It was difficult hearing him say anything over the bass while sitting in the third deck of Wukesong (MasterCard Center, if you insist), but I've never seen so many Chinese people standing at a concert before -- and ushers letting them do it. Akon had the crowd hot, which is a tribute to his showmanship, I suppose, but a real sign of what Chinese club music is all about: American club music that's upbeat and safe, about beautiful girls, basically.
The Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Eivind Aadland, performed three really solid pieces last night at the Century Theater near Liangmaqiao. (You can read my interview with Aadland on the Beijinger here.) When it was all done, the audience gave the TSO a stirring ovation, so Aadland came back and had the orchestra play an encore of the famous Chinese folk song Mo Li Hua, which got the crowd to clap again.
They came out for a second encore, a song that I didn't recognize. All told, a great night.
Last night my friends' band, Autobots, Deploy! (or have they dropped the exclamation mark?), played a show at Jiangjinjiu Bar next to the Drum and Bell Tower. Clip below.
And here they are at:
Tun (open mic... band's debut of Squarepusher's "Iambic 9 Poetry")
Bob Dylan's Asian tour, planned for later this month, has been called off after Chinese officials refused him permission to play in Beijing and Shanghai.
The Chinese seem to be worried that he might say or sing something politically sensitive, as Björk did in 2008.
As if Dylan would. Don't the Chinese know that these days the 68-year-old former protest singer is a respectable golfer who released a Christmas album last year and has even allowed Blowin' in the Wind to be used as the soundtrack of a TV commercial?
But maybe the Chinese ban will do him some good. Could it help to restore his credibility as the prophet from Desolation Row?
As Wang Ge of the Beijinger reportedback on February 25:
Sun Mengjin, one of China’s most well-known music critics, published such statement in his blog post titled Greed Destroys Dylan's Shows in China: “There’re people working their ass off to pull off a show and not making any money, and there are also scalpers who only care about making money from music; Business is business, but there’s a bottom line. Dylan’s agent asked for USD 250,000 per show in mainland China, and some Taiwanese promoter sold it to a mainland company for USD 400,000 – I mean, how money-driven can you be? Don’t they know about the international standard of maximum 15% for agent fees? 400,000 dollars for the 8,000 seated Shanghai Grand Stage, it’s impossible to make the money back by selling tickets. Those people are whistling ‘blowing in the wind’ while their black hearted money are also blowing with the shit out of their ass. FYI, there will be a day when Dylan is too old to sing.”
Um, yeah. So Guardian, maybe you should think about adding tbj to your RSS. Or at least doing a bit more research next time.
This one was fun to write. Excerpt from the Beijinger's blog:
The signature movement, without question, is the opening, O Fortuna. If the name means nothing to you, the tune surely does. Give it a listen and see what image it conjures. Personally, I think about the promo for Wrestlemania XIV’s match pitting the Undertaker, with his black full-length trench coat, black Stetson hat and general bad-assitude, against his brother Kane.
If your point of reference is different, that’s understandable. Since first being performed by the Frankfurt Opera in 1937, this two-and-a-half-minute piece has enjoyed remarkable crossover appeal, appearing in everything from video games and movie previews to advertisements and So You Think You Can Dance; it has been spoofed, synthesized and remixed by hip-hop producers, deejays, comedians, classical musicians, et al. It is quite possibly the most recognizable classical piece of the 20th century.
Yet after all that, the best version is still probably the original, which is capable of exposing the hopeless imitators. In Hate Me Now, rapper Nas, with O Fortuna as his beat line, bewails of the mercurialness of fate: “It’s a thin line between paper and hate, friends and snakes, nine millis and thirty-eights, Hell or the pearly gates.” Not to say I don’t appreciate Nas’ obvious skills as a wordsmith, but rhyming seems like a ditty compared to the rage and choler of the speaker in the original:
Fate – monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, you are malevolent, well-being is vain and always fades to nothing, shadowed and veiled you plague me too; now through the game I bring my bare back to your villainy.
If we put a microphone into the bottom half of our vocal cords, in that space before the larynx alters the transit of air into highly evolved sounds recognizable as language, what would we hear?
Literally speaking, not a whole lot besides air; but if this were a riddle, the answer you want may just be an unusual and wonderful wind instrument called the chiba, a stout bamboo flute from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) that descended from the ancient xiao.
The 60 or so people who attended Dandeli Art Space’s “Blooming Youth and Ancient Melody” on Saturday were treated to a free performance of the chiba, along with the guqin, a seven-string plucked silk instrument dating back some 3,000 years. Lots has been written before about the latter, and a simple search on either YouTube or YouKu will yield dozens of results. The chiba, however, is a relative unknown.
