Ladies and Gentlemen, Red Rock: The Long, Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll is now available on Amazon!
Red Rock at Amazon Canada:
Red Rock at Amazon USA:
It’s a start. Stay tuned for more….
Category: General
You know, general musings, stuff of that ilk.
Banned in the P.R.C., Part I: “Enemies” from Within
The Chinese Cultural Ministry recently unveiled a list of songs that must be taken down from the country’s music websites because they had not been properly submitted for approval. Or, to put it in Their words: The songs may do harm to “national cultural security”. It relates, of course, to Red Rock: The Long, Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll, as it reminded me about previous so-called controversial material I came upon over the course of writing the book.
But first, the recent Blacklist. It’s got its share of Western pop (Gaga, Backstreet, Beyonce and more), but most of the songs were Canto- and Mandopop, the Cantonese and Mandarin-language pop music coming from Hong Kong and Taiwan, respectively. It’s worth noting that there is more than just saucy lyrics at work. “National cultural security” is a serious issue: As a late bloomer in terms of the international community, China is extremely concerned about ensuring its own culture isn’t drowned in a sea of imports. It’s not an unprecedented attitude: Canada, France and others have systems in place to ensure time for homegrown material. But, as in so many situations, China takes things further. And anything that relates to the islands of Hong Kong and Taiwan is particularly sensitive.
Taiwan and Hong Kong are certainly linked to what is technically their Motherland, but they are separate from Mainland China in more than geographical ways, much to the chagrin of only, really, the Mainland. Taiwan and Hong Kong have been at the pop industry – and experimenting with Western ways generally – for much longer, and doing it much better, so an inferiority complex is definitely part of the fuel for the decision to limit the bigger and slicker pop machines of the islands into Mainland ears. Of course, the battle is pointless, since Mainland audiences have been choosing the music of Taiwan and Hong Kong over that of their own comrades for years now. While the Mainland pop machine has certainly come a long way in its chase for the Hit, it will be a long time before China proper is producing pop stars with a regularity that competes with the superstars of Hong Kong and Taiwanese pop – it’s not that there are no Mainland stars, it’s just that their fame pales in comparison to that of their bretheren and sisteren over the water. Something interesting occurred in the early nineties (which China scholar Geremie Barme brings up in this article), when it was believed that official support for yaogun was worth undertaking: In combination with the Official support of Mainland pop, a Great Wall of music might be erected that could compete with imports, lest the country lose out completely in the battle for its citizens’ hearts, minds, and ears.
Red Rock encourages a look at how we’ve arrived where we have arrived, and so, in the face of a new Blacklist, it makes sense to look back at what previously fell victim to the Red Pen of officialdom. When the Communist Party gathered in 1942 to talk about the guiding principles of the nation they were seven years from founding, Chairman Mao said something that resonated far beyond those years: “Literature and art are subordinate to politics, but in their turn exert a great influence on politics.” The goal of art – a poster, a play or, much later, a three-minute-and-thirty-three-second pop song – was to “awaken and arouse the popular masses, urging them on to unity and struggle and to take part in transforming their own environment.” Here, then, are some of the folks that the Party worried were doing a bit too much awakening and arousing. It’s a sampling of the music of the Mainland, and of Taiwan, that got caught on the wrong side of that struggle in the early days of China’s dealing with the world.
Stay tuned for another installment, featuring “Enemies” from outside of the Middle Kingdom.
1. Teresa Teng: Back in the late seventies and through the eighties, Teresa (known as Deng Lijun in Mandarin), queen of Taiwanese pop, was the embodiment of pop music’s corrupting influence, even as she became a favourite of the citizenry supposedly morally beyond bourgeois fluff such as this. Even yaogun mourned her death in 1995, releasing a CD of covers to mark the occasion, which gives you an idea of how wide-ranging her influence was. Words like ‘decadent’ and ‘pornographic’ (mimi zhi yin 靡靡之音 and huangse gequ 黄色歌曲) were the kinds of language used to deride Teng’s music, but eventually the Man came around: In 2007, news broke that she was invited (though unable to attend) to perform for the 1988 Spring Festival Gala, the Chinese New Year extravaganza that is an intimate part of every family’s New Year’s celebrations, and the ultimate Official seal of approval for any participant.
