There has been talk for a while now about the possibility of a 3D film based on Yaogunner Number One’s 2010/2011 New Years’ Eve and Day concerts. For those two shows, Cui Jian turned the tables on his former employers, the Beijing Symphony Orchestra. Cui had blown the trumpet for the group through most of the 80s, until the Orchestra told him that his extra-curricular pop and rock activities had to stop. Luckily for us all, he chose yaogun, and left the Orchestra before the decade was up.
And then, in 2010, he hired them on as his backing band for two concerts.
Word now is that the film, named for his 1997 song, 超过那一天 (chaoguo na yitian) or “Get Over That Day,” is set to be released later this summer. Known in English as Transcendence (a long, strange way from Stereo Symphony On the New Long March, which was the working title cited by The Hollywood Reporter), the film’s eponymous song is generally considered to be Cui’s reaction to the 1997 return of Hong Kong to China from its British overlords: In it, he raps of a sister he never knew whose return to the family was imminent and of the mixture of emotions leading up to the reunion. It’s a rare entry in the ‘songs about Hong Kong’s return’ category, in that the view is more foggy than rose-coloured.
Cui’s live performances tend to culminate with “Get Over That Day,” as he creates an onstage celebration by going into the crowd to pick out as many women as possible to join him in a mangled mess of bodies, rhythmically and not-so-much-so jumping around the stage, devil-horns and peace-signs raised high, voices wailing and cell-phone cameras flashing. See below for footage of the song performed at the 2011 Macau International Music Festival.
A preview of Transcendence was held in Beijing on the twenty-sixth anniversary of Cui’s first major public appearance, the date when he unveiled what is still his most popular song, “Nothing to My Name” (yi wu suoyou) – a song about which you can read more right inside of this very blog to say nothing of what you can read about it and yaogun inside of the book around which this blog is centered. Long-time China resident and reporter Jaime FlorCruz was at the screening and wrote about it for CNN, here. Nice touch by the event organizers, handing out red bands to the gathered folks in homage to the red cloth with which Cui covers his eyes during the singing of “Piece of Red Cloth,” in turn a reference to the red bands worn by many of China’s revolutionary “fighters,” particularly through the Cultural Revolution.
Cui’s, and yaogun’s, own revolution is still ongoing. Though he has recently had very few problems with censorship, this film was, apparently, subject to a bit of cutting-room treatment. “…Some lines had to be taken off and some songs were disallowed,” Cui said to the crowd. “We have had to remove them to save the whole work. Such compromise is made so we can deliver the other messages.” One message he went on to deliver: “If by simply telling the truth of people’s sufferings, an act is considered as anti-stability or anti-system, then it’s absolutely wrong. Change is inevitable, so why not make it happen as soon as possible?”
Let’s hope that in addition to change, this film will be coming to a theatre near all of us as soon as possible.
“Get Over That Day” live, 2011, Macau International Music Festival:
Still blown away by the amazing Kid Koala Space Cadet Headphone Experience show at Toronto’s 918 Bathurst last night. If you’re remotely interested in animation, music, scratch-DJing, comics, art, video games or lying on the floor with headphones and experiencing music, I can’t recommend it enough. Here’s another way to put it:
It got me thinking, and remembering.
When Kid Koala came to China in 2005, I got a chance to not only see what he does up close, but to sit down and chat with him for a while, writing articles that eventually appeared in Maisonneuve, the Toronto Star (in advance of an appearance at my current place of employ, Harbourfront Centre) and the South China Morning Post.
The highlight of KK’s visit to China was the master class/media preview that gave local reporters and aspiring DJs a peek into his process — a process that audiences at the Headphone Experience get via great sightlines to the video screens displaying the live feeds from strategically-placed cameras. Two of the top names in Chinese scratch DJing were in attendance, and thus, I also told the story of the state of affairs in the Chinese scratch-DJ scene.
What better time, I figure, to revisit KK’s Chinese adventures than after coming off of the Headphone Experience. Thus have I included, below, the article that appeared in SCMP in the wake of his China trip. Seven years ago, when the piece was published, scratching, and hip hop generally, had a lot in common with yaogun: They were new phenomena still yet to be fully understood and appreciated by fans and participants — to say nothing of the general public who equated the DJ with the nameless, faceless employee working the CD players, providing the soundtrack for a night out in a club.