A young musician who goes by Xing Zhe explained to us that every chiba goes through an exacting selection process. First a specific type of bamboo must be found that can be cut to the appropriate length (usually an eighth of a foot, which translates literally into the name of the instrument). It is then hollowed out and placed in a damp and dark environment for a year, not unlike the fermenting process for fine alcohol. A master will then cut a mouthpiece and play it, sans finger holes, for as long as he deems it takes for the right sound to emerge. Only then will holes be cut, four along the top and one on the bottom, and declared ready for use.
A low-shelf chiba runs for about 4,000 yuan, while high quality ones can go for 10,000 yuan – though who can really put a price on antiques? – which partially explains why there are probably no more than 50 chiba masters in China. The other reason is because the chiba virtually disappeared from this country for 700 years sometime during the Song Dynasty. It continued its evolution as the shakuhachi in Japan, imported there by a Buddhist monk in the 8th century.
Sitting in the same room as a chiba performance is like you’ve ascended 4,000 meters into a holy mountain and plopped yourself next to a meditating arhat. The instrument is capable of eerie, magical noises that are evanescent and transitory yet firmly grounded in our world. The sound is reedy, raspy and muted, about as natural as a spring, like a melodized sigh or exhale. Occasionally you will even hear a squeak or, quite literally, the sound of breath, quite unlike the pachydermal blare of Western-style trumpets and horns – which is to say, not metallic and cold but alive, arising from our lungs.
Because there are only four holes on the chiba, the tiniest finger movement makes a difference; likewise, the simplicity of the design makes it so that the slightest change in breath – in strength, volume or breathing angle – will affect the sound. There is much room for interpretation, and the result can be as artistic as the creator wishes, as hollow as a ditty or infused with melancholy as a pastoral. An old tradition in Japan held that a man and woman would play shakuhachi melodies in a field, at a remove from one another. If the tunes didn’t match, the two could not meet – a harsh penalty, indeed, though somehow appropriate because the instrument is, after all, an extension of the soul.
Upon failure the passionate shepherd, we can only surmise, would fall to writing poetry.
Here is a video of Xing Zhe playing the chiba on Saturday:
AND OKAY, JUST A FEW MORE PARAGRAPHS ON THE GUQIN: In any given performance, the seasoned guqin player’s hand will undergo an amazingly complicated series of maneuvers to elicit the desired sounds, a feat that you really get to appreciate when you see it up close. The fingers on the right hand alone have to perform eight designated movements, such as the pluck, flick, vibrato, strum and slide (those may not be the technical terms). Musicians don’t play the guqin so much as coax it, sometimes taking incredible pains to massage a certain effect out of the vibrating strings.
What you get are sounds that are never stagnant: notes always carry with it the sidewinding tail of a mellifluous twang or nictitating echo, with shadows of melodies lingering an extra second after each rest stop.
I should also note that Saturday’s guqin performers, a young couple who were not music majors, asked I not use their names because, in the guy’s words, “we haven’t achieved the level of competence to be considered musicians.” That’s humility for you.
What Bar, located just northwest of Tiananmen and whose name has induced more than a few Abbott and Costello acts, doesn't get lots of press, so like many small bars trying to lure in an extra customer or two, it turns to live music. A couple weeks ago, another one of my friends' bands, Autobots, Deploy!, played at What Bar to a crowd of friends.
What made the night really cool, however, were the punk acts that went on before and after Autobots (most definitely not a punk band). The music was loud, furious and expressive, something you don't often get in China. Video below.
Since its first performance on February 27, when the band was known by a different name (several different names, actually), The Redbucks have slowly made their up in the Beijing music scene, playing at spots like Ginkgo's on Andingmen, Jiangjinjiu near the Drum and Bell, 2 Kolegas near Chaoyang Park, MAO Livehouse just north of Nanluoguxiang and, in the video below, Paddy O'Shea's, an Irish bar on Dongzhimen Outer St., on September 25. (There was also a show at a racetrack in South Beijing, organized by a Hanggai contact that's somehow connected to -- and here it gets a bit fuzzy -- the new U.S. ambassador to China's daughter, who apparently is a Redbucks fan. The band members are hoping they might play in front of President Obama when he finally visits.)
If you haven't heard them yet, take it from me: it's a good time whenever they take the stage.
Here's their official bio:
Hailing from America’s East, West, North and South, the Redbucks are Beijing's most notorious and rowdy group of American Bluegrass musicians. Whether these ruckus-raising ramblers are singing about love and lust or moonshine and misdemeanor, there will always be something to dance, drink or sing to – and often all the above.
Later this year: gig with bango legend Bela Fleck? Stay tuned...
Approaching her 38th birthday, Midori is no longer the precocious child who performed with the New York Philharmonic at age 11, in front of President Ronald Reagan at 12, made her first recording (of Bach and Vivaldi) at 14 and delivered a 100-minute recital at Carnegie Hall four days before her 19th birthday. There is a difference between watching a child, however professional, navigate the minefield of a terribly difficult composition and a mature musician do the same; more is expected of the latter, and yet less seems at stake. The failures of adults are so much less keenly felt.