Karaoke staple, then and now: “The Moon Represents My Heart”
2. Su Xiaoming’s “A Night at A Naval Base”: Another to be filed under “…Really…?”. Authorities attacked Su’s tune for the suggestion that navy officers slept soundly in their bunks, comforted by the knowledge they were anchored close to home because it implied that China’s protectors weren’t constantly at attention, primed to strike down any enemies whatever the time, place or situation. It was confusing, because Su came out of the military, and had even won a singing competition, putting her soundly in Official territory; the delayed reaction against her song was downright 1984-y. Eventually, though, she was back on the right side of the law: Like Teng, Su’s rehabilitation was signaled by a Spring Festival Gala slot, which she took in 1986, singing about her nation’s soundly sleeping soldiers.
Su Xiaoming circa 1980, when it was not ok for the navy to take a break
3. Zhang Xing: Often seen as yaogun’s first star, Zhang Xing did not quite cut a rock and roll figure. In his memoir of his time in the late eighties and early nineties playing music in China, Dennis Rea, who played a few shows with Zhang, remembers him as a “dandy” with an “impeccably tailored suit, slicked-back hair and stylish sunglasses.” Rumours of affairs and multiple pregnancies among his female fans (of which he had many) culminated in a jail stint for “(violating) the marital laws of the time”. Zhang cultivated a bad-boy image in a time before folks knew what to do with a bad boy, and thus, his association with rock and roll. Because musically, he was only a very distant relative of rock: He may have turned rockers on to a rhythm that rolled, but surely yaogun would only have invited him to the largest of family reunions. Below, “Late Arrival”, from the 1984 album that was the country’s first million-seller (the song is a cover, incidentally, of a tune penned by a Taiwanese pop singer):
Before there was rock and roll, there was Zhang Xing
4. “Prison Songs”: Written from the perspective of (and, sometimes by) ex-convicts and former so-called “rusticated youth” – those “sent down” to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution of the mid-sixties through to the late seventies to be educated by the peasants. These songs spoke directly of those experiences as well as celebrating the vulgar alternative lifestyles of the down-and-out. In his fantastic book Like A Knife, which looks at pop and rock in the late eighties and early nineties, China scholar Andrew Jones reports that somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred thousand prison-song tapes were sold between the winter of 1988 and the spring of 1989; knock-off compilations were soon also hitting the streets, and the product was selling at a rate that increased as fast as official disapproval of it. Musically, though, they don’t sound so much like the rough-and-tumble outlaw music you might expect from the name. Like, say, Chi Zhiqiang’s “Cigars and Beer Are First-Rate”:
Pop music for ex-cons, by ex-cons, about, well…
In future installments: More “Enemies” from within, and a few from wihtout.
And: Coming, in less than one month… Red Rock: The Long, Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll to a bookstore near you!
It Was Twenty Years Ago Today…
Nevermind
Ten
Achtung Baby
Out of Time
Metallica
Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Use Your Illusion
Badmotorfinger
The Low End Theory
1991: An unbelievable musical year – a year the likes of which have yet to be seen again. And it’s been twenty years. Suddenly, a whole lot of thirtysomethings – teenagers when they we were first turned on to the bands via the breakthrough albums listed above – are wondering how the hell two decades went by. And, of course, we’ll gobble up the inevitable reissues (like these), anniversary tours (one hastens to note the ticket merchant handling said tour) and Cinematic Events.
But I digress.
When grunge hit, what was yaogun doing? Soon, a more detailed answer to that question, I promise. The short answer: In August, 1991, Black Panther released their debut album in Hong Kong and Taiwan (the Mainland release came the following year). This was the hit single there-off:
Yaogun’s early nineties was a more homogenous period, where longhairs dominated with hard rock and metal. It would be some time before yaogun would sound like American rock’s 1991 – it was a time, remember, when R.E.M. and Mr. Big, “November Rain” and “One”, plaid and leather could share chart space.