Things have come a long way, though Wang Liang, aka DJ Wordy, and Gary Wang, aka V-Nutz, still remain atop the Chinese DJ heap. V-Nutz had just taken over the reigns at China’s national DMC competition as the article came out. Wordy, meanwhile, true to his word, won the China DMC title in 2006, the year after the article was written — and then again in 2007, and one more time, in 2008.
(June 27, 2005)
DECKS APPEAL
Kid Koala is putting his education training to good use on the mainland, showing budding DJs the finer points of scratching, writes Jon Campbell
His house has been taken over by clay mosquito models and miniature sets, he draws cartoons about robots in love, he works with puppets, and his playful style of scratch DJing fits perfectly with his child-like monicker. You wouldn’t peg Eric San – aka Kid Koala – as a teacher, but not only did he receive a degree in early childhood education, on this June day in Beijing, Eric San – better known as Kid Koala – was playing teacher in front of a gathered posse of local DJs and media. This was his second trip to China in 11 months; successful visits to Beijing and Shanghai last year prompted organisers to bring him back.
His gigs in Shanghai and Beijing were supplemented by master’s class, equal parts ‘how-to’ and ‘what-the?’, which were what separated his China shows from those of a growing number of visiting DJs and musicians. It was a chance for local DJs to see, up close, San’s art form, and for those not quite clear on what it was that scratch DJing was to get an inside look.
“(The class) gave me an opportunity to break down and demystify some of what was going on, technically,” said San. “It was mostly media people there to acquaint themselves with what it was I did, and why I flew over the ocean. I think they were trying to warn people what they were paying for.”
San had already achieved a large level of fame not only from his opening slot on Radiohead and Beastie Boys tours, but from his two releases on the renowned UK label, Ninja Tune, which made San their first North American artist. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Some of My Best Friends are DJs combined his deft scratching skills with his ability to sniff out strange, silly and subtle samples that he combined with the musician’s ear garnered from an early childhood piano education. The mini-comics that were a part of his releases added an additional level of fun, and then, in 2003, the music became not the focus, but a bonus part of the package, when he released his first graphic novel, Nufonia Must Fall, which – without dialogue, but with an accompanying soundtrack of piano-based music – followed a robot on a quest to win the girl of his dreams. His next project – set for an autumn release – is another graphic novel, this time composed of photographs of miniature models and sets, which tells the story of a country bumpkin mosquito in the big city trying to make it in the local jazz scene. In 2007, he says, he and his posse will create a puppet show musical, inspired by his parents’ love of showtunes.
Kid Koala flanked by local DJs Wordy (r) and V-Nutz (l)
Back in Beijing, his parents weren’t far from his mind, as he performed a mash-up of ‘Moon River’ – the song is one of his mom’s faves, and his creation was a gift to his folks – as neither Audrey Hepburn nor Henry Mancini could ever have possibly envisioned. Later, he scratched out a trumpet solo – and more – atop a standard swing-blues backing track. While the DJs in attendance were overjoyed at the chance to witness the Kid, the other media and curious onlookers were somewhat baffled. “If they were confused about (what I do) before the master’s class,” said San, “they were definitely more confused after the master’s class.”
Shanghainese DJ Gary Wang (aka V-Nutz), who won China’s first nationwide DMC competition in 2002, was left speechless. “I basically knew what he was doing, and I was still blown away.”
Wang Liang (aka Wordy), placed third at last year’s DMC competition, and was also amazed and inspired by San’s show and master’s class. “Seeing Kid Koala is important for (us)…A lot of people think they’re DJs, and they think they can scratch. But then they see someone like this.”
There are many who call themselves DJs, he says, but between he and V-Nutz only four names are raised in terms of technically proficient scratch DJs: Themselves and two others – Beijinger Shorty-S and Shanghainese Fortune. Nine people participated in last year’s national DMC competition – the winner of which is flown to the international competition in London – and there is concern that there may be no China DMC competition this year.
