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Subscribe to RSSBEIJING – The live music scene in Beijing is one of the great perks of living in the Chinese capital. As we reported a couple of years ago, a thriving community of independent musicians and artists can satisfy practically any music craving.
Experimental folk? Check.
Indie electronica? Check.
Rock with comic cross-talk? Check.
But if you crave big marquee names, better move to Tokyo.
In the past year, China has seen only two major-league performers come from overseas: Usher earlier this month, and Beyoncé last October.
Photo by Ed Flanagan/ NBC News
Usher's popularity in China is in part due to his wholesome image.
For a major international city with nearly 18 million permanent residents, that’s a pretty poor showing of global mainstream pop and rock acts.
One reason for the paucity is censorship.
Avoiding controversy
Since Bjork’s controversial act of shouting "Tibet, Tibet" at the end of a song called Declare Independence during a concert in Shanghai in March 2008, China’s Ministry of Culture has maintained strict restrictions on foreign performers.
Since then, a handful of western artists have had to cancel gigs because of their perceived politics. In 2009, ministry officials revoked permits for Oasis to perform, calling the band "unsuitable."
Photo by Adrienne Mong/NBC News
Thousands of young Chinese fans turned out for Usher's concert last weekend.
Bob Dylan was due to perform in Beijing and Shanghai this year, but concert promoters said the Chinese Ministry of Culture denied him a permit, perhaps concerned about the legendary 68-year-old musician’s counter-culture origins.
But it’s not just about politics.
"Anything that talks about violence or things that are a little bit extreme, those tend not to be approved here," said Adam Wilkes, managing director of 8th Round, a live entertainment company in Beijing that organized this month’s Usher concert.
Usher’s mass appeal in China is in part due to his wholesome image as well as his talent, the accessibility of his music (R&B remains extremely popular amongst the young urban set here), and his fame in the west.
Chinese acts still reign
Concert promoters face other challenges trying to bring overseas rock/pop acts here.
"Foreign mainstream artists are not particularly influential in China," said Jia Wei, a music critic.
"They are merely competitors in the local music scene."
Photo by Ed Flanagan/ NBC News
Chinese pop stars like Taiwanese-American Wang Leehom have no trouble holding concerts in China.
Usher drew a large audience at the spiffy Wukesong Stadium, which looked to be about 70-80 percent full. That’s not a bad turnout considering the cheapest tickets went for $41 in a city with a median monthly income of $550.
But that was nothing compared to the sell-out concerts by Mandopop stars like Jay Chou or Wang Leehom, who attract at least 35,000 people per show. (In fact, Wang made a special appearance at Usher’s concert and sang a duet in Mandarin with him, triggering screams of delight from the audience.)
The night of the Germany-Argentina World Cup quarterfinal, Chou staged a show at the Workers’ Stadium in Sanlitun, where expats and locals converged on a concentration of bars, restaurants, and clubs to watch the match. And I’m pretty sure the traffic snarling up the roads in Sanlitun were because of Chou, not the soccer.
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And when tickets were released this month for a series of comeback concerts in China by Faye Wong, a semi-retired Hong Kong pop singer, they were sold out within ten minutes.
But there’s also the fact China’s music industry is new and relatively undeveloped, with the concert industry really only five years old.
What little music recording infrastructure exists here revolves around local talent, said Wilkes, who’s spent almost a decade working in China.
"For the most part, the mainstream state-owned media does not focus their attention on Western popular culture," he said. "So most of this information comes in organically through the Internet, so it’s available, but it’s not driven."
So for the foreseeable future, it seems Beijing will still only be attracting A-list music performers at the rate of one a year.
Thank goodness for the underground music scene.
Mongolian hip hop, anyone?
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China will be a very interesting place for at least the next one hundred years. Actually the fate of mankind is dependent on China's moves. There simply are more Asian/Neo Asian peoples in the world, than anyone else. China is mother of all the Asian region. So, as China goes, the world will follow. The US is about to become as irrelevant as the earlier great powers, like England, Spain, Portugal, Rome, etc. But the real hope in China, is its young people. What do they want, I do not believe that they truly know, that they, and only they, will lead the world into a bright or dim future. Let us bring new understanding, based on thousands of years of culture, to the youth of the world, through, music, arts, electronics, communication, the Internet, may the world make new harmony, freedom, choice, and ultimate understanding of who we are and where we shall go, together.
