristics of a military band, but they still had no way to access the fact that this was a revolutionary song. Therefore, we gave them a new piece of information and read aloud the lyrics to The Internationale. Upon hearing the first few lines of the song—“Raise those hungry, cold, and poor slaves. Raise the poor people of the world. The blood is boiling. We will destroy the Old World”—the students not only identified the revolutionary theme of the song, but realized its connections to a world socialist revolution. The students were confident they had “figured it out” and thought the lesson was over until we declared that the lyrics were not Russian after all. We then turned their attention toward China by reading Yang Fan’s essay and showing The Gate of Heavenly Peace (see Lesson Plan). Once our students realized the importance of The Internationale in the lives of Yang Fan and his classmates, we explained how the song arrived in China. In 1923, when China entered the world communist movement, Qu Qiubai translated The Internationale. It was introduced to China along with several other songs from the USSR to foster a national transformation to communism. Since then, the patriotic song has been learned and performed by all Chinese citizens.⁹

HISTORY, CONTEXT, AND MUSIC Beijing, Spring 1989

The actual “beginning” of the protests in Tiananmen Square during the spring of 1989 is difficult to discern. For teachers of world history or Asian Studies, marking that “beginning” for students will vary according to educational objectives and time available to focus on the subject. For Yang Fan, the story begins on April 15, 1989. When former Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang died of a massive heart attack, students like Yang Fan gathered in Tiananmen Square to commemorate him. At the age of eighteen, Fan was a university student whose life revolved around soccer and math. He admits to thinking very little about politics before this event. Fan’s decision to go to the Square that day was purely social. His friends convinced him to take a break from his studies. When he got to the Square, he was impressed by the other students who were freely expressing their views. From the middle of April through June, Yang Fan savored this freedom by coming and going to Tiananmen Square and surrounding areas at his leisure. He remembers when he and his friends sat in front of some of the tanks that were positioned some distance from the Square. They did not feel threatened by them. While the soldiers refused to come out of their tanks at first, Fan and his friends socialized and sang together. When the soldiers did come out of their tanks, they were friendly. The students spoke with them, showed them newspapers, and explained that they were working toward making the country a better place for everyone. It was hard for Fan to imagine that this optimism and confidence would lead to a violent crackdown in June. A number of resources offer an account of the unbelievable turn of events. In our undergraduate course, time limitations caused us to rely on a quick but powerful overview of the incident presented via video segments and Yang Fan’s personal story. The video, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, provided our students with their first glimpse of this reality. The video’s emphasis on stark, still photographic imagery helped us to demonstrate the context of Yang Fan’s experience with The Internationale in the spring of 1989. Like music, these chilling images encourage a sensory experience. The sparing use of narration and amplified reproduction of the event’s soundscape also served as an effective complement to our other classroom materials: an audio recording of The Internationale, the words of Yang Fan’s story, and his translation of the song’s lyrics.

The Tragedy at Tiananmen: The Untold Story, also known as “The Koppel Report,” offered more details about the various events leading up to the massacre. In fact, throughout this video, footage captured choruses of protesters singing The Internationale. For example, an attuned viewer can catch a portion of The Internationale while students retreat from the Square on June 2 and during the official funeral of Hu Yaobang. It can also be heard later in the video, after a discussion of the April 26 editorial in a Beijing newspaper reprimanding students for their behavior. Finally, it appears again during a report on the events of May 20. Unfortunately, these segments are fleeting, so they do not serve as effective examples of The Internationale itself. Instead, students can view them in follow-up activities in order to “witness” the song’s significance in Chinese politics. Combined with Yang Fan’s story, these resources helped our students experience the effect of a single song on the life of a university student not much different than themselves. The Internationale symbolized all that was good in China when Yang Fan was in grade school. When he sang it in Tiananmen Square, it stood for his duty to make his homeland a better place for other people fighting for freedom and democracy. Living in the United States, far from his home and family, Yang Fan associates The Internationale with the freedoms of speech, religion, peaceable assembly, and the right to petition the government. Now, this expanded meaning extends beyond Fan’s vision for China and embraces his vision for the world.