Tag Archives: cancelled

Dreamer Festival Tianjin and Wuhan Both Canceled, Shanghai “Postponed”

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UPDATE 9/20/2012: Surprising no one, the Dreamer Festival dates in Shanghai have been “postponed” to April of 2013 due to the promoter not receiving the correct permits (yet promoting the festival and selling tickets…) and the current political climate. Instead, the festival will be held next year. Here is the latest announcement (Chinese only).

UPDATE 9/17/2012: As of Friday afternoon, the Wuhan Dreamer Festival has been cancelled as well due to the fact that none of the foreign artists are able to perform. Link to the Douban note with the official notification from the organisers, here.

Well, color us shocked (and dripping in sarcasm, FYI). From their official microblog (Sina Weibo) yesterday afternoon comes the news that the Dreamer Festival in Tianjin has been canceled, less than a month out from it’s original October holiday date.

To recap, Sounds Great! promoters (声演坊) and Pocket Music announced earlier this year that they were putting on three simultaneous music festivals in Shanghai, Wuhan and Beijing during the October holiday period, 2012. Over 20 foreign headliners were announced, including World’s End Girlfriend, Jay-Jay Johansen, Pelle Carlberg, Agnes Kain and more. We were always dubious that ANYONE could pull off three multi-day festivals simultaneously, and Sounds Great/Pocket have not had a good track record in the past of following through on announced events.

According to the organisers, the Shanghai and Wuhan festivals will go on as scheduled, and the cancellation of the Tianjin event was attributed to the upcoming transition in nearby  Beijing. If you’re keeping count at home, this means that there are official no outdoor festivals north of the Yangtze this October. So, uh, enjoy the beautiful weather we’ll inevitably have in the northern capital?

Dream Theatre China tour cancelled

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Hard Rock band Dream Theatre were meant to be performing in China at the beginning of May. On Monday, they issued a statement on their website and their Facebook telling fans that reluctantly, they must cancel their Chinese tour. According to the band, their promoters Xoundforce and Guitar China were unable to secure the necessary working visas in time for the shows.

Dream Theater were due to play Century Theatre in Beijing.

One bites the dust – Suzhou Holisland Festival goes down

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If you’ve been reading this site for 12 months or so, you might remember the mysterious case of the Suzhou Holisland Festival. Rumours abounded, but in the end Sinead O’Connor came, Simple Plan came, and most Suzhou taxi drivers couldn’t find the enigmatic Holisland. About 3,000 people attended what was apparently a pretty well produced festival.

Anyway, we’ve just seen on their website that the 2011 edition has been cancelled. The news flash was pretty short. Apparently

In light of the decision rendered by the Xiangcheng District of Suzhou, the 2011 annual Holisland Rock Festival has been suspended.

We have been wondering how long it was going to be before government and real estate investors get bored of losing money. This is likely the first of many.

Holisland Suzhou Festival cancelled

Mr. Big won’t be playing Shanghai

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After all the drama and craziness of the last 10 days, we’ve just been informed that the headliner for Midi Shanghai won’t in fact be participating. It seems that Mr. Big neglected to get a multi entry visa, and having left China after the Beijing show (we assume to play some other Asian locations) they won’t be able to get back into the country. If you were hoping to “get close to them” tomorrow night in Century Park, it might not happen exactly that way.

Still, you should go along and support Nanjing’s Angry Jerks and Shanghai’s own Top Floor Circus. We’ll be down there on Saturday for a bit of Yaksa and Miserable Faith. Rain rain stay away…

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.

The Ministry comes out fighting

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Soooo, there seems to be a bit of a brouhaha over the Bob Dylan shows. We’ve commented quite a lot on this and now mainstream global media are getting their knickers in a twist about the whole thing. Did the Ministry of Culture deny approval for the shows; did the promoter do a shifty?

  • Initial report (January 2010) HERE
  • January update HERE
  • March controversy HERE
  • Attempted synopsis HERE

So now, AP and the Wall Street Journal are all over it.  Shades of Bjork all over again (we really hope NOT). According to both, they have written confirmation from the Ministry of Culture confirming that the shows were never applied for.  You can read the WSJ take HERE.

We’ve made our position fairly clear.  These shows were fated from the start, given the amount of money rumored vs. the actual situation for big artists in China.  Applications were likely never made because the shows were never sold into local promoters.  It’s a mess and Broker Brothers have caused more problems for themselves by blaming Chinese censors.

An alternative view of a foreign media bashing the Chinese government from China Geeks HERE.

Classic get out clause – Bob Dylan cancelled – blame the government…

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The poor Chinese Ministry of Culture. They get it in the neck every time a promoter doesn’t pay up or can’t sell any tickets. The latest in the Bob Dylan saga featured in the Guardian yesterday, in which the spokesman for the Taiwanese promoter/ agency Broker Brother’s Herald (BBH) claim that the Ministry of Culture deemed the artist too controversial.  You can read the Guardian article HERE.

We don’t have any inside information, but this claim doesn’t sit very well with the 3 month running saga that we’ve followed quite closely. When we first announced that Dylan was meant to be touring (HERE), we noted that BBH had promised a massive guarantee for the entire 5 date run.  Our initial sources put that figure at close to US$2m.  At the same time, there were questions raised about BBH’s cash flow.  They had guaranteed this astronomical amount in order to flip the shows to individual promoters for a vastly inflated fee (HERE).  At the same time, it was rumored that the local promoters weren’t biting, particularly in China.

And so, predictably enough, we receive word that BBH have put the blame squarely at the feet of the Ministry of Culture. A great excuse to get out of the guarantee, but another blow to the credibility of the Chinese touring market, and let’s face it, likely a big nail in any ambitions of mainland touring BBH had…

Show of Peace “postponed”

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Well, hot damn.  We’ve been a little bit cynical about the Show of Peace since we heard about it.  You can indulge in our cynicism HERE and HERE.  We were torn all the way through (no, really – we ARE into good causes and have no problems with organizers using music to draw attention to/ raise money for them).  On the other hand, we were never convinced with Show of Peace’s intentions/ causes, but enough said.  No more knife twisting.

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Taiwanese fun and games

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In two completely unrelated bits of news, China’s relationship with Taiwan gets put under a musical spotlight.

First, a Taiwanese promoter refuses to participate in an artist tour previously agreed to, unless the name of the tour changed.  Artist X is playing 6 dates on the mainland, and 1 in Taipei.  The tour was called “Artist X China Tour 2010″.  It is now called “Artist X 2010 tour”.  Right.

Second, the two shows in Shanghai’s Mao Livehouse for the Taiwanese band 1976 have been canned by the Shanghai Cultural Bureau due to “not meeting some unspecified rules”.

This seems to be ongoing.  We reported on the cancellation of Tizzy Bac’s China appearances last summer HERE and HERE.