Among the musicians known as "people's musicians" before the founding of New China, there were only two musicians, Nie Er and Xian Xinghai. All those who know Nie Er's life deeds will be shocked and shocked by his musical creation achievements and his historical status: a person who escaped from the frontier province of the motherland at 18 o'clock and ran to the international metropolis of Shanghai to work, a few years later, he was able to enter the talent-dense Shanghai film circle and literary and art circles, and became very close to the hot film director and film star, becoming a well-known composer, especially the composer of the "March of the Volunteer Army" that later became the "National Anthem of the People's Republic of China". How exactly did he do it?
Photographed in Shanghai in 1931
Moreover, Nie Er drowned and died at the age of 23. He suddenly disappeared, so good youth, excellent musician, how sad...
Nie Er is a native of Yuxi, Yunnan, kunming, or Shanghai
In recent years, many places have been competing for celebrity resources, in order to develop the cultural tourism industry, in some places, even the characters in the novel are also determined to be their people. In fact, the key lies in whether the celebrity resources can be used well, and the problem now is not the lack of historical and cultural resources, but the problem of whether they are good at using them. Just like some local officials always complain about the lack of talent, but never work how to make good use of the existing talent resources.
Judging from the literature, Nie Er is a native of Yuxi, Yunnan, and also a native of Kunming. Nie Er has 4 graduation diplomas, of which 3 diplomas are written "Student Nie Shouxin is from Yuxi County, Yunnan Province" and 1 is written as "Kunming County, Yunnan Province". That is to say, official documents prove that Nie Er is "mainly" Yuxi people. Because Nie Er was originally from Yuxi, official documents at that time were accustomed to defining where a person was from by his origin. Nie Er was born in Kunming, and has lived in Kunming since he was a child, and it is realistic to say that he is a Kunming native. Therefore, now In Yuxi City and Kunming City, Yunnan Province, there are Nie Er Memorial Sites, Kunming City has Nie Er's former residence, which is nie's residence when Nie Er was born, and Nie Er's tomb is also in Kunming; the nie er former residence in Yuxi City is the house of his parents in Yuxi, as well as Nie Er Square, Nie Er Concert Hall, and the streets have Nie Er Road and Ziyi Road. In fact, there is no need to make a conclusive conclusion, love to argue let them continue to argue, and at the same time, Kunming City and Yuxi City each or jointly hold Nie Er commemorative activities, which is also very good.
Kunming Nie Er Former Residence
Former residence of Nie Er in Yuxi
Shanghai Nie Er Former Residence
Of course, this article tends to emphasize that Nie Er is a Yuxi person, because many of Nie Er's musical works are related to the regional characteristic culture of Yuxi. This point will be explained below, and the table will not be listed here. It is also extremely important to emphasize that Nie Er is a Kunming native. Although Kunming was a frontier city in China, it was also a cultural center, especially after the French invaders occupied neighboring Vietnam, and from 1904 to March 1910, a railway connecting Kunming in China with the port of Haiphong in Vietnam, the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, was built, which was the first railway in southwest China. In a certain sense, this railway also imported modern civilization (including capitalist culture and Marxist theory) into Yunnan, so that the advanced Chinese intellectuals living in Kunming could awaken. In fact, the Xinhai Revolution was echoed earlier in Kunming, Yunnan, and Zhu De, who later became an important member of the first generation of the Leadership Collective of the Communist Party of China, was active in Kunming long before Nie Er was born. Li Shengxuan, a native of Yunnan, is a Marxist theorist and a friend of Nie Er; Zheng Yili, a native of Yunnan, who published Guo Dali's translation of Capital, is also a friend of Nie Er. This was an important condition for Nie Er to be influenced by Marxism and even join the Communist Youth League organization when he was a middle school student.
Esquire
But in the cultural sense, people should say that Nie Er is a Shanghainese. Because the most important achievements of Nie Er's life were mainly completed in Shanghai. He moved many times in Shanghai, living in small lofts and small houses, and it was in these simple migrant workers' rented houses that he created the nie er legend.