Yaogun got there, eventually, and in a big way.
Festival Season(s)
It’s festival season throughout much of North America and Europe, and I was going to say it’s festival season across China as well, but that would only be part of the story: Festival season, lately, has been happening multiple times each year. In recent years, with “explosion” being a massive understatement, it’s hard to know when the season ends (festivals used to be limited to the holiday weekends of Oct 1 and May 1). Between late July and early August I know of the following festivals: 2011 Ocean Midi Music Festival, Ark Beach Music Festival, the InMusic Festival, Zebra Beach Music Festival, Rock Aid and the Da Ming Palace International Music Festival. There are others, but it’s nearly impossible to keep track.
Many point to the proliferation of music festivals across the country as a sign that things are looking good for yaogun. An important half truth at the very least: Music festivals – or, more accurately, events with the word ‘festival’ in their name – are, indeed, an increasing occurrence around the country, especially as local governments have come to see value in backing such events.
Festivals make both a good and bad model upon which to base a judgement on the rock scene, because, like the scene itself, looks are deceiving. Just as it takes more than a proliferation of bands to make a vibrant and internationally-ready rock scene, there’s more to a Festival Scene than an increasing number of stages under the banner of ‘festival’. And an increasing number there certainly is: Check here, at the encyclopaedic Rock In China, for a list of many recent festivals.
Some recent highlights include: The short-lived Beijing Pop Festival, which brought an increasingly significant lineup of international acts, culminating with Public Enemy, Nine Inch Nails and others in its final, 2007, event. Record label – and, many would add, PR agency – Modern Sky has an eponymous festival as well as the Strawberry Festival and a folk festival in various locations across the country. The Zebra Festival emerged in 2009 in Chengdu and has plans for expansion (in 2010, the fest went to Hangzhou; 2011 saw a Shanghai version). The Midi Music Festival, most often referred to as the leading festival light of the country, has long outgrown the campus of the eponymous music school where it began in 2000, with events outside of Beijing beginning in 2009 and expanding rapidly thereafter.
Each festival has had, and continues to have, its own challenges to overcome both from outside – the unpredictability with which the authorities limit the events, for one – and inside – organizational chaos leads to festivalian chaos – though anyone beyond industry insiders would be excused for seeing nothing but good news: The festivals look right and get great coverage in the local and international media. But artists, staff, volunteers and observant attendees (and I have been in all of those categories) run into elementary problems of the type that shouldn’t exist at this level. It’s not that the glass is half-empty, it’s that it’s hard to know what kind of cup we’re talking about, and what kind of liquid (if a liquid at all) is being poured (unless it’s being drained). And the more pouring that gets done, the tougher it is to get the stuff to go into the glass.
“In China, if someone does something successfully, then all of the sudden, there’s a million people doing it,” influential radio DJ Zhang Youdai told me. “It ends up ruining things for everyone. Recent festivals have turned people off.” He said this in 2009, and while things then seemed to be getting out of hand, it was nothing compared to what was to come (one is also quick to add that Youdai himself headed up a festival in 2011, Kama Love, which received good reviews)
Over the course of the millennium’s first decade, a number of festival attempts were made, to varying degrees of success. There were the non-festivals, like 2003’s First Annual Lattetown Music Festival, named for the condominium complex (one of a million ridiculous real estate development names in the country) in the southern outskirts of Beijing. Metal bands Suffocate and Spring and Autumn joined pop-punks Reflector and grunge guy Xie Tianxiao and others celebrate the condo’s opening. “We’re trying to show that Lattetown is a fashionable and modern place,” said one saleslady charged with handing out pamphlets that day to the mix of rock fans confused over the setting and nouveau riche confused as to why their search for a new house had to be so loud.
