The Changing Fate of the Chinese National Anthem

A national anthem, arguably the most representative song of a nation, serves more than ceremonial purposes. National symbols, rituals and traditions are important for political and social order, for these define a nation’s identity. Cerulo (1993, 1995), as an example, studied the function of national anthems as a crucial component of national identity construction by aligning the syntactic structure of the musical pieces with larger socio-political contexts. However, the function of a national anthem goes far beyond defining a nation’s identity; it can have a much more direct bearing on collective memory because most anthems have lyrics. If the rhythm of an anthem shapes the syntactic structure, its lyrics define its message. As Wagner-Pacifici (1996: 303) stated, “The necessity of ‘words’ is what gives the forms of collective memory such importance.”