Nie Er's story urgently needs more and better art forms such as films to present and disseminate
Nie Er is the composer of the Chinese national anthem, Chinese should know him, and making his story into a movie is one of the best ways to spread it in today's era. My advice is not to make one film, but to make many films, to present such a brilliant person from many angles.
In the movie "Nie Er", the 45-year-old Zhao Dan played the 23-year-old Nie Er, and the god did not resemble the shape.
People have been doing this for a long time, but it hasn't been done well enough. In 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded, the "March of the Volunteer Army" was determined as the national anthem, and the composer of the national anthem, Nie Er, began to receive attention. As early as 1959, the artists presented a film "Nie Er", which was a great success as a gift film for the tenth anniversary of the National Day and was named one of the best films for the tenth anniversary of the National Day. The screenwriters of this film are Yu Ling, Meng Bo, Zheng Junli, director Zheng Junli, main actor Zhao Dan, etc., they are all Nie Er's former friends and revolutionary comrades. As artists, they know and understand each other, which is the reason for the success of the film "Nie Er" and it is difficult to surpass.
But times have changed, and people are increasingly dissatisfied with the old movie "Nie Er". For example, even the best actor, after all, Zhao Dan was 45 years old when he played Nie Er, and Nie Er was only 23 years old when he died, and no matter how god seems, he can't hide the difference in appearance, such a shortcoming is a great regret, if not fatal. In 2021, in a TV series depicting the Armageddon of the Liberation War, It was Tang Guoqiang who played Mao Zedong, who was 69 years old, compared with 53 years old in 1946. The same is true of several other important characters in this TV series, such as Wang Jian, who played Ren Bi, who was 66 years old, and Ren Bi was only 42 years old at the time. The director chooses actors in this way, which can easily trigger the audience's negative evaluation of the artistic standards of the entire film and television work, and also greatly affects the audience's perception and emotions.
When the 66-year-old actor plays the 42-year-old Ren Bi, the reason is that Ren Bi looks old
In particular, when filming the old film "Nie Er", due to the characteristics and requirements of that era, the film highlighted the characteristics of Nie Er as a revolutionary figure, while the lack of in-depth excavation of Nie Er's ideological and spiritual characteristics in other aspects was obviously unable to adapt to the appreciation needs of Chinese and even a wider audience in the early 21st century.
Nie Er, played by Chen Kun
As an outstanding historical figure, Nie Er has the responsibility and need to make new interpretations of his thoughts, spirit, achievements, and so on. Figures like Nie Er, who to a certain extent embody the spirit of the times, should make new spiritual interpretations and artistic reproductions in each subsequent era, which is a historical responsibility that artists should not give up. Therefore, in 1999, Wu Ziniu directed the movie "National Anthem", and Chen Kun played Nie Er. But the film was also hastily completed as a tribute film, and it was clear that the choreographer failed to dig deeper. In June 2021, another "Song for the Country" was released, which once again positioned the perspective on the "Song for the Country", and this idea is logically reversed: it is the "March of the Volunteer Army" that expresses the spirit of the times and the spirit of the nation before it becomes the national anthem, and Nie Er did not compose the "March of the Volunteer Army" to create the national anthem.
In general, so far, the artists' understanding of Nie Er is not in place, and even the shallow stories have not been told well, let alone the deep ideological characteristics, spiritual connotations and artist temperament.