There was 2005’s cryptically dubbed “Carnivalesque Party of 1 vs. 120,000”, part of the International Beach Tourism Culture Festival, in the small city of Beihai, in southeastern Guangxi province that combined rock performances with a bikini competition. Soon thereafter was the Gegentala Grasslands Music Festival, which seemed to be a decent enough festival with good potential for a future, but was revealed to be an attempted cash grab by a Sichuanese strawberry magnate. The trip out to the Inner Mongolian grasslands looked like it would be worth the ride until the supposed seven-hour ride became, for many, a twenty-hour nightmare; word was unpaid bills nearly stopped the music on several occasions. Gegentala, Part II was not forthcoming; meanwhile lodging and food prices had been inflated to the point of comedy.
What’s interesting about the current situation – in which one estimate claims that 2010 saw as many as one hundred festivals; all indications point to an increase in 2011 – is how suddenly it all seems to have happened. Which isn’t exactly the whole story: The festival era didn’t begin with the Midi Festival, and what’s more, despite appearances, things haven’t come all that far.
In 1990, then-new-Beijing resident Udo Hoffmann put together what he says is the country’s first festival. News of the event got to a city official who said that ‘hell had opened its gates’, so it wasn’t a huge surprise that his Hoffmann’s second attempt – for which, he says, five thousand tickets were sold – was cancelled two days before the event. He learned from those first events, though. In 1993, he started the Beijing Jazz Festival; the event lasted through until 2001. Hoffmann was also behind the Heineken Beat festival, held in Beijing in 1999, 2000 and 2001, it was the first large-scale international festival in the country (the lineups for the Jazz Festivals and Heineken Beat are here).
1990’s 90 Modern Music Festival was a two-day event featuring Tang Dynasty, Ado, The Breathing, 1989, Cobra and Baby Brother (Baobeir Xiongdi) at Beijing’s Capital Gymnasium that was said to have drawn eighteen thousand spectators. In a similar vein was the New Music China Xinxiang Concert, for which Huang Liaoyuan brought nine bands – via a “rock and roll train” full of musicians and fans – to a stadium in the small city in 1998. Six years later, he put together the Helanshan Music Festival alongside a motorcycle festival in the desert of western Ningxia. Other than the hard-to-reach venue, the reviews were positive.
2002’s Snow Mountain Music Festival, held in the southwestern corner of the country, nearby the once-mythical and recently-official Shangri-La, was supposed to be the Chinese Woodstock that everyone had been waiting for. With Cui Jian as the festival’s artistic director, the international media certainly played it that way, but the rainy season and the far-flung locale kept the audience numbers low. Episode two wasn’t until five years later; subsequent installments went further away from rock.
In the first years of the nineties, filmmaker Sheng Zhimin (whose 2009 Night of an Era [再 见乌托邦] is a fantastic look at the nineties’ rock scene), like many current festival organisers, was approached by a local government official who was told that adding a rock component to an otherwise unsuitable-for-rock event would be great for local business. His ‘festival’, which took place inside a (working) roller coaster in a Beijing suburban celebration of Chinese New Year, was put together with not much more than his personal connections to local bands and the dreams that he and his crew had from watching Woodstock videos. The situation would be laughable if one didn’t appreciate Sheng’s deep sense of mission. What is laughable, though, is when one is confronted with the possibility that not much since has been learned.
The governmental support that abounds these days – it is a shocking thing to behold – is one of the reasons that it’s easier for festivals to flourish. “As long as the musicians are healthy and not opposed to the Communist Party, why not let everyone enjoy the rock and roll?” Li Xuerong, secretary the local Communist Party Committee for Zhangbei, the site of the InMusic Festival, told the Global Times. Li’s comments represent the feelings of many a local government official eager to put their own towns on the map, and, for now, are convinced that music festivals help them do that. Multiple-year deals between local governments and festival organisers have been signed, a trend that looks to continue as long as it appears that the festivals are adding to the image of the locales in which they are held.