You have left out India which has almost the same population as China and has thousands of years of history and spiritual culture like China. It too has a huge young population. Is there a reason?
Indian ancient culture was dead long time ago. Chinese culture is the only one left. Egyption, Indian, Babylonia culture all died. By that I mean, the current culture in those three regions are different from the ancient ones.
Wow! It appears the United States National Security Agency (NSA) has unveiled it's latest ultimate snooping, invasive and eavesdropping tool targeting ALL Americans connected to the Nations Power-Grid!
During the utterly depraved invasive East Berlin era, the East German security forces discovered a very innovative mechanical means to connect to the city's hot water pipes supplying citizens heat radiator's which could be selectively tuned to eavesdrop and tune specifically into conversations in any residents home or dwelling! Using current computer technology, America's NSA has taken that to a new level of corrupt, invasive depravity with it's Operation 'Perfect Citizen' coming to your US Home soon!
The scope of the depraved invasion on American freedoms and liberty's in America's homes under Operation 'Perfect Citizen' is truly amazing. The NSA appears to have been given the 'Green Light' to attach NSA 'sensors' and 'computer links' to the Public Utility power feed-lines across America. This under the 'guise' of alerting the NSA against a cyber-attack upon a local Power Company's power-grid.
Americans are not universally stupid nor ignorant enough to even think the NSA cares about how much electrical energy Americans are using although in the past local heavy handed law enforcement agency's have targeted private individuals with heavy electrical energy for door busting marijuana searches.
However the vast number of American's do not realize how much information is received and carried already on the Nations Power Grid lines. Many home intra-net's now are using the power grid, metro-city areas are adopting intra-net and internet data processing thru home power grid's as direct tie-in's. ALL of the Nation's power grid operators pass messages, and ton's of information in digital and analog packet's on the very lines carrying power into your very homes!
In the most basic form, the nation's power grid forms a gigantic antenna array which picks up computer keystrokes and virtually all kinds of electrical signals which can in turn relay that specific information to the NSA under the 'Perfect Citizen' operation.
Sadly, this appears to directly go against President Obama's campaign promises of not allowing nor permitting further invasions of America's Freedoms, Liberty's and Rights which were entirely under assault during the horrific Republican administration of Bush-Cheney. Does this signal that like the CIA with Afghanistan's Opium-Heroin trafficking, America's NSA is no longer controlled by the Executive Branch of Government?
Sadly, this also signals that American citizens who thru alternative energy choose to 'go off the grid' will likely be harassed and targeted as unpatriotic and suspected of conducting unpatriotic activities.
Operation 'Perfect Citizen' illustrates the extreme height of paranoia in some of the dark, nefarious federal agency's in America much like East German security agency's prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I was just in Beijiing and Shanghai 10 days ago on holiday and meeting w/local music promoters to bring bands over one of which is SplitWorks www.myspace.com/splitworkers and I saw Canadian band Caribou and adverts for other Western artists coming to China...that said-the statements: "In the past year, China has seen only two performers come from overseas: Usher earlier this month and Beyoncé last October" and "So for the foreseeable future, it seems Beijing will still only be attracting A-list music performers at the rate of one a year." is absolutely MisInformation and journalists need to research more throughly. There is indeed some dubious censorship and big-brother type eyes, but Shanghai & especially Beijiing I found cosmopolitan, vibrant and cutting edge!
Hell...I saw Jimmy Buffet in Hong Kong two years ago, fer goodness sakes. (Ok, ok...I know Hong Kong is not exactly "China" but try telling that to my Mainland students...)
And big-name international stars perform in Macau casinos all the time these days (including Usher just the other day.)
So, when you say "China" make sure that you qualify that it is "Mainland" China that has such a difficult time attracting "suitable" foreign artists.