Category Archives: censorship

Oh goodie – here we go again. International artist (Elton John) calls out an enemy of the state (Aye WW)

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Back in 2008, a certain Icelandic singer dedicated her song “Declare Independence” to a certain part of China that has famously been trying to do just that for over 50 years. Last night, Elton John dedicated his Beijing show to infamous dissident artist Aye WW.

While most probably not as seriously or damaging as the Bjork incident (which was 4 months before the great Olympic coming out ceremony in 2008), it begs the question “Why won’t these primadonnas ever learn or think what the potential consequences of these actions might be?”.

Promoters across China work hard in the margins, trying to incrementally increase their ability to do more and at the same time increase choices for the Chinese public. In fly cosseted stars on their private jets, stay in their Chinese presidential suites for a night and think they will solve the problems of a nation by embarrassing the state in their own back yard. Then fly out, back to their mansions in Cannes surrounded by sycophants that tell them how brave they were and how significant those actions will be, and we are left to clean up the mess.

So what are the consequences likely to be? Most probably an increase in the already expensive and weighty Ministry of Culture approvals process. Most likely more scrutiny for international artists wanting to come and play China and subsequently less variety and frequency of shows. Life post Bjork was tough here in China…

Progress is currently being made and artists of all stripes are arriving every week to play China’s big cities  sharing messages, friendship and collaborating with fans and artists here. Soft power is a very real phenomenon, and has very real results.

Everyone knows and appreciates Mr. Aye and his efforts to stand up for the rights of the Chinese nation and her people – the foreign media cover it on an almost daily basis. If Elton wants to do something valuable for China, why not play a benefit concert for orphans; or how about spending some time in Beijing understanding the issues, then going home and writing an op-ed for a global publication about his experiences and thoughts? Nah, let’s go for the easy one: call out my “mate”, get some headlines which never hurt global Elton PR and get the fuck out.

Thanks Reg…

 

Thoughts for the Dragon Year

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The Tiger went into a cocoon and a dragon emerged, glistening, with great expectations for music in China. These are our thoughts about the lay of the land for the rest of 2012. Think of this done in a rocking chair, looking contemplatively at the horizon while freezing half to death in the grip of Beijing’s winter

Every year for the last 5 years we’ve reflected in the (relatively) mellow time that is the Western and Chinese New Year extended break and thought about how far we have come and how big the upcoming year is going to be.  Every year, the number of shows, festivals, live houses and especially promoters seems to increase exponentially and this one looks no different, with one big, nay massive great caveat.

Opinion is almost equally divided on the lay of the entertainment industry in 2012. Some say that a second Cultural Revolution is underway, others say that this year of the Dragon will be the most open and interesting year for entertainment and music particularly.  Our own view is somewhere between the two.  There has been a recent series of unfortunate closures of live houses in 2nd and 3rd tier cities, licensing artists is getting harder and there is of course a handover of political power: Hu Jintao giving way to Xi Jinping at the 18th Congress.  That’s going to go down in September and official confirmation will be sometime after, so it will be very interesting to see how the October festivals fare.

It is likely that Beijing will become a very hard place to do anything. We hope not, but if the Olympics and the 60th anniversary of the Communist party were any kind of benchmarks, Dragon year will be rather less fiery than we hope……

Which side of the fence do you come down on?

Linkin Park: will they won’t they (again)?

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UPDATE: Linkin Park’s management have confirmed that they won’t be coming to China any time soon. Don’t go buy those tickets…

OK, so Timeout Shanghai picked up a juicy nugget from the official Shanghai Cultural Information (government run) website. Apparently, Linkin Park are playing a New Year’s Eve gig at Hongkou Football Stadium, the stage for their original triumph way back in 2007.

This is strange for a number of reasons:

  1. Livenation had their multi-million $$ stadium tour in September cancelled due to an inauspicious meeting between the band and he who shall not be named
  2. Livenation don’t know anything about this new show – we would imagine they would have been given a heads up
  3. Can you imagine how freaking cold it will be in Hongkou stadium on the 31st December?

We are awaiting official confirmation/ denial shortly. In the meantime, perhaps hold off buying tickets…..

 

The problem with Linkin Park

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You may or may not know that Linkin Park are without doubt the biggest Western rock band in China. They have also committed a huge amount to this region. We’ve devoted a lot of coverage on this site to the band including

our first article, a review on the Hongkou Stadium show in November 2007

the man who broke Linkin Park in China

the cancellation of the 2008 China tour

This is a band that has been promoted extensively in China for over 10 years, has done 2 tours of the mainland, and were slated to return to China this September for a run of three stadium shows (Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan) that Livenation were putting together. Contracts were signed, licenses applied for, things were looking good. A rock stadium show in Wuhan – we’re not the biggest LP fans in the world, but we would have gone to that show….

Until a couple of weeks ago that is.

Linkin Park China cancelled banned

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Yugong Yishan closed down

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It seems like the noose around the neck of Beijing nightlife is closing ever tighter. According to Timeout, Yugong Yishan has been closed due to “fire regulations”. This isn’t the first time that Yugong has been in trouble – a few weeks back, Rustic’s show at the self same venue was closed down.

Whatever is happening in the ‘Jing? We can only hope that some of these recent decisions are temporary and reversed soon.