Nie Er's story of working in Shanghai is very inspiring
Nie Er was born in 1912, came to Shanghai in July 1930, left Shanghai for Japan in April 1935, and drowned in Japan on July 16, which is the focus of Nie Er's biographical works. Different times and different people will have different cognitive perspectives. In the era of reform, opening up, and comprehensively promoting modernization, people can have at least three angles to recognize and understand Nie Er:
First, Nie Er "drifted" from the age of 18 to 23 for more than 4 years, from a migrant worker to a composer, and can write a very touching inspirational story. Nie Er came to Shanghai from Yunnan, alone, with no relatives, and could only rely on his own hard work. He had a meager income, a difficult life, and lived in a small attic (there was no popular basement at that time), but he never gave up his hobbies and pursuits, saving a little money to buy a violin to practice every day. Finally, he successfully applied for the Mingyue Song and Dance Drama Club with his talent, and later entered the Lianhua Film Company and THE EMI Records Company, and became the "backbone" of these enterprises at a young age. Although Nie Er learned violin playing and invited professional foreign musicians as "personal trainers", he was not from a science class after all, and mainly relied on his own unremitting struggle. However, he found a platform to give full play to his strengths and advantages, and gradually gained the recognition and acceptance of the Shanghai literary and art circles at that time, and created a number of musical works representing the highest level of Chinese music at that time, especially the creation of such a great work as "The March of the Volunteer Army". Nie Er went from an obscure migrant worker to the music industry in the film industry for only two years, growing into an excellent people's musician, such a struggle process, the spirit of struggle, in Nie Er's time is a miracle, in today's view is still a miracle.
There were three very dramatic turning points in Nie Er's experience: First, he left Kunming for Shanghai. In 1930, Nie Er was just a very ordinary young student, like many young people, who were influenced by the trend of the times and participated in some political activities, but they were blacklisted by the reactionary authorities in Yunnan. Nie Er's third brother Nie Sulun's friend Li Tongwen inadvertently saw a list of young students who were about to be arrested at the desk of his father, who was then the president of the Kunming District Court, and found that Nie Er was among them, and Li Tongwen immediately revealed this information to Nie Sulun. This incident caused Nie Er's fate to suddenly change significantly, and his family thought that he had to find a way to escape the persecution of the reactionary government, and it just so happened that Nie Xulun had just found a job for a Shanghai business guy, just so that Nie Er could replace the third brother to do this job. So he immediately boarded a train from Kunming to Hanoi, Vietnam, and diverted to Shanghai, which was the shortcut from Kunming to Shanghai at that time.
The latter was Nie Sulun and the former Nie Er, 1830
This turning point is extremely important to Nie Er's life, first, to bring him to Shanghai, which is the key to Nie Er's success in life, and second, because he was persecuted and fled his hometown, which is the ideological basis for him to continue to participate in revolutionary activities. The third is to come to a strange city alone, doomed to his struggling life, he must work hard to survive. Therefore, film and television works and literary and artistic works that take Nie Er's life deeds as the object of expression must show and render well the contingency and particularity of this turning point in life.
The second is to enter the Mingyue Song and Dance Drama Club. On July 24, 1930, Nie Er entered Nie Sulun's friend Xue Gengyu to work at the "Yunfeng Shenzhuang" in Shanghai. This business is the Shanghai semicolon of the "Yunfeng" general business name opened by several Fujian people in Kunming, and the business is to purchase goods from Shanghai and sell them in Kunming. But the business soon went out of business. In fact, this business name is mainly doing illegal business, the business name in Shanghai to buy cigarettes mailed to Kunming sales, the boss's purpose is to mail cigarettes as ordinary items, it escaped the high special consumption donations that must be paid to send cigarettes, because several partners have unevenly shared the loot, smuggling and tax evasion behavior was exposed, and the business was punished and bankrupt. This business name allows Nie Er to stand in Shanghai for more than half a year, but the bankruptcy of the business name is more important to Nie Er, it is not bankrupt, how can Nie Er "transform and develop"? That Xue Gengyu was a traitorous businessman, and he helped Nie Er by providing a job for Nie Er, and Nie Er was also grateful to him for this, but later he repeatedly borrowed money from Nie Er and did not pay it back, which caused Nie Er to live a very embarrassing life for a while, but also forced Nie Er to work harder, and continued to "help" Nie Er. Nie Er began to look for a job again, checking the job advertisements in the newspaper, and a new turning point came. On March 28, 1931, his "Declaration" published an advertisement for the Lianhua Film Company Music and Dance School to recruit actors and band trainees, and Nie Er went to apply for a job and was admitted.
