Music Fest Deja Vu

The deja-vu encountered by looking through the Modern Sky Festival’s early-October 2013 lineup inspired the penultimate post by the now-done-with-Tumblr Slink Rat. It’s a deja-vu this blog has also had, and one that all fans of yaogun and observers of China’s growing festival scene should, too. In short, Slink Rat questioned why, with as genuine a curiosity as one might intuit from a blog post, it is the case that the same bands play the festival every year. To that we might add the concern that this is happening across the festival landscape in a way, Slink Rat points out, that wouldn’t fly elsewhere.

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Cui Jian Branches Out, Again…

He’s been a star onstage for thirty-odd years now, so it’s only reasonable that Cui Jian, the inventor of yaogun, would opt to join the action on other sides of the stage. And the action in question is not his film forrays: in 2009, he was one of three directors that contributed segments to Chengdu, I Love You (which, by the by, debuted at the Venice Film Festival); his 3D concert film came out earlier this year; and his full-length directorial debut, Blue Bone, which tells the story of a young musician, is set for a 2013 release. No, Cui is looking to branch out into another place altogether…

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Festivals Season, again

As lineups are announced at music fests around the world and as summer music festival season encroaches, a look China-ward reveals that it’s just about festival time. In glorious China-fest fashion, lineups are only just being announced, at t-minus barely a month to the big fests – e.g. Midi and Modern Sky’s Strawberry Music Festival, both of whom are doing Beijing and Shanghai versions. Meanwhile, new-ish-comer China Music Valley Festival is set to have some big names, though not yet officially…

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