Tag Archives: chengdu

Grammys in Chengdu

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Are you sad you missed out on Michael Bolton the last time he played in Shanghai? Too young to see Shawn Colvin at Lilith Fair? Here’s your chance to see nine Grammy winners in concert, at the Night of Fortune Grammy Superstars Concert in Chengdu. Supposedly the closing party for the 2013 Fortune Global Forum, the lineup includes Leo Sayer, Jody Watley, Shawn Colvin, Richard Marx, Yolanda Adams, Patti Austin, Diane Schuur, and Michael Bolton. We’re not exactly sure what these stars have in common with the confirmed conference attendees, which read like a Who’s Who of international and Chinese companies, SOEs, and media.

The Grammy winners will be joined by Chinese stars including pianist Lang Lang, Cantopop singers Nicholas Tse and Joey Yung, and PLA-approved songstresses Song Zuying and Tan Jing. Prices range in price from 186 RMB all the way to a staggering 7320 RMB for VVIP tickets which includes some quality hangout time with Michael Bolton, Yolanda Adams and Jody Watley.

The Global Forum takes place from June 6-8 in Chengdu. The closing party is June 8 at Chengdu Gymnasium. Damai has tickets … if you’re so inclined.

Chengdu Big Love – the aftermath

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A few months ago, we previewed Chengdu’s Big Love Music Festival. Originally scheduled for last summer and plagued with weather issues, Big Love 2011 was moved, postponed and though never officially cancelled, ultimately became Big Love 2012. This year, when we saw the poster and lineup announcement for the festival, we were understandably excited for the likes of Ash, Suede, Ellen Alien, Luo Dayou and even Extreme. From all reports up to and during the event, the festival seemed to go off without a hitch: the weather held, the crowds were enthusiastic, the bands well-received. And then. Well, we all know what happened then.

A frantic Weibo post on the morning of June 25 alerted festival staff, artists and attending media that all individuals associated with Big Love were being singled out and unable to leave the hotel. It was revealed soon enough that their rooms, ostensibly paid for by the organizers, had not been at all and no one was allowed to leave the premises until settling up. This was no Hanting-sized bill either – everyone was staying in 5-star hotels. In the end, it was revealed that the promoters of Big Love had lost RMB 50m on the festival overall. In the process, they had failed to pay RMB1.8m of hotel bills and stranded between 150-160 festival workers at the airport, having lied about paying their plane fares. Most galling (and frankly, shocking) were the faked SMS messages to staff members confirming their flights from Chengdu back to their home cities. One such fake SMS was rapidly posted on Sina Weibo and Douban, highlighting exactly how far the promoters were willing to extend the charade.

We understand that music festivals in China are still a hard business, with extremely high overhead costs and long-range payoffs. However, occurrences like Big Love are a black mark on all promoters working in China. The debacle will be held up as an example of how China isn’t ready to produce a festival on such a large scale. It’s pity because there are people working very hard here to produce international-caliber events. The spectre of Big Love will effect artists’ and production’s willingness to do business with any promoter, and thus the entire music festival industry in China itself.

For an excellent round-up and translation of all the microblog updates surrounding the tense aftermath of Big Love, we suggest starting with GoChengdoo’s exceptional coverage.

Preview: Big Love Music Festival

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It has almost been a year since the government-sponsored Big Love Music Festival was meant to happen. Located in Mianyang, Sichuan’s largest music festival originally planned to put on 4 days of music, densely packed with around 100 performers. Last year, the festival was postponed, moved (to Chengdu) and ultimately cancelled due to disastrous weather conditions; according to the event organizers, the festival venue was “not suitable for the safe set up of stages and organization of large-scale mass gatherings.”

But alas, the festival plans to showcase just as much music this year. The postponed festival will take place from June 21 to June 24, 2012 at Chengdu’s International Intangible Culture Heritage Exposition Park (whew!).  Although some artists have changed, the Big Love Music Festival lineup features many big-name headliners. Foreign headliners include British boy band BLUE and, held over from last year, the extremely corny 80s rock band Extreme. On the Chinese side, the festival has pulled out the big guns with appearances by Alan Tam, Luo Dayou and erstwhile reclusives Pu Shu.

Last year, we said on this blog that John Tejada and John Mills were going to perform at the electronic stage at Big Love. Unfortunately, they aren’t making it this year, BUT not to worry, as the festival found some great electro replacements. German minimalist electronic producer Ellen Allien and popular trance duo Cosmic will be at the festival to drop some sick beats.

Not into electronic music? The rock will also be graced by Chinese festival favorites New Pants, Xie Tianxiao, Wang Feng and Cui Jian. There will be a beer garden, artistic exhibitions, car shows and a camping site for those die-hard festivalgoers.

Go Chengdoo has more info about the revamped festival here.

