Once again I’m back in front of the tabula rasa. And once again I’m challenged with where to begin. The choice is now obvious, of course, it’s in the ideas of a “new world music” by Chinese composer Cong Su. And it is his soundtrack to the movie 美夢成真 (aka Dreams Come True) that will point us to a new direction we’ll try to explore as fully as possible. This music which trapezed through experimental, neotraditional, and ambient realms pointed to music of the Sinosphere we have been sorely sleeping through.
Cong Su’s story begins in the midst of China’s “Cultural Revolution”. Somewhere in the hills of Tianjin, in Northern China, this only child came to avoid the worst of it by studying music (as his father worked tirelessly as a music teacher trying to sidestep cultural censorship and dissolution of “freer” repertoire). After graduating Cong would go deep into compositional study, absorbing and trying to master then “modernize” little heralded folk-influenced Chinese compositions. At the start of the ‘80s, with a tape recorder at hand, Cong would travel to Guangxi to do field recordings, absorbing environmental cues into his music and arrangements.
By the time Cong graduated in 1978, travel restrictions began to be lifted and the “opening” up of China allowed him to take advantage of pursuing his studies abroad. It was in Germany he chose to continue his education, influenced by the ideas of Stockhausen, trying to understand the European way of composition. By the early ‘80s, Cong threw himself head first into all sorts of the supposed avant-garde, dedicating daily life to attending contemporary concerts, absorbing pop music, and analyzing compositions at the forefront of that wave. As a student who transitioned to a teacher in Munich’s University of Music and Performing Arts he was supposed to be absorbed by that European environment.
1985 marked a turning point. Commissioned to write a piece for the East Asian Art Festival held at the West Berlin International Art Festival, it was there he was introduce to the music of Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu, Korean one’s by Kang Seok-Hee, and others who presented a new style of “Eastern” music that held its own against anything coming from the west. Quickly after that, Cong Su’s lax love of the European avant-garde was whisked off for a thorough re-encounter with a reimagining of his homeland’s music in a way that spoke of progress (rather than a complete look back or forgetful forward).
As his newer compositions started to bridge the gap between the East and West, as they started to use the sonorities of his homeland in ways that were rarely heard before, he chanced on trying to create a “new world music” that could speak to any culture.
It was in 1985 that Italian movie director Bernardo Bertolucci resolved to use that spirit to inspire the music of what would become the soundtrack to The Last Emperor. Working with like-minded musicians — Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Byrne — together they created music for an “eastern” epic that could be absorbed by audiences worldwide. In it these same audiences got a taste of the quick, concise, universal, experimental ideas that Cong was capable of.
Just a year later, armed with an Oscar win in hand, Cong received a full backing (monetary and creatively) to create his next soundtrack; a solo affair that would expand fully on his ideas of a new Chinese world music. In the increasingly more open Chinese culture, Cong realized the potential of newer instruments – synths, guitars, etc. — and new ideas from rungs of minimalism, jazz, and elsewhere could be absorbed into traditionally-influenced cues. Although the name of the film was “Dreams Come True”, it appeared that Cong Su’s dream was coming true to show a new fork in the road for Chinese music listeners.
You hear it in the opening ambient electronic tones of “The Dream Of Mei Mei”. You hear it in the middle of “The Show On The Square” section in its preceding first epic song. The guzheng dissolved into the resonating drama of “The Stream”. Then that drama transmogrified into the hypnotic nocturnal new world music beginning in the “The Airport…”. Here’s where we’re left realizing that the Chinese music we think we know, isn’t the one we really know. This “now music”, as presented by Cong Su, seems more like a recurring dream, each time shifting tectonic plates, spiriting away the “exotic” and playing with our feelings in the universal realm — we know this music now.
Cong Su’s 美夢成真 (Dreams Come True Soundtrack) is a dialog of our dialogue as cultures trying to find other ways to come together (in ways that avoid the trappings of the past). It’s having “flexibility” as a tool to find new prose that can speak to anyone.