“The rock scene is much better than it was ten years ago,” said the former rocker Wordy, who (literally) traded his guitar for a turntable and a mixer three years ago. “The scratch-DJ situation now is like rock five or six years ago. People hear the word DJ and they think of the discos – like ‘mm-tss-mm-tss,’” he adds, mimicking the sounds of the heavy techno that is a feature of most Beijing clubs.
But the packed room at Club Mix wasn’t thinking of disco during Kid Koala’s set, and especially not while Wordy and V-Nutz joined San for a brief jam session. The guest of honour was obviously impressed, as he was on his last trip. “It’s bubbling up (in China). Here, it’s just so new that you’re seeing all these light bulbs go off ‘Oh, maybe I can do it this way’…You can feel it, it’s on the cusp of something, it’s electric.”
A few days after the show, Wordy was still on a high, and is back behind the decks in a hip-hop hangout known as Dragonstylaz. The office-studio looks right – with two dance rooms, small and large, for b-boy dancing, and a room with a four-turntable setup – but it is in the most unlikely of locations: Inside the Olympic Stadium. From the windows and sliding doors along the back walls of the space, the track around the football pitch is spitting distance away. The space is run by, among others, Zou Bin, a DJ who occasionally teaches scratch DJing. “Most kids don’t want to study scratch,” he says, “they just want to make money.” Paid gigs, as both he and Wordy know all too well, rarely come with the ability to play the music they love most. Wordy recalls playing at fashion shows in not-quite-fashionable spots such as Zhengzhou, Henan, and playing poppy hip hop at Beijing clubs rather than tunes from his beloved underground collection. Zou also organises and DJs at techno parties, including a beach party in Qinhuandao, Hebei, on July 9. But while most clubs cater to the newly-moneyed party people with pop-rap, Zou and Wang remain optimistic: “Old school might be the next pop music,” said Zou. “A lot of new songs are old songs redone.” Meanwhile, they are both excited about Section 6, a hip hop party held on the last Saturday of each month, and now, about Dragonstylaz.
Zou compares the space to community centres overseas. “Outside of China, there are community clubs, like for boxing. In China, there’s nothing like that.” Dragonstylaz, he says, is a place where hip hoppers and b-boys, scratch DJs and rappers can hang out.
“We want this to be like a family,” adds Zou Yang, who also helps oversees the space. “A family for hip hop.” As she spoke, one of the country’s best ‘street dance’ teams, FCR, was going through breakdance moves in the studio behind her. Other dance crews, a string of rappers, DJ students and random hip hoppers come by to hang.
Wordy finds himself at Dragonstylaz not infrequently. “When I saw what Kid Koala was doing, I had so many ideas for stuff I could be doing. But there aren’t any real record shops in China,” he said “So I can’t do the things I was thinking about doing…Yet.” The self-proclaimed ‘vinyl junkie’ boasts a collection of 700 records, which he accumulated searching through the second-hand markets of Beijing for scraps of warped who-knows-how-they-got-here albums, online ordering and the kindness of friends going abroad.
But Wordy has a new plan to boost his collection: “I’m going to get really good and win the DMC China competition so I can go to London,” and go to the record shops and buy a whole lotta records. I hear that they all get their new shipments on Mondays, and tons of DJs go to the shop at the same time to dig through them.”
With a smile that signals confidence that he will join those DJs on some Monday in London both in form and skill, he adds, “I’m going to be the best DJ in China.”
Dick Clark’s passing has elicited much ink over his role, via American Bandstand, in bringing rock and roll into the households of America at a time when the heads of those households wanted to bar the music from ever getting into the ears of their familes’ younger members. Ditto the reports on Soul Train‘s Don Cornelius and his role in popularising — legitimising, even — African-American music among the mainstream, when it, too, was left at the fringes of popular culture. The deep marks of both men remain on popular (and unpopular) music, despite the void left by their passing.
China, too, had its own version of these two folks, folks that were instrumental in introducing rock and roll, and, eventually, yaogun, to Chinese audiences — audiences whose hunger for the music was already at an extreme, confined by the limitations of the earliest days of rock’s entry into China, in the days before the internet, when resources were at a minimum and cassettes were brought in from outside the country (or, eventually, found after intensive searching through the chaotic shelves of an increasing number of tiny shops popping up through the nineties), played and passed around and played again, until the spool of tape inside burst out of the shell’s confines, and not even the well-practised pencil skills of the hardest-core yaogunner could get it back in.
