A Study On Critical Method And Aesthetic Theory Of Li Wan's Pop Music Reviews

The thesis begins with the difficulty and hope of Chinese pop music reviews.The difficulty refers to the absence of music critics.For a long time,there are two contributing factors of this phenomenon which have been neglected:our country lacks a healthy music critic environment,as well as profound critic panels;also,the professional musicologists and the amateur critics carefully keep the distance with each other,which leads to declines in both quality and quantity of music reviews.The author summarizes the cultural environment of Mandarin Pop Music reviews for the past thirty years,and introduces the writing trends,publishing panels of amateur critics and their methods of participating in music industry.Then,the author talks about the undoubtedly leader of the amateur critics—Li Wan,introducing his family story,educational background and two professional identities.In Chapter 2,we briefly recapitulate Li's writing career,and explore his original intention,publishing panels and potential targets,providing the basic background of understanding his reviews.Later,the paper discusses the geographical traits and genres of the objects.Last,two non-mainstream music comments books are studied,in order to deepen Li's horizon,ability and mission of writing music monographs.Then we focus on his distinct writing style.His reviews tend to be sweet on the surface,but somewhat bitter inside—every article aims to discuss one significant art problem.He is skilled at using lyrics when trying to express his own ideas;sometimes,the lyrics undertake the structure function.There are at least five identities in his words:he is a journalist,esthetician,socialist,historian and a poet.He prefers to write in spoken language,providing the readers the usage of all their senses to feel and experience the music.He further pays much attention to verbs,and writes in a rather poetic stylistic language structure.Li Wan's popular music reviews are based on four main aesthetic principles.Firstly,seeking any authentic roots.Secondly,the subjective and objective parts can never be truly separated when making an aesthetic judgment.Thirdly,he exhibits a profound understanding of the music,lyrics and poems in pop music,especially in rock and folk music.Last,but not the least,being a recorder of contemporary popular music,it is essential to "always be loyal to his own hearing perception".