Official video here

Zebra Festival, in review

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2011 Zebra Music Festival

Edison Chen made his come-back headlining this year’s pop-heavy Zebra line-up.

Words and pictures Hugh Bohane.

This year’s Zebra Music Festival in Chengdu over the May holiday saw Edison Chen return to the China entertainment industry after a three-year hiatus (for those of you not familiar with the why, check this extensive wiki article on indecency). Rumours abounded during the promotional campaign (which was much later than in previous years), that Edison’s face had been deliberately left off many Chengdu posters in the lead up to the event, for fear of upsetting the ZMF’s family-orientated mission statement.

The ZMF is one of the the biggest in-land festivals in the country, with more or less a 90% local audience and is certainly one to keep an eye on for future, anthropological- reference. Now in its third year, there were a few changes to the festival. Held in co-operation with the local Chengdu municipal government, the 2011 edition chose to feature more Mandopop than in previous years. There were still exceptions: some alternative national and international rock, electro, nu-metal, hip-hop, reggae and ska bands. Apart from the pop-centric line up, many punters felt disappointed by the absence of the crowd-pleasing Xiong Mao/ Panda Club, which in previous years pumped out a steady feast of electronica until the wee smalls hours. Instead, there were only a handful of DJ’s, playing on stage 2 at selective times over the three days, usually having to shut down before 11 pm.

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Festival Action

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There was a time that this humble blog was one of the only places to access English language information about festivals in China. No more!

There is some great and in depth information on the Beijing festivals over at Beijing Gig Guide (Midi | Strawberry) and one of the most comprehensive lineup analyses of any Chinese festival over at GoChengdoo covering the Zebra Festival.

Midi Festival, Beijing

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Can’t let it go….

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We are on holiday. It is lovely. However, there are a couple of things to do. First, to round up all the various bits and pieces around the web on Chinese music, the second, to write an editorial about why we think the Beijing music scene is suffering. The editorial will come next week, but in the meantime, here’s some reading for the October national holiday.

  1. Shanghai Bands getting their dues: Dan Shapiro, columnist and band member extraordinaire, is potentially departing Middle Kingdom shores fairly soon. In a long and detailed article, he highlights the profusion of Shanghai based bands that, long ignored, are starting to populate October holiday festival week. It’s a measure of the increasing strength of Shanghai’s music scene that there are so many bands making so many journeys to play big stages around the country.
  2. China Festivals run wild: a pretty basic article at the pretty basic Global Times (Chinese English language mouthpiece anyone?). Not much to see here
  3. Zebra Festivals: the Global Times (again) run a quickie on the launching of Zebra Festival in Hangzhou. Forbes also runs a profile with Zebra founder Scarlett Li, talking about her experiences with the festival and her plans for the future. Zebra does seem to have their house in order, but we cannot stomach this oft repeated (and perpetuated by the festival itself) attendance figure of 150,000 year one and 200,000 year two. We were at Zebra #1 and would estimate the numbers at 10,000 max per day. Once again, inflating the numbers does nothing for any of the festivals with regard to sponsors or attendees. Glastonbury festival has a capacity of 177,000 people and is by far and away the biggest music festival in the world. How Zebra can claim to be larger is beyond us.
  4. Beijing Today with a well researched and realistic article, Music Festivals and the Illusion of Success. We like this article of course, number one because it quotes us, and number two because they agree with our prognostications.

Happy holidays everyone. We will have some festival reviews upcoming. Until then…

An interview with Zebra Media’s Scarlett Li

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Go Chengdoo have put together an extensive and insightful interview of the founder and head honcho of Chengdu’s Zebra Festival HERE (we reviewed the festival in 2009 HERE and in 2010 HERE).

The interview meanders through the history of the festival, Ms. Li’s inspiration and continued plans for Zebra, the reality behind her claims that Zebra is already the largest festival in the world (200,000 people for 2010, putting it some 50% ahead of Glastonbury, which is currently the world’s biggest), and the future of music festivals generally in China. It’s a great view into the mind of the woman that has put together the most ambitious and successful music festival in China to date…

Zebra Festival 2010

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A couple of weeks ago, we reviewed Beijing’s Strawberry Festival. Helen Feng of Pet Conspiracy reviewed the three main May holiday festivals and had very good things to say about Zebra. We will be posting a review in the next few days, but to whet appetites, check out this video that Mogo put together.

A video of the 2010 Zebra Music Festival, put together by Mogo

More May Festivals – from the Pet Conspiracy posse

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Helen Feng from Pet Conspiracy and Free the Birds fame updated her Facebook with reviews of the 3 festivals that they played over May holiday. She kindly allowed us to use it here. Enjoy!  By the way, she hurt herself jumping off the 2m high stage at Strawberry, so send her fuzzy best wishes…

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