Zhang Youdai is perhaps the best known of those Dick Clark types. You wouldn’t know it these days, when he looks like the kind of guy that could’ve hosted the equivalent of American Bandstand, but back in the day, Youdai’s look almost got him booted off the air — the radio. By the time he was able to use his own voice on the air, which was no small feat, since the Official Voice of Chinese radio narrated all programming into the nineties, he was told by his bosses that his hair was too long. Again: For the radio. But Youdai — which is the name he gave himself in college, meaning ‘has tapes’ because wherever he went, whether restaurants, taxis, bars or parties, he brought his own music — persisted, and managed to convince China Central Radio, that rock and roll, and, eventually, yaogun, belonged on the air. Between him and his Shanghainese counterpart, Sun Mengjin, alone — to say nothing of the DJs in other cities around the country — generations of those about to yaogun got their real education, through headphones snuck into classes, radios secreted away under pillows and more.
Unlike in Dick Clark’s case, there is no New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on which these DJs could find a mass mainstream audience, but that isn’t exactly a bad thing as anyone who’s seen tell of the extravaganza that is Chinese New Year on China Central Television can attest. Alas, neither Dick Clark nor Don Cornelius achieved their goals overnight, and yaogun is on a steeper climb than the music championed by American Bandstand and Soul Train. Thusly do Sun, Youdai and the next generation of DJs, writers, players and audience members forge a path. Uphill, but ever forward.
Readers of the National Post have five chances this week to join me, proverbially, on the road, as they run one “Diary” entry of mine every day this week. Episode one is now live, which takes place over the course of my first day and a half in Shanghai on the Canadian Consulate-sponsored book tour.
Reading positive reviews of one’s own work is, to be sure, a great feeling. But reading Han Huilong’s recent article was feeling beyond anything that a good, objective reivew might bring. From my recent travels through China and speaking to a few Chinese audiences — not to mention the period I was researching the book, or those living in China prior to that — it is clear to me, like so many elders from so many places, that, in short, “kids today…”
But Han, like other potential readers on the Chinese side of the Pacific, saw something in the text beyond a great (!) story.
“Reading [Red Rock],” he says, “was a somewhat unexpected experience for me. It’s the first time that I actually learned about Chinese rock history.”
And, he continues, looking beyond the music: “China’s glorious music history has given us a hope to strive for.”
It’s more important than I can put into words for those of us outside China to read about yaogun to get an understanding of China, particularly when China is all over the news and our understanding of what that actually means is nil. But it’s at least just as important for those inside China to do it — for the same reason.
Here’s to more folks, inside and outside of China, actually learning…
decade was up.
s, handing out red bands to the gathered folks in homage to the red cloth with which Cui covers his eyes during the singing of “Piece of Red Cloth,” in turn a reference to the red bands worn by many of China’s revolutionary “fighters,” particularly through the Cultural Revolution.
Dick Clark’s passing has elicited much ink over his role, via American Bandstand, in bringing rock and roll into the households of America at a time when the heads of those households wanted to bar the music from ever getting into the ears of their familes’ younger members. 
Ditto the reports on Soul Train‘s Don Cornelius and his role in popularising — legitimising, even — African-American music among the mainstream, when it, too, was left at the fringes of popular culture. The deep marks of both men remain on popular (and unpopular) music, despite the void left by their passing.
when he looks like the kind of guy that could’ve hosted the equivalent of American Bandstand, but back in the day, Youdai’s look almost got him booted off the air — the radio. By the time he was able to use his own voice on the air, which was no small feat, since the Official Voice of Chinese radio narrated all programming into the nineties, he was told by his bosses that his hair was too long. Again: For the radio. But Youdai — which is the name he gave himself in college, meaning ‘has tapes’ because wherever he went, whether restaurants, taxis, bars or parties, he brought his own music — persisted, and managed to convince China Central Radio, that rock and roll, and, eventually, yaogun, belonged on the air. Between him and his Shanghainese counterpart, Sun Mengjin
, alone — to say nothing of the DJs in other cities around the country — generations of those about to yaogun got their real education, through headphones snuck into classes, radios secreted away under pillows and more.