Lai Kam-hui
Entering the Mingyue Song and Dance Drama Club is also a particularly important experience in Nie Er's life. First, he met Li Jinhui and got Li Jinhui's cultivation and help. This is very fortunate, Li Jinhui is the head of the song and dance school, he personally interviewed Nie Er, although Nie Er did not stand out during the interview, Li Jinhui hired him. Who is Lai Kam Fai? Chinese pop music master! He has composed more than 2,000 songs in his lifetime, and is the author of famous popular songs such as "Drizzle", "Peach Blossom River", "Special Express", "Sister I Love You", and the author of anti-war songs such as "Chinese National War Song" and "Ten Miles to Send Husband". He is a composer and an entrepreneur, and in his Mingyue Song and Dance Club, he almost concentrated the first generation of pop stars in China, such as Zhou Xuan, Li Lili, Wang Renmei and so on. Most importantly, he is Nie Er's Bole and the guide for Nie Er to embark on the road of music creation!
Li Lili, formerly known as Qian Zhenzhen, is the daughter of Qian Zhuangfei.
Li Jinhui gave Nie Er a lot of selfless help, helped Nie Er learn music, arranged for Wang Renyi, the first violinist of the Mingyue Society, to teach him to improve his violin performance level, and later Wang Renyi left the Mingyue Society, and Nie Er became the first violinist. In particular, Li Jinhui personally taught him to learn Chinese and composition. Learning from the master, Nie Er's progress is naturally very fast. Second, Li Jinhui brought him the opportunity to get acquainted with the celebrities in the literary and art circles at that time. Li Jinhui and Shanghai entertainers dealt with each other every day, and Nie Er also became a friend and collaborator of the "leading figures" in the Shanghai literary and art circles at that time, such as Cai Chusheng, Zheng Junli, Sun Yu, Sun Shiyi, Xu Xingzhi, Yuan Muzhi, Jin Yan, Wang Renmei, Zhao Dan, Ren Guang, He Luting and so on. Li Jinhui sympathized with the revolution, and not only had a close relationship with Tian Han and other communists, but also did many things to help the Communists. After the April 12 coup d'état in 1927, Tian Han entrusted Qian Zhenhui, the daughter of ccp member Qian Zhuangfei, to Li Jinhui, and under the careful cultivation of Li Jinhui, Qian Zhenzhen soon became the "Four Heavenly Kings" of the Song and Dance Society along with Wang Renmei, Xue Lingxian and Hu Di, and recognized Li Jinhui as his righteous father, named Li Lili, and became a popular movie star in the 1930s and 1940s. When Qian Zhuangfei's wife Xu Shuangying came to Li Jinhui's house as a guest, Nie Er often walked around and worshipped her as a dry mother. In particular, knowing Tian Han, Xia Yan, and other Communist Party members was crucial to Nie Er.
Nie Er's acquaintance with Tian Han was the most important turning point in his life
After the "1.28" in 1932, Shanghai was shrouded in white terror. The leading organs of the Communist Party of China demanded the development of party members in the literary and art circles, and Nie Er was listed as one of the first training targets. At that time, Tian Han was identified by the party organization as Nie Er's training contact. Tian Han studied in Japan in his early years and was very talented in theatrical arts, once calling himself "China's future Ibsen". He initiated the founding of the Chinese Left-Wing Writers' Union and the China Left-Wing Dramatists' Alliance in Shanghai, and became an activist organized by the CCP to contact people in the literary and art circles. After Nie Er and Tian Han got acquainted, they were very close, and with Tian Han's encouragement, he successively joined the music group of the "Friends of the Soviet Union", the China Emerging Music Research Association, and the music group of the Left-wing Dramatists Alliance. Later, Tian Han recalled in the article "The Road to Nie Er's Victory": "Nie Er joined the Communist Party of China, which I introduced and was swore by Comrade Xia Yan. We are infinitely honored to be able to recruit such a young and promising music warrior for the party. Xia Yan recalled that Nie Er's party joining ceremony was held in the corner of a studio at the First Factory of Lianhua Pictures, and the party flag was drawn on a piece of paper and burned on the spot after the oath was taken. Under the guidance and influence of Tian Han, Nie Er composed basically revolutionary songs. In just two years, Tian Han composed lyrics and Nie Er composed music, starting from Nie Er's debut work "Mine Opening Song", the two people jointly created 14 songs such as "Road Song", "Graduation Song" and "Dock Worker", accounting for nearly half of Nie Er's total 34 song works (and 4 songs).
