Stranded – Between the World’s Midpoint and Elsewhere

About the Research: 

Drawing from the history of jazz and folk music in Shanghai, and venturing past the presence of city syndromes toward the borders of city life, the first part of "Chord Progression" focuses on studying the history of early 20th-century Shanghai jazz and folk theatre/music, using the tools of Critical Urban Theory, Postcolonial Studies, and Historical Anthropology to investigate how the music of this era shaped an urban life riddled with the colonialism and war. The second part incorporates the practice of returning to civic life, an experimental music album, a concert that transcends time and space, and an exercise that attempts to reshape the soundscape. Following Shanghai's commuter rail lines back to our contemporary urban life at last, the project poses the question of whether these acoustic specters from the past ever truly departed.

Lecture Performance Content:

Form: Performance Lecture
Director & Writer: LÜ Dongkun
Performer: Chord Progression
"The Trumpeter": LÜ Dongkun
"The Singer": WANG Siyu
"The Conductor": CHEN Nanpu
Arrangement: CHAO Lecheng, CHEN Nanpu

The lecture-performance unfolds with murmurs from our two protagonists—"The Trumpeter" and "The Singer," accompanied by music reproduced under the direction of "The Conductor." The former are two specters from 1930s-40s Shanghai. They will guide the audience back a hundred years to the city of that time, their disembodied existence ignoring any segregation barrier: listening to The Ballads born of hard times, calling for Salvation or Decadence; immersing in diasporic farewell or reunion through The Internationale. The tunes played by "The Conductor" challenge the status quo: Does jazz still possess the power to transcend race, class, and time if we encounter in middle of a stranded world? Can these nostalgic melodies revive the collective memories of an era after a century has passed?