REINTERPRETATION OF THE CLASSICAL TRADITION IN THE SONG OF HU LI AND LI YUGANG “THE NEW «DRUNKEN BEAUTY»” Part 2

In order to determine to which aesthetic direction (chinoiserie / postmodernism) the pop song “The New «Drunken Beauty»” belongs, we analyze the music, performance and video of the pop song. It is shown that pop song music organically merges two musical streams: elements of traditional Chinese Peking opera with the rhythms of Western pop music (R&B, rock music).The analysis shows that the pop song music achieves the artistic state of “i-ching” that is in line with traditional Chinese aesthetics, psychology and philosophical tradition. Composer Hu Li turns to traditional musical techniques – he uses the yinqiang resonator sound characteristic of Beijing opera, melodic techniques typical of Chinese musical culture, and turns to agogic. On top of the emotionally holistic expression of the Chinese spirit that forms the basis of the musical text, Western elements are layered, giving a modern colouring to the recurring eternally true images of the Chinese perception of the world. The conducted analysis shows that in Hu Li's pop song there are no signs of postmodernist deconstruction and fragmentation of the Chinese national tradition, and the only technique that could be interpreted as postmodernist – the theme of return (set both in the lyrics and in the music, performance and music video) in fact cannot be defined as a postmodernist technique of déjà vu, because it is not supported by other fundamentally important features of postmodernism. The analysis shows that there are no signs of postmodern deconstruction and fragmentation of Chinese national tradition in Hu Li's pop song, and the only technique that could be construed as postmodernist – the theme of return (set both in the lyrics and in the music, performance and music video) cannot actually be defined as a postmodernist technique of déjà vu, for it is not supported by other fundamentally important signs of postmodernism. The return to the past and, in general, the appeal to the classical tradition is inherent in the modern Chinese aesthetic trend of chinoiserie, the essence of which we defined as stylization, which plays an important communicative role in culture. The peculiarities of recreating classical images in the pop song “The New «Drunken Beauty»” revealed in the analysis do not lead to the disintegration of classical images, nor to the violation of the holistic perception of the world. In this song we encounter a reinterpretation of tradition in the form of its stylization, thus it should be attributed to the aesthetics of chinoiserie, but not to the aesthetics of postmodernism.