On the other hand, festivals are still battling the cultural obstacles of a nation new to the idea of massive outdoor events. “People go to restaurants – they don’t even really go to bars,” Liu Chang, a Midi School graduate who has worked on the Midi Festival since 2007, says. “Most people who go to the festivals probably have no knowledge of the music or any band. To them it’s a simple gathering.” Liu Chang’s boss, Zhang Fan, knows this to be true: “Fifty percent of (the audience) aren’t necessarily coming for the music,” he was quoted, in 2006, as saying. “They’re just coming to have fun.” While there are certainly a few fan favourites, the overall idea was that you could go to the park, hang out, and maybe possibly see some music you’d like. “For the festival-goers, half of the time is spent wandering around,” he told a China Daily reporter in 2007. “The festival is not only performances but rather, a relaxed lifestyle.” Add to that the far-flung locales festival organisers are now exporting to, and you have an audience comprised of a large number of locals just trying to figure out what the heck is going on in their hometown. If people are attracted to a music festival for any reason other than music, we are not talking about an event that gets filed in the same category as Boneroo, no matter how many people are in attendance – and that number is impressive – or how many stages may dot the grass fields of any given park in the Kingdom.
And one ought to look critically at who is standing upon these stages. I knew I’d been seeing the same names year after year, but it came home after a quick survey of Midi Festival lineups from the past dozen years. Miserable Faith and Yaksa have appeared at twelve Midi Festivals; AK47 and Brain Failure at eleven; Twisted Machine and Sand, ten; Subs seven; Ruins and the Verse (six). Here is not the venue for debating these bands’ worthiness for the stage. But it is the venue for questioning the variety in the lineups of the country’s leading festival – and, by association, the country’s other festivals, who are all picking from the same limited pool. When festivals go looking for the local Big Guns, they don’t stray far from that list. There is Cui Jian, the biggest star in the country; Xie Tianxiao, who is being tagged as Cui’s successor. There are a few others, who straddle that line betwixt yaogun and pop: Wang Feng, He Yong, Zhang Chu, Xu Wei, Tang Dynasty, Zero Point, Heaven.
What one hopes is that festivals live up to their potential, and bring yaogun with them. What one fears is the triumph of the status quo: The same bands headlining the same events plagued with the same problems.
Radiohead meets Yaogun, Possibly
Seems that this blog will alternate through time. We started at the beginning; we now continue to the recent present. We will thusly hop around for the foreseeable future.
Radiohead opened an account on the Chinese microblogging site, Weibo.
Maybe.
If it’s actually Radiohead (an enormous “if”), nine days after posting “testing the weibo”, they have 67,500 reasons to post something more. If it’s not Radiohead, which is a distinct possibility (nothing more has been posted as of now, other than just about 4600 comments from fellow weibo-ers), they might want to consider joining the fray.
The Guardian asked what I thought, in this article, which ran on July 6, five days into Reibohead.
If any band can attract a loyal, hip, intelligent and savvy group of netizens to help their cause, I told the paper (the ’cause’ being accruing interest in a China tour, or of record distribution, rather than, say, freeing political prisoners), it’s definitely Radiohead. They could, I continued, employing the kind of subtlety and reasonableness much-needed in our over-hyped world, be kings of the virtual world.
Of course, it’s unclear if they opened the account at all. And if they did, whether it was done with an eye to performing, or just, you know, to “test”.
Their politics are what everyone’s talking about vis. China, which is reasonable, especially if the idea is to post on weibo the kinds of things they’ve been posting in other forums — which they won’t be able to do.
It’ll be a long time before the group gets permission to play in China (and before that, it’s arguable that the country isn’t ready, technically, for what that would entail). Certainly playing for/supporting/encouraging support for, say, an ethno-religious group headed by an elderly monk in a small Indian mountain town isn’t the kind of thing that looks good, in China, on a resume. Forget the permit-issuing authorities; it’s not likely an application would even be submitted (even if presenters could afford the fee or get specs up to snuff). Sinologist Perry Link talks about censorship in China as the “anaconda in the chandelier”: The snake will generally leave you alone, so long as you don’t poke at him. Radiohead, in this scenario, is the big, long stick.
Alas.
Like most bands, whether or not they know, tried or cared, Radiohead does, in fact, have something of a presence in China already, via, first, dakou, or ‘saw-gash’ tapes and CDs:
- via http://www.verycd.com/groups/@g2385974/659802.topic
…and later, thanks to file-swapping, p2p-ing, and the fact that in the post-OK Computer world few rockers or fans would not be aware of or attentive to Radiohead, whether in Beijing or Brighton. And, of course, there’s “indie” labe
l Modern Sky, who snagged the rights to Kid A a million years ago (2001) and (officially) distributed it in China. (one is hesitant to add that they did so well with it that they never distributed another Radiohead record again, though their catalogue does still include the occasional overseas record.)