But make no mistake: even if Midori has ceded some of her spotlight to younger musicians, she has not lost the ability to keep audiences rapt when the lights are on her. On Friday, she expertly navigated Sibelius's roiling arpeggios, glissandi and multiple octave double stops on her way to a flawless rendition...
Funny story about the eight-word quote, "I'm going to play Kreisler, Recitativo and Scherzo": I brought a digital recorder and taped Midori's playing for the sole purpose of catching her words on the off-chance she said anything, but when the critical moment came, I was so far away -- and the tape recorder was on the ground -- that the sound quality was quite bad. At home, I could barely make out what she said. I literally spent an hour Googling terms like "mezzantino" and "mestizo," "wager" and "chrysler" and "krizer," "mezzetta music term" and "mezzan tival" and "classical music ragner scherzo" ("scherzo" was the easiest to get). You musicians, feel free to make fun of me here. I was ready to give up on two occasions. And then, at the one-hour mark, I typed -- quotation marks included --
"and scherz
At the exact moment I imputed the Z of scherzo, Google's auto-search suggested "kreisler recitativo and scherzo." And sure enough... bingo.
For those keeping track at home, Microsoft Bing: 0; Google: a lot
You're not officially part of the hip Beijing scene until you've seen Hanggai, a band rooted in Beijing but inspired by the sounds of Mongolia. I know scant few who've not seen a Hanggai show and fewer still who've never heard of them. Indeed, this quartet makes just about everyone's short list for best band in the city.
Friday night, the foursome played its last show before embarking on a U.S. tour. If you're in the States, take my advice: go see these guys. They will put on a show unlike any other, with sounds both pure and primal, folksy and modern. "Drinking Song" will get you to raise a pint of something the first time you hear it, then get you to climb atop a table the next time (see video, below). And don't get me started on "throat singing" -- chords originate from a pit of somewhere that doesn't seem organic, and the room you occupy will seem to grow less stable amid an eerie, hallowed reverb.
Below are seven videos from their performance in front of a jam-packed crowd at Tiny Salt Coffee Club in the China Business District. Would you believe that the cover was just 40 kuai, or about six bucks?
Drinking Song, the band's biggest hit... they played it at the end of their first and second sets.
Last night at Ginkgo Bar, Mbeewan (Moussa Boudra) (bar website: "a multi-instrumentalist and composer-songwriter for more than 10 years, is the lead singer of iRieTEAM, a French Nu-Roots Reggae band created 5 years ago, and whose first album will be released in 2009") played his last gig in Beijing, a fun and energetic show that lasted well into the night. A packed crowd danced and sang along, even Americans who may or may not have understood a word of Mbeewan's French.
Regretfully, I have neither photos or videos to share, but here's Mbeewan from an earlier performance (not in China, don't think).
And Ginkgo, which hosted this American bluegrass band last month, is quickly becoming a go-to place for music and dance. It's located at Andingmen and is one of the only bars in the area, so it actually feels "tucked away," even though it's hard for any foreign bar (French, in this case) to truly blend into any local neighborhood.
I'm not the biggest fan of Tun Bar, nestled deep in an alley off Sanlitun South St. -- the servers are a bit pushy, lingering next to your side to get you to buy buy buy, and the sound quality ranges from bad to unbearable -- but my musician friends seem to like playing there, so occasionally I go. Kevin Reitz and Jeff Orcutt, two guys who have their own labels on this blog, were there this past Tuesday (open mic night) and did a sweet rendition of Squarepusher's Iambic 9 Poetry. Here they are:
I've written about this before, but tonight I passed by Deshengmen on my way to pickup Frisbee and was transfixed all over again by the dancers under the Gate of Virtuous Triumph.
In olden days, Deshengmen -- which now looks like a castle from the original Mario Brothers for NES -- was an entrance point for victorious troops returning from battle. Now it overlooks a small square where elder dancers engage in yannge (秧歌), "rice-sprout songs" accompanied by thunderous drums, gong and horns. These are the songs of pastoral Shaanxi, where yangge originated.
When I arrived, the band was just warming up, with two guys affixing stilts to their feet. One man -- I'd put him at 50 years of age -- was particularly colorful in his movements, flicking his wrists this way and that while jerking his hips and bobbing his head. A young girl of about 5 or 6 rooted her legs to the pavement and shook her upper body in a delightful and cute little sway. I can only guess -- poorly -- what sort of dances will be the craze when she reaches adolescence, but I can say that for our time, what she was doing would qualify in most clubs ("discos," as the locals say) as more than passable.
