如何创造流行--我的创作与思考

Li Haiying:How to Create Pop Music

开场白 流行音乐永远是与新技术、新媒体、新潮流、新时尚、新观念、新思想等新事物相互作用、相互推动发展的。

Music is supposed to be live performance.It is just like watching a fake sport match if the performer is lip-synching to pre-recorded tape.When Liu Huan was singing my song 'The Crescent Moon' at 2008 concert of my works,he touched me so much with his performance,espe-cially in the finale,which was a great moment that can never be replicated.In my opinion,when a work creates some sensation at the beginning and then is passed on over the years,it is a work that wins general popularity.Otherwise,if it comes out in splendor but disappears in a short while,it is not music of popularity.A good work should be the medium to express feelings of different people,such as 'In That Remote Place','Singing of My Motherland','My Motherland',the Amer-ican song 'Moon River',the French 'La Mer' and the German 'Mona Lisa'.These songs remain popular after so many years,with so rich significance that makes them not just melodies and lyrics,but rather part of the history and memories of the past social life.It is in the same way that the Book of Songs,the Poetry of Chu,the Ancient Po-etry,the Poems of Western Han,and the poetry and dra-mas from Tang,Song and Yuan dynasties have formed our Chinese language,our feelings and our thoughts.In preparing my works' concert in Guangzhou in 2008,I combined the elements of typical pop music from the 1970's and 1980's with the contemporary orchestra writ-ing techniques for pop music,in an attempt to pay my homage to the disco music in the 1970's and 1980's.The Qing Dynasty peot Zhao Yi remarks in his book Oubei Poetry Criticism,'everyone has feelings but no one reveals them.Once it is said,everyone wants to express it and it becomes easy to spread out,and then it enjoys pop-ularity in the current age and the ages to come.It is all because it takes the common feelings of people at the first beginning.' Just as the Tang poet Wang Wei created his famous poem 'Seeing off Yuan Er on a Journey to the West' af-ter he had succeeded in 'taking the common feelings of people at the first beginning',Zhao Yi's words,which I happened to read recently,speak out what I have had in mind for many years.'Taking the common feelings ofpeople at the first beginning' is the very ideal for my composition.Although some people believe that expression of personality is the utmost criterion,it is no problem as they are looking at the matter from different perspectives.The keywords here are the 'at the first beginning'.If you simply do whatever is popular at the present time,this should be called 'taking the common feelings afterwards'.In order to be the 'first',you should search and contem-plate,and should be calm and sensitive so that you can take the initiative.