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"Tiananmen Stars"
Written & Produced: May-July 2009
This is a tune whose inspiration came from watching Youtube videos of and reading the Wikipedia article on the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.As you know, it's an incident that happened in Beijing, involving as many as 1,000,000 protesters who called for China's democratic and economic reforms. And the government responded with severe military actions, causing thousands of deaths.
The year of 2009 being its 20th anniversary, I took an opportunity to learn about this tragic event a while ago. And I was shocked by the magnitude of it. The number of victims are 2,600 according to the Chinese Red Cross. But other sources reported different numbers: NATO intelligence said 7,000 people died, for instance. The Chinese government said only 241 died, and the Chinese Red Cross mysteriously denied its own estimate of 2,600 casualties later on.
The protests started on April 15 and lasted until June 4. They were at first in the form of mourning for Hu Yaobang. Hu, who died on April 15, 1989, was a reformist politician who was forced to resign two years earlier. He was known for his tolerant stance on liberal intellectuals, and the authority put a blame on him for a series of student protests.
On the day of Hu's death, a small number of civilians gathered in Tiananmen square to express their sorrow for Hu Yaobang, while on the same day many students in Peking University and Tsuinghua University did the same in the campus. The students started to join the Tiananmen Square gathering too.
The gathering went on, and the number of participants grew over time. As the movement progressed, the participants increasingly started to address social issues. On April 18,
Score || Leadsheet || Piano || Piccolo, Violin, Trumpet & Bass || Bongos & Drums
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(Continued from the left column)
they announced seven demands of the government including "affirm as correct Hu Yaobang's views on democracy and freedom", "admit that the campaigns against spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalization had been wrong", "publish information on the income of state leaders and their family members" and "end the ban on privately run newspapers and permit freedom of speech".
On May 4, approximately 100,000 people marched in Beijing demanding dialogue between the authorities and student representatives. The government rejected the proposed dialogue. A large number of students started hunger strike shortly after.
In June, the government dispatched soldiers and tanks to control the situation. As the word spread, people began setting up barricades at major intersections of Beijing, attempting to stop the army troops. But the army reached Tiananmen Square around 1:00am on June 4 and cleared the Square by 5:40am, killing (probably) thousands of protesters in the process.
I want this tune to be something that commemorates the courage and dignity of the protesters. They died for a cause, and the cause has been making this world a far better place than it would be without it. Their spirits have kept us aware of the importance of freedom of speech, free media and democratic society based on people's will, not authoritarians.
They died for you, and they died for me. This piece of music goes out for them as a "Thank you" from me.
On the technical note, this is the first tune I created after installing Cubase Studio 5 last month.
It has lots of nice sounds as presets, and for this tune I used the Piccolo, Violin, Trumpet, Snare, Kick, Bongo and DX Piano sounds in the presets. The DX Piano sound (hear) was mixed with the acoustic piano sound (hear) I have on another VST instrument.
they announced seven demands of the government including "affirm as correct Hu Yaobang's views on democracy and freedom", "admit that the campaigns against spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalization had been wrong", "publish information on the income of state leaders and their family members" and "end the ban on privately run newspapers and permit freedom of speech".
On May 4, approximately 100,000 people marched in Beijing demanding dialogue between the authorities and student representatives. The government rejected the proposed dialogue. A large number of students started hunger strike shortly after.
In June, the government dispatched soldiers and tanks to control the situation. As the word spread, people began setting up barricades at major intersections of Beijing, attempting to stop the army troops. But the army reached Tiananmen Square around 1:00am on June 4 and cleared the Square by 5:40am, killing (probably) thousands of protesters in the process.
I want this tune to be something that commemorates the courage and dignity of the protesters. They died for a cause, and the cause has been making this world a far better place than it would be without it. Their spirits have kept us aware of the importance of freedom of speech, free media and democratic society based on people's will, not authoritarians.
They died for you, and they died for me. This piece of music goes out for them as a "Thank you" from me.
On the technical note, this is the first tune I created after installing Cubase Studio 5 last month.
It has lots of nice sounds as presets, and for this tune I used the Piccolo, Violin, Trumpet, Snare, Kick, Bongo and DX Piano sounds in the presets. The DX Piano sound (hear) was mixed with the acoustic piano sound (hear) I have on another VST instrument.