The Radar has been dominated recently by China’s fledgling festival market. To be fair to us, the October holiday week (which we are just about to enter and which happens every year in the first week of the month) is the key time for festivals. Clement weather, allied to the nationwide holiday make October (and the similarly congenial May break) festival-mania-time.
Until this moment, we have focused pretty exclusively on the offerings of China’s main two cities. Here, we throw some light on some of the others.
We’re going to have seven music festivals during the National Holiday in six cities. The second running of Beijing’s Modern Sky Festival will be well attended. Modern Sky’s 10 year tenure as China’s only viable indie label affords it a certain amount of celebrity. The others seem all to have their own individual slant and the question on our lips is: Is this situation the start of something bigger, or are we already seeing overcapacity for a largely ignorant public?
