8 ms·

The Mortals Behind China’s ‘God Songs’

70 points by cow9 7y ago

rhema 7y ago
I like the idea of Jung's "Collective Unconscious" and think about it as ephemeral culture seems to briefly stabilize. Looking up popular keywords from search engines is one approach for understanding mass movements about what people are paying attention to. While I don't feel that art should be automated, or even rigorously formalized, that does not appear to be what is happening here. Instead, these writers rooms still have to go through the interpretive process, applying the same mundane thought processes to make anything really work.
analyst74 7y ago
When I watched the latest star wars show with some friends, we started noticing all the meme-able moments, now I wonder if those were introduced intentionally too.
- endymi0n 7y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyetic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyetic
  - applecrazy 7y ago
    We should call the meme version of these type of works "memetic" works.
raldi 7y ago
This reminds me of the story of MP3.com. The creator ran a search engine, which never got especially popular, but it was popular enough to demonstrate the sudden growth of that term, and so he registered the domain name without even knowing what it meant.
didibus 7y ago
It'll be interesting to see the long term effect of this circular dependency between producers and consumers in arts. Why do we like what we like? What creates a trend? Can you create a trend by observing what's trending?
- tomcam 7y ago
  Yes, this has been done in the pop music world for at least 100 years. Irving Berlin analyzed top of the chart songs so that he can learn how to construct his own.
theseadroid 7y ago
OT but I find the translation from 神曲 to God Songs very inaccurate. The word 神 has many meanings in Chinese other than referring to gods. Some related expression such as 这玩意真神 or 这人真神 would be more properly translated into: this thing/person is enthralling/magical/enchanting/hypnotizing. 神曲 would be the kind of songs that are so hypnotizing that you can't direct your attention elsewhere. And those songs might not necessarily be nice songs. They are referred to as 魔性洗脑神曲 sometimes, which is something like enchanted brainwashing hypnotizing songs in English. One of the first songs being associated with this term is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7U0EirV2Hw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7U0EirV2Hw
- jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
  I thought maybe the author got that translation from google translate, but then I put it into google translate and got back "divine comedy"
  - yorwba 7y ago
    Yup, that's the Chinese title of Dante's work: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A5%9E%E6%9B%B2 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A5%9E%E6%9B%B2
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- otabdeveloper2 7y ago
  The Greek 'daemon' seems like a pretty accurate translation for '神'.
  - schoen 7y ago
    Strictly, daemon is Latin; a better transliteration of the Greek into English is "daimon". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B4%CE%B1%CE%AF%CE%BC%CF%89%CE%BD#Ancient_Greek https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B4%CE%B1%CE%AF%CE%BC%CF%8...
xmly 7y ago
"God Songs"? This is the worst translation ever. Even "Magic Songs" is better.
yegle 7y ago
Immediately remind me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEfQ_9DIItI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEfQ_9DIItI, where the scores in the movie are constantly borrowed/changed from known good version. Also: the music in Iron Man 1 eventually became part of Game of Throne theme song: https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/e81vr8/18_seconds_into_mark_ii_on_the_iron_man_2008/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/e81vr8/18_sec...
applecrazy 7y ago
Kind of OT, but the media outlet that published this article kind of gave me a weird vibe. Then I looked it up, and apparently it's a CCP-approved, strictly censored news organization[1], like most other news sources based in China. Really don't want to get into details, but some articles[2] don't even acknowledge all viewpoints, which makes it clear that there's some censorship going on behind the scenes. Despite that, I have to agree the OP is definitely interesting and relevant to HN. [1]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/03/china-explained-sixth-tone-is-chinas-latest-party-approved-outlet-humanizing-news/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/03/china-explained-sixth-t... [2]: http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1004929/user-concerns-over-facial-recognition-high%2C-china-survey-says http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1004929/user-concerns-over-fac...
tony 7y ago
The amount of good Chinese music out there is amazing. If you're open taste-tasting modern Chinese pop music, I would like to recommend: - A-Lin: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCURRzgKx4DkVozbOjFflMpg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCURRzgKx4DkVozbOjFflMpg - Mayday: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQyweuVOAh3NHGKDDadRSbg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQyweuVOAh3NHGKDDadRSbg - JJ Lin: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd91HSXKhsIv8PIjNrDByHQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd91HSXKhsIv8PIjNrDByHQ - Joker Xue: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeHAsNPoMw7xfNf0pH-CmJA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeHAsNPoMw7xfNf0pH-CmJA They are all on spotify if you look them up too. From Spotify/YouTube you can use related artists/playlists to get into more variety.