Unlike most bands, though, Radiohead has been a major influence to a large number of Chinese rockers: There are few yaogun bands active or formed in the last decade-plus who don’t cite Radiohead as a major influence (not unlike the situation in many parts of the planet).
Also unlike most bands, Radiohead is well-known for a vision of the music biz that is similar to their conception of rock and roll: Their strategy for releasing In Rainbows (ie: pay what you want) seemed just as off-the-charts as what their brand of rock and roll created in each album since OK Computer.
China is a place where models of any kind tend not to work, so a band that is up for anything — not to mention creative about approaching the ten-tonne behemoth known as the music industry — is a perfect match for the Wild, Wild East.
Imagine if Radiohead actually set up the weibo account, and if it signals that the band is ready to seriously consider China. They could, like Linkin Park, make a real impression (LP were fortunate to have Huang Feng on their side building serious traction in-country in the days before weibo, douban and the million o
ther platforms part of the new normal). There is much to learn from LP; as much about finding success as avoiding failure: The recent hugging/high-fiving the band didwith a certain elderly monk seems to have slowed that train’s return trip to China, but the point is, Team Linkin spent a good amount of energy building a real presence, and it paid off nicely until things went pear-shaped.
Which is the other point: Real investment in China requires a full-on effort and an outlook that goes far beyond scheduling. Which doesn’t mean bands that want in to China need to drop causes, shut up and play. It means they have to know what the investment in China involves.
So let’s say Radiohead is weibo-ing. Let’s say they get a few zillion more followers. They might well become invested in the country, proving their commitment not to the sales of billions of records but in the healthy development of an industry that is, to put it kindly, still finding its feet. There are two ways to look at the music business in China (like so many other industries): One: It’s a complete mess. Piracy is rampant, censorship is difficult, apathy is widespread. Two: It’s a clean slate. Everything is brand new. Nobody’s been doing anything for very long, so the potential for change is so huge.
Radiohead didn’t have a clean slate upon which to write the rules to their recent releases, but it sure seemed like they did. Imagine what they could do with an actual clean slate.
Let’s be clear: It’s not that Radiohead will be the tide that rises all ships on the storm-ridden and pirate-infested Chinese market. But a real involvement could certainly make others stop and rethink strategy, both inside and outside the country.
…
One yearns to bring this all back to Red Rock, that much-anticipated book now less than three months from international release. One can. Because Radiohead’s earliest imprint in China was made in the wake of Pablo Honey and the song “Anyone Can Play Guitar”. Influential radio DJ Zhang Youdai named his short-lived program (1994-1995) took the name and under its banner brought axemen into the studios of Beijing Radio to teach tunes to listeners. Many a young rocker snuck headphones into their extracurricular classes to listen in on those lessons.
Yang Haisong, the singer of post-punk outfit P.K. 14 and a major figure in yaogun, told me that among his crew, “Anyone Can Play Guitar” was more than just a song. It was their mantra and guiding philosophy. “Grow my hair,” Thom Yorke sang. “I wanna be wanna be wanna be Jim Morrison”. It sounds cheesy, and maybe he was poking fun. But when you find out that yaogunners were longing for the excitement, action and promise of America’s sixties to lift them out of the angst of China’s nineties, and that they believed they found it in rock and roll, it takes on a whole new meaning.
It was more than a rock song: It was the impetus for a life-altering decision, one that separated you from 99.9% of the world as you knew it. You couldn’t just grow your hair until the late nineties; those locks marked you as a rebel of a kind that those of us in rock and roll’s homeland couldn’t imagine.
“I wanna be in a band when I get to heaven,” went the song. When young ‘gunners heard that, they took it to heart, and you can hear it in the best of the music they made.
Let’s hope Radiohead remembers that.