So what explains their appeal?
“I like them because they express such positive values,” said Jia Su, a 24-year-old advertising worker in Beijing. She has followed the group since she was a university student and now manages the Weibo account of a fan club for TFBoys. “They are nice, kind, hardworking. That’s what the Japanese and Korean boy bands don’t have.”
Unlike many teenage pop stars in Japan, South Korea and elsewhere, the members of TFBoys display no signs of youthful rebellion. They decidedly do not walk on the wild side. They sing of studying hard and serving the nation. The group’s music is cheerful with upbeat lyrics, and the boys’ appearance tends toward neat outfits and sweet smiles.
.. That wholesome schoolboy image has won TFBoys love not only from Chinese fans, but also from the government. They have twice been featured on the Chinese Lunar New Year television gala staged by CCTV, the state broadcaster.
.. “One way the Chinese government controls the entertainment industry,” said Zhu Dake, a cultural critic at Tongji University in Shanghai, “is by honoring and financially rewarding those who, from the government’s perspective, are conveying positive values.”
In this case, “positive values” means not just traditional values such as filial piety, social harmony and hard work, but also deference to the party line.
.. Since South Korea agreed last year to allow the United States to install a missile defense system — called the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad — South Korean shows have been blocked from the Chinese internet, and South Korean singers and actors have been barred from Chinese television.
.. “No company can risk sponsoring a ‘bad boy’ band that might end up on the government’s blacklist,”
.. “Before the early 2000s, the mainland Chinese entertainment industry was dominated by Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. Celebrities from those places were regarded as true stars,” Mr. Zou said. “But it’s different now. We have the money, and the market. What’s more, entertainment companies have learned the key to producing successful idols.”
.. “There’s a Chinese saying: At the age of 3 you can already see what a man will be like when he is old.”
J.S.Bach – French Suites
Andras Schiff – Piano
BWV 812 813 814 815 816 817
The French Suites, BWV 812–817, are six suites which Johann Sebastian Bach wrote for the clavier (harpsichord or clavichord) between the years of 1722 and 1725. The suites were later given the name ‘French’ (first recorded usage by Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg in 1762) as a means of contrast with the English Suites (whose title is likewise a later appellation). The name was popularised by Bach’s biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel, who wrote in his 1802 biography of Bach, “One usually calls them French Suites because they are written in the French manner.” This claim, however, is inaccurate: like Bach’s other suites, they follow a largely Italian convention.There is no surviving definitive manuscript of these suites, and ornamentation varies both in type and in degree across manuscripts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Suites_(Bach)
Glenn Gould Biography
But he hated performing – ”At concerts I feel demeaned, like a vaudevillian” – and though in great demand, he rationed his appearances stingily (he gave fewer than forty concerts overseas).
.. Gould harbored musical, temperamental and moral objections to concerts, and aired them publicly: “The purpose of art,” he wrote, “is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenalin but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.”
.. He liked to call himself “a Canadian writer, composer, and broadcaster who happens to play the piano in his spare time.”
.. Gould was one of the first truly modern classical performers, for whom recording and broadcasting were not adjuncts to the concert hall but separate art forms that represented the future of music. He made scores of albums, steadily expanding his repertoire and developing a professional engineer’s command of recording techniques. He also wrote prolifically about recording and the mass media, his ideas often harmonizing with those of his friend Marshall McLuhan.
.. His postmodernist advocacy of open borders between the roles of composer, performer and listener, for instance, anticipated digital technologies (like the Internet) that democratize and decentralize the institutions of culture. There is no question that Gould, more than any other classical musician, would have understood and admired digital technology – and would have had fun playing with it.
Katy Perry – Chained To The Rhythm (Official) ft. Skip Marley
A surprisingly substantively subversive song from Katy Perry:
LYRICS:
Are we crazy
Living our lives through a lens
Trapped in our white picket fence
Like ornamentsSo comfortable, we’re living in a bubble, bubble
So comfortable, we cannot see the trouble, troubleAren’t you lonely
Up there in utopia
Where nothing will ever be enough
Happily numbSo comfortable, we’re living
in a bubble, bubble
So comfortable, we cannot
see the trouble, troubleSo put your rose-colored glasses on
And party onTurn it up, it’s your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie
Yeah, we think we’re free
Drink, this one’s on me
We’re all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm
To the rhythmTurn it up, it’s your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie
Yeah, we think we’re free
Drink, this one’s on me
We’re all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm
To the rhythmAre we tone deaf
Keep sweeping it under the mat
Thought we could do better than that
I hope we canSo comfortable, we’re living in a bubble, bubble
So comfortable, we cannot see the trouble, troubleSo put your rose-colored glasses on
And party onTurn it up, it’s your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie
Yeah, we think we’re free
Drink, this one’s on me
We’re all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm
To the rhythmTurn it up, it’s your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie
Yeah, we think we’re free
Drink, this one’s on me
We’re all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm
To the rhythmIt is my desire
Break down the walls to connect, inspire
Up in your high place, liars
Time is ticking for the empire
The truth they feed is feeble
As so many times before
They greed over the people
They stumbling and fumbling
And we about to riot
They woke up, they woke up
the lionsTurn it up, it’s your favorite song
Dance, dance, dance to the distortion
Turn it up, keep it on repeat
Stumbling around like a wasted zombie
Yeah, we think we’re free
Drink, this one’s on me
We’re all chained to the rhythm
To the rhythm
To the rhythmdid some research online to find out the hidden messages behind the video…
0:22 — Comments on everyone’s obsession with social media
0:30 — Cotton candy shaped like atomic bombs
0:42 — Katy pricks her finger, showing that even if everything appears perfect, it isn’t what it seems
0:48 — Roller coaster separated by gender, enforcing a heteronormative lifestyle
1:07 — An amusement park rides depicts houses falling, referring to the housing market crash
1:20 — Everyone’s obsession with social media gratification
1:30 – The sign says 1984, a possible tie to the novel 1984 which depicts a dystopian society where people are constantly monitored
1:37 — Katy’s male counterpart gets a much higher validation score for doing the same thing as she, a woman, does
1:46 — ‘There’s No Place Like Home’ ride throws people back over a fence – an obvious allusion to Trump’s immigration ban/wall
1:50 — The ‘Bombs Away’ ride shows a flurry of falling bombs
2:15 — ‘Inferno H20’ seems to comment on the world’s dependence on oil and its impact on not only the environment but also our own bodies
2:39 — A hamster wheel that a white man seems to successfully navigate proves incredibly difficult for a black man and an Asian woman who both fail
2:50 — Katy is the only one able to see passed the ‘Nuclear Family’ video being played to see the darker truth behind it
3:46 — Katy successfully beats the hamster wheel; hope for the future?
To view video, click “Read More” and Enable Closed Captioning