70 points by cow9 7y ago

I like the idea of Jung's "Collective Unconscious" and think about it as ephemeral culture seems to briefly stabilize. Looking up popular keywords from search engines is one approach for understanding mass movements about what people are paying attention to. While I don't feel that art should be automated, or even rigorously formalized, that does not appear to be what is happening here. Instead, these writers rooms still have to go through the interpretive process, applying the same mundane thought processes to make anything really work.

analyst74 7y ago

When I watched the latest star wars show with some friends, we started noticing all the meme-able moments, now I wonder if those were introduced intentionally too.

endymi0n 7y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyetic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyetic
- applecrazy 7y ago
  We should call the meme version of these type of works "memetic" works.

raldi 7y ago

This reminds me of the story of MP3.com. The creator ran a search engine, which never got especially popular, but it was popular enough to demonstrate the sudden growth of that term, and so he registered the domain name without even knowing what it meant.

didibus 7y ago

It'll be interesting to see the long term effect of this circular dependency between producers and consumers in arts. Why do we like what we like? What creates a trend? Can you create a trend by observing what's trending?

tomcam 7y ago
Yes, this has been done in the pop music world for at least 100 years. Irving Berlin analyzed top of the chart songs so that he can learn how to construct his own.

theseadroid 7y ago

OT but I find the translation from 神曲 to God Songs very inaccurate. The word 神 has many meanings in Chinese other than referring to gods. Some related expression such as 这玩意真神 or 这人真神 would be more properly translated into: this thing/person is enthralling/magical/enchanting/hypnotizing. 神曲 would be the kind of songs that are so hypnotizing that you can't direct your attention elsewhere. And those songs might not necessarily be nice songs. They are referred to as 魔性洗脑神曲 sometimes, which is something like enchanted brainwashing hypnotizing songs in English. One of the first songs being associated with this term is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7U0EirV2Hw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7U0EirV2Hw

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
I thought maybe the author got that translation from google translate, but then I put it into google translate and got back "divine comedy"
- yorwba 7y ago
  Yup, that's the Chinese title of Dante's work: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A5%9E%E6%9B%B2 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A5%9E%E6%9B%B2
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
otabdeveloper2 7y ago
The Greek 'daemon' seems like a pretty accurate translation for '神'.
- schoen 7y ago
  Strictly, daemon is Latin; a better transliteration of the Greek into English is "daimon". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B4%CE%B1%CE%AF%CE%BC%CF%89%CE%BD#Ancient_Greek https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B4%CE%B1%CE%AF%CE%BC%CF%8...

xmly 7y ago

"God Songs"? This is the worst translation ever. Even "Magic Songs" is better.

yegle 7y ago

Immediately remind me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEfQ_9DIItI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEfQ_9DIItI, where the scores in the movie are constantly borrowed/changed from known good version. Also: the music in Iron Man 1 eventually became part of Game of Throne theme song: https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/e81vr8/18_seconds_into_mark_ii_on_the_iron_man_2008/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/e81vr8/18_sec...

applecrazy 7y ago

Kind of OT, but the media outlet that published this article kind of gave me a weird vibe. Then I looked it up, and apparently it's a CCP-approved, strictly censored news organization[1], like most other news sources based in China. Really don't want to get into details, but some articles[2] don't even acknowledge all viewpoints, which makes it clear that there's some censorship going on behind the scenes. Despite that, I have to agree the OP is definitely interesting and relevant to HN. [1]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/03/china-explained-sixth-tone-is-chinas-latest-party-approved-outlet-humanizing-news/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/03/china-explained-sixth-t... [2]: http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1004929/user-concerns-over-facial-recognition-high%2C-china-survey-says http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1004929/user-concerns-over-fac...

tony 7y ago

The amount of good Chinese music out there is amazing. If you're open taste-tasting modern Chinese pop music, I would like to recommend: - A-Lin: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCURRzgKx4DkVozbOjFflMpg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCURRzgKx4DkVozbOjFflMpg - Mayday: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQyweuVOAh3NHGKDDadRSbg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQyweuVOAh3NHGKDDadRSbg - JJ Lin: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd91HSXKhsIv8PIjNrDByHQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd91HSXKhsIv8PIjNrDByHQ - Joker Xue: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeHAsNPoMw7xfNf0pH-CmJA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeHAsNPoMw7xfNf0pH-CmJA They are all on spotify if you look them up too. From Spotify/YouTube you can use related artists/playlists to get into more variety.