The Charm of the City in Musical Narration: The Construction of Chengdu's Local Image in Song

Abstract

Music has the power to recreate place and awaken a sense of place. As a medium of communication, music combines the narrative characteristics of imagery, nostalgia, and localization. Songs named after place names and their comments have an image-based expression of the place, as well as a symbolic emotional mapping between the creator and the listener. Focusing on two music platforms, QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music, this study considered songs related to Chengdu, used lyrics and comments as textual data, and conducted content analysis from the perspective of musical narration. It determined the degree of association between feature words through high-frequency word statistics and socio-semantic network analysis and constructed the dimensions of local imagery through rooting theory. The study also constructed a theoretical model of "local image construction based on music narration," analyzed the features of local image, and examined the relationship between music narration, local image, and city charm. The results indicate the following: (1) The local image of Chengdu in music narrative comprises three aspects: symbol presentation image, meaning-endowed image, and comprehensive expression image. Among these, symbol presentation image includes seven categories, while meaning-endowed image and comprehensive expression image each contain two categories. (2) Music narration can be categorized into the narration of songs and critical narration whereby listeners express their views under the influence of narrative transmission; narrative text has an impact on element cognition, emotional resonance and tone rendering in three aspects: narrative elements, structure and tone, so as to construct place image. The local image is specifically expressed as follows: based on narration elements such as character, time, place and environment, it connects the cognition of image elements such as character, time, space and landscape; through the narration structure of "I say to you" and "you listen to me," the emotional resonance is triggered after the individual role is substituted, forming emotional and intentional images; under the rendering of these narrative tones, combined with individual cognition and emotion, macroscopic atmosphere image and local characteristic image are formed. (3) The local image of Chengdu as narrated musically is characterized by the coexistence of tradition and modernity, the interaction between nature and humanity, and the sense of romance and "the feeling of home". 4) Music narration constructs the local image of "ideal home," "story tavern, " and "earthly life, " which become the charm of the city. This study connects music, narration, and place; addresses how music constructs local image; and introduces the perspective of narratology to expand the relationship between music and local image into a deeper mechanism. Simultaneously, the expression of the city image evolves from the spatial structure and symbolic perception to the place meaning level, conveying a sense of spatial temperature and bringing the space to life. Moreover, the model proposed in the study provides theoretical and methodological reference for the creation of charming cities, construction of local imagery, and image promotion.

Keywords

• musical narration
• local image
• song
• sense of place