Marginal Voices

Some voices are remarkably absent from the arguably fragmented world of rock in China. All the bands described in the previous chapters are located in Beijing; some of the singers moved from their hometown to the capital of rock to pursue their career in music. Releases from places outside Beijing are relatively rare; bands from, for instance, Shanghai are generally not taken seriously by the rock scenes in Beijing. Female voices are also rather scarce in Chinese rock, although their number has increased over time. Rock's aesthetics caters primarily to male identifications, so it seems, leaving little room for women to make rock. However central Gangtai pop might be when it comes to sales figures and media outreach, it is peripheral in the more ‘serious’ writings on music in Asia. As I have shown in the introduction, it is downplayed not only by China's rock musicians, but also by Chinese and Western journalists and academics. It is commonly assumed and asserted that a rock singer who has moved toward the world of pop has lost his or her soul.

Following Bakhtin, the rock mythology can be considered an authoritative discourse that generates uniform meanings and flattens out contradictions and ambiguities. In my scenic and genealogical approach in the previous two chapters, I have unpacked the productive power of the rock mythology, while I have simultaneously tried to address the underlying contradictions and ambiguities. In this chapter I will go one step further towards acknowledging the voices marginalised through the power of the rock mythology, and which can consequently be termed subaltern. The concept ‘subaltern’ is borrowed from a group of predominantly Indian scholars known as the Subaltern Studies Group, who tried to counter colonial discourse by giving room to heterogeneous and above all female indigenous voices (see Spivak 1988). As Spivak (1999: 281) asks herself: ‘Can the subaltern speak?