More than anything, as I stood next to onlookers who bore no expression (weirdly), I wondered why most of the other dancers were so stoic. Their steps around the square -- they moved in a rectangular pattern, snaking back and forth like those aliens in the old Atari game Invaders -- were perfunctory and their countenance inscrutable. Meanwhile, I could hardly suppress my desire to jump into the crowd (something I'd never do in actuality, mind you) and exclaim my joy and gratitude for this scene. The music, which you can hear in the below video, was infused with vim and vigor, rhythm and something very much approximating soul.
Soul of the country. Perhaps that's why the people were so somber. It has been said that my parents' generation is China's Lost Generation, folks who suffered unspeakable injustices during the Cultural Revolution and were told, via state dictum, that their experiences never happened, or that they're moot and irrelevant, subordinate to the aspirations, whims and fancies of China's future generations. The future. What is it, exactly, without a past? On whose shoulders are the people of today -- my generation -- and tomorrow -- that little girl dancing without a care in the world -- supposed to stand on? Whose can they stand on?
There was -- the more I stood there and reflected, the more I understood -- sadness on the dancers' faces, or regret. Was this their catharsis, then? Do they come every Tuesday to this spot to cleanse themselves, in their own private ways amid a collective, of their sins? Can those who suffered and those who inflicted suffering find common ground in dance?
I'm probably taking this conceit too far. For all I know, these were people who needed some exercise and found it sad that summer is giving way to autumn and, eventually, to another cold, bleak winter devoid of music and dance. Or perhaps -- you'll allow me this, I hope -- there is an inner music within all of them, guiding their steps towards a future reunion with their wandering, astray but not lost -- not lost! -- souls.
In Beijing, you haven't made it until you've played at Mao's Live. The band we introduced you to earlier this month, Lan Daotian (蓝稻田, Blue Rice Paddies), played a gig there Wednesday night:
Drummer Kevin Reitz gets some love from his Ultimate Frisbee teammates:
Last Saturday the American bluegrass band formerly called too many names to list (but now going by The Redbucks... Facebook page here) played at Ginkgo Bar at Andingmen, close to Houhai. Here are two more pictures from their performance.
This correspondent was a bit disoriented by the night's preceding events and was therefore unable to record a video or, now that he thinks about it, hear any of the music, which was weird considering he was standing right there, but judging by third-party accounts, everyone had a great time and left with the sort of warm, glowing sensations that come to those who mix good people with good spirits and a brew or two. After the bluegrass part of the set concluded at about 1 a.m., the band played Reggae for another hour or so to everyone's delight.
I'm always happy to discover good live music in Beijing, such as Pet Conspiracy and Hao Yunyu, but it's so much easier to "discover" bands when you have a friend in them.
Presenting... Lan Daotian (蓝稻田, Blue Rice Paddies) and drummer Kevin Reitz, who played Saturday night at Hot Cat Club, which is tucked away in a hutong between Beixingqiao and Lama Temple. The location is near Dongzhimen, one of Beijing's many symbols of its sprawling, concrete-based modernity. Hot Cat Club, alas, is a throwback, a place with portraits of Thom Yorke on its walls and squat toilets in the alley. (Only one of those things is good.)
Without further ado...
This is Kevin (as is this, but he probably hopes you don't click on that), and this was him last year playing at Nashville Bar during the Paralympics Opening Ceremony.
POSTSCRIPT: Never a bad time to give a shout-out to friends' bands, such as this bluegrass quartet now called The Redbucks.
At the first night of the Beijing Bookworm International Literary Festival:
The instrument Gremo is playing is called the celia and is apparently the only of its kind in existence in the world. I believe it.
Xi Chuan had his Chinese poems translated into English, which he read with slight difficulty. He paused during one poem to ask Bruce how to pronounce "infinitum," which he pronounced as "in-finy-i-tum." He also had a weird way of pronouncing "mosquito" as "moss-guy-to," but we understood. The mispronunciations actually enhanced the overall esthetic effect, I thought. They were going after a certain mood characterized by unfamiliarity and otherworldliness, and I think it was better that the poet read in an alien tongue (Xi did read one poem in Chinese, however, and that was an enjoyable experience).
I'd like to point out that Xi Chuan's poems were quite dark -- literally, from bats in the night to a poem called "The Darkroom" to lying down at dusk and monsters in the dark -- and that I, despite my illness, was entranced. Will have to buy his books when they come out in English.
Don't let anyone tell you the music scene's lacking in Beijing. You just have to know where to find the good shows.
On Thursday night, my friends of Dumpy Loves and the Boiled Peanuts (also known as "Swamp Mamma Johnson and the La Dudes" and "Yellow River and the Supplies" -- they're indecisive about the name) played a couple sets at Tun Bar, nestled deep in the (dark, dark) heart of Sanlitun South Street. They went through an impressive repertoire of classic folