PHOTO ESSAY

Rebel Yells

A protest music mixtape

By Matthew McKinnon

August 12, 2005

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A blindfolded Cui Jian. Photo Getty Images/AFP/Mike Fiala.

Yi Wu Sao You (Nothing To My Name), Cui Jian with Ado

(Rock and Roll On the New Long March, 1988)

“In post-Mao China,” U.S. guitarist and composer Dennis Rea has written, “Cui Jian was Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Kurt Cobain all rolled into one, a one-man rock and roll revolution whose poignant songs of alienation spoke volumes to a generation searching for meaning in a rapidly changing and increasingly globalized China.” It’s true. Jian (his full name is pronounced, roughly, Sway Jen) was a trumpet player with the Beijing Philharmonic Orchestra before becoming China’s first rock star. As the latter, he pens lyrics that hint at social change without outright defying China’s ruling Communist Party.

Jian was a youth hero long before the Tiananmen Square student demonstrations of 1989. His Nothing To My Name — a synth-rock squall that, sadly, has not aged well — became the uprising’s unofficial anthem. Ado, Jian’s avant-garde band, performed it at a concert staged inside the Square. Translated from Mandarin, Jian sang: “I tell you I’ve been waiting a long time / I tell you, here’s my final plea / I want to grab you by the hands / And take you away with me.”

Jian escaped censure for his actions at Tiananmen, but was silenced midway through a 10-city tour that followed. He had been playing to teeming crowds of young Chinese, who made a habit of flashing “V” signs for victory. The Party worried that the concerts would incite public revolt. Jian was banned from playing on university campuses. He spent the ’90s giving what Rea called “surreptitious gigs at private gatherings in Beijing.”

Jian performed in the U.S. for the first time in 1995. Today he remains an important, working musician in China.