Nie Er and Tian Han
Due to the influence of Tian Han, Nie Er instinctively rejected the musical style of his boss and friend Li Jinhui. On July 13, 1932, Nie Er used the pseudonym of "Black Angel" to publish an article entitled "A Short Treatise on Chinese Song and Dance" in the Shanghai Times Supplement Film Times, sharply criticizing Li Jinhui's work's practice of attracting the audience with a sense of fragrant flesh, proposing that "you have to go deep into the masses" and "That is the road of the times!" Nie Er originally thought that it was just to study and discuss the problem, he also personally told Li Jinhui that "the black angel is me", but the colleagues of the drama club thought that this was the stage of the dismantling of the drama club, and finally the meeting of all the staff of the Mingyue Society decided to ask Nie Er to quit, in fact, Li Jinhui himself did not care about this matter, he and Nie Er are still friends. With the help of the party organization, Nie Er stayed in Beiping for 3 months, and then returned to Shanghai, and on November 26, 1932, he entered the first factory of Lianhua Film Production and Printing Co., Ltd., and began to use the name "Nie Er" when he entered the factory. Both Yichang and Mingyue She are subsidiaries of Lianhua Pictures. From 1933 onwards, Nie Er's musical talent began to play a role, and music creation began to take off. On May 28 of that year, Nie Er wrote in a letter to his mother Peng Xiaokuan: "Recently, I have been painstakingly studying music, and several pieces of music have appeared and are still popular. Therefore, when Nie Er is mentioned in the Shanghai art world, a considerable number of people already know it, especially the names of the four ears can often be seen in many film publications. Mom! You should be happy enough! (The Complete Works of Nie Er, vol. 2, p. 139, Culture and Art Publishing House, People's Music Publishing House, October 1985)
Nie Er's great wisdom lies in the deep presentation of the Chinese national spirit with music
Second, Nie Er's music creation reflects the fusion of Chinese culture, Chinese spirit and modern art. Nie Er was in Shanghai, a world of flowers and flowers in China at that time, which was the place where the collision between Chinese culture and foreign cultures, especially Western culture, was the most intense. The key to the success of Nie Er's music creation lies in two aspects: his music incorporates elements of Yunnan folk music. Nie Er's initial musical literacy came from the Yuxi flower lanterns, Dian opera, and Dongjing tuning that his mother used to hum to him as a child, and from the folk music played by neighbor Qiu Carpenter, his brother, and others when he taught him to learn folk instruments such as bamboo flute, erhu, sanxin, and yueqin. In May 1933, Nie Er wrote to his mother: "Now I want to study folk songs and ballads in various parts of China, and ask the third brother to help me collect some sent, no matter what minor key, dongjing tune, mountain song, Dian opera brand, do not hurry!!! He wrote in his diary dated March 7, 1933: "Musically... Pay attention to Yunnan music. In a letter to the third brother in July 1934, he described the situation in which he formed the "Sensen" national band and adapted traditional music at EMI Records: "I organized a 'Sensen' national band, which played Chinese music entirely with Chinese instruments, and with scientific organization and sound, became a new form of Chinese music. "When he was composing music, the elements of national music that had settled in the depths of his soul kept emerging. In 2017, the author visited the heads of the Dian Opera Troupe and the Hua lantern Troupe in Yuxi City, Yunnan Province, and they all clearly affirmed that the "March of the Volunteer Army" adopts some elements of the singing voice of Dian Opera. In this regard, Nie Er's music creation organically integrates Yunnan folk music elements and other musical elements to express the deepest and most agitated feelings of the Chinese nation, which is the true embodiment of "people's musicians", which is nie er's successful road and the essential feature of Nie Er's music creation. It can also be said that Nie Er's music creation reflects the creative transformation and innovative development of Chinese culture, which is the only way for China to complete the transformation and development from traditional society to modern society.