Intro Festival moved

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It seems that Beijing is going through a prohibition style dry period. After alcohol bans at Strawberry and Pinggu over the May holiday, China’s (only?) electronic festival have decided to move away from their planned Tongzhou Canal Park location and back to the old gaff at D-Park 751. Why they can sell booze there and not at the Canal Park is a mystery to us, but it does seem like a bizarre contradiction. Still, there’s nothing as illogical as the BJPSB.

We’ve also heard rumblings that KAMA Love Fest might also be facing venue issues. Beijing seems to be both the hottest and coldest place on earth for music festivals right now.

Intro Festival moves to D-Park

Dylan strikes back

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So there has been a LOT of talking about the recent Bob Dylan shows in China. We were going to post something, but honestly, we couldn’t be bothered. There were cries of “sell out”, “expat only shows”, “over-reaction”, “boring” from most of the major global publications. Why, we have no idea really?

In any case, Bob has come out on his own website with the facts. We reprint them here:

Allow me to clarify a couple of things about this so-called China controversy which has been going on for over a year. First of all, we were never denied permission to play in China. This was all drummed up by a Chinese promoter who was trying to get me to come there after playing Japan and Korea. My guess is that the guy printed up tickets and made promises to certain groups without any agreements being made. We had no intention of playing China at that time, and when it didn’t happen most likely the promoter had to save face by issuing statements that the Chinese Ministry had refused permission for me to play there to get himself off the hook. If anybody had bothered to check with the Chinese authorities, it would have been clear that the Chinese authorities were unaware of the whole thing.

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Festival Update – problems at Nanjing and Pinggu

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After Suzhou Strawberry was abruptly canceled last week, and the sudden cracking down on foreign artists (see the comment from Mike Weed re, ChongQing), we expected this festival weekend to be a difficult one. After day one, we can so far report that

  • all international bands (including the expat-ish bands out of Shanghai Boys Climbing Ropes and the Fever Machine) have been banned from playing Nanjing’s Blossom Music Festival. Quoting from someone there
  • fun in Nanjing: k-holes, typhoons and censorship
  • From another source at the Pinggu Festival in Beijing, apparently the organizers were told late yesterday that no alcohol was allowed to be sold on site.

We’re sure there will be many more twists in the tale over the next couple of days, but initial signs aren’t very promising.

What’s going on? Suzhou Strawberry canceled…

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UPDATE: There has been an official update on Douban. Apparently,

because of the recent thunderstorms, the basic facilities (at the Wujiang site) have been badly damaged, and can’t be fixed in a short time. so the festival has to be postponed, the new dates to be announced

It seems like the Gods of Chinese Music are conspiring against us on the eve of another landmark May Holiday where music festivals are slated to take over the country

First, Midi Festival in Beijing is forced to leave its spiritual Haidian Park home

Second, a spate of closures and cancellations in Beijing.

Third, and most seriously, it seems like the inaugural Strawberry Festival in Wujiang near Suzhou has been cancelled. Details are sketchy at present. We have picked up the following though:

  • mlive has stopped selling presale tickets
  • all volunteers have been informed that training is cancelled
  • the site setup has been stopped
  • Zuoxiao Zuzhou was taken to the local police station straight from the airport yesterday. He is out now, but he mentioned on Weibo that the festival organizers should not use the microblog broadcast on big screens: too risky
  • some bands such as Sound Fragment have confirmed the cancellation

This is all really bad for our industry. Part of an increasing cyclical trend away from freed0m of expressi0n?

UPDATE 2: courtesy of @mightyboom (this is the most believable for us)

Suzhou Strawberry Fest has been cancelled due to an unexpected uproar at Zhouzhuang Folk fest last weekend.

Last weekend’s Zhouzhuang Folk Festival, someone sent a message containing “Aye Way Way (sic.)” to the public tweet channel, which has been shown on the big screen. Aye Way Way, the famous Chinese dis-a-dent artist, was ‘kidnapped’ by police at Beijing Airport early this April. The message was deleted immediately, however, it did not stop people from tweeting more. Shortly ahead of Zuo Xiao Zu Zhou, a famous underground folk musician, came up on stage, young folks started yelling “Aye Way Way”. The whole ‘accident’ wasn’t planned at all, but it was one of the greatest reactions within China regarding the authority detaining Aye Way Way.

Until now, Aye Way Way has been missing for almost a month.

“Modern Sky”, known as the most influential Chinese indie label, was the host of both Zhouzhuang & Strawberry Fests.

MIDI Festival

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Over at Beijing Daze, there is a small amount of doubt lingering over MIDI Festival 2011. Certainly we’ve heard a couple of reports that the sensitive spring that we are having might be putting spanners in the various MIDI works (and those of Strawberry too, truth be told). Of course, there were issues with nationalistic Japanese flag burning last October, something that the NY Times somewhat sensationally covered. We predicted this coverage might have repercussions, literally

Music Festivals in China are in no way a fait accompli – just because the government has been involved increasingly in the last couple of years, a single missive from the centre could put paid to festivals entirely. The first page of the article basically highlights every single anti authoritarian element of Midi in particular and seems to be excessively sensationalist. It strikes us that coverage like this might be a double edged sword for China’s festival industry.

In these Jazzy Mine times, perhaps the risks of backfire are just too great.

Fingers and toes crossed that the authorities don’t mess with the Beijing festivals again. Cancellations play havoc with the reputation of Chinese festivals both domestically and internationally.