Nie Er and Wang Renmei
Third, Nie Er's music creation fully reflects the characteristics of the times in which China has transformed from a traditional society to a modern society.
Nie Er's music composition incorporates revolutionary musical elements such as the Internationale. That is to say, the characteristics of the times embodied in the organic combination of Nie Er's patriotic spirit and revolutionary spirit are also what Nie Er's biographical works should be more deeply displayed. Scholar Lu Yeping published the article "Nie Er and the < Volunteer March >" in the 5th issue of Contemporary Music in 2021, saying that "the March of the Volunteer Army is a melodic march, motivated by the weak '2-5' four-degree interval at the beginning, which is a reference to the Internationale, like blowing the horn of the revolution, full of high fighting spirit." "As a Communist Party member and a revolutionary musician, Nie Er naturally adopted revolutionary music elements. The Communist Party's leadership of the revolution is to seek happiness for the people and rejuvenation for the nation, and to lead the people to build traditional China into a modern country, thus completely changing the fate of the Chinese nation being invaded and bullied. Expressing such a theme of the times is not only the requirement of the party organization, but also the inherent requirement of Nie Er himself to change his fate and change the state of existence. Nie Er himself, as a migrant worker, has a personal feeling for the miserable living conditions of the working people; nie Er, who witnessed the "August 13" Songhu War of Resistance in 1932, has a patriotic passion for resisting the Japanese invaders in his heart, which is also natural. Therefore, his participation in revolutionary cultural work should have a strong internal demand, and when the revolutionary cultural work requires him to compose works such as "The Song of the Great Road", "Pioneer of the Road", "Song of Selling Newspapers", "Song of Mei Niang", "Singer Under the Iron Hoof", "New Woman", "Saiwai Village Girl", "Flying Flower Song", "Graduation Song", "March of the Volunteers", and so on, it is all a natural expression of his inner passion.
Nie Er exploded into a number of excellent works in just two years, and if he had not died young, he would have produced more and better works. It can also be said that only in terms of the song "March of the Volunteer Army", Nie Er's musical talent is also unparalleled. From the 20th century to the 21st century, throughout the historical stage of the Chinese people's realization of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, the "March of the Volunteer Army" will become a battle clarion call to unite and lead the unremitting struggle of billions of descendants of Yan Huang. This should have been something that Nie Er himself, as an artist and composer, had not expected at all, but he did.
Although Nie Er's life is short, his experience is very rich and wonderful, his inner thoughts and feelings are also very rich and very profound, from his experience and many of his works, many wonderful stories can be generated, and many profound enlightenments can be excavated. Even if it is based on Nie Er's emotional life, it can also tell a very wonderful story. Before leaving Kunming, Yuan Chunhui was Nie Er's girlfriend, and later Nie Er also kept in touch with her in correspondence, and the diary often mentioned "three people" (referring to "spring"), but long-distance love made their feelings gradually weaken, and some film works highlighted the love affair between Yuan Chunhui and Nie Er, which was unrealistic. In Shanghai, Nie Er has a close relationship with many actresses, and has written many times about his feelings with Bai Lizhu in his diary, and he is also somewhat complicated with Wang Renmei and Tan Ying, but Nie Er has always been a pure, kind and enterprising youth, even if it is emotional, it is pure and pure feelings. He was only 23 years old when he died, and his income level has always been relatively low, so he never considered getting married and starting a family, but instead he said in his diary that Li Jinguang's marriage was not smooth and Wang Renyi was in emotional trouble, and he said that he was sorry for them. Obviously, Nie Er always put study and work first until his death, which is the real Nie Er.
Yuan Chunhui on the left is Nie Er's girlfriend. The other two girls were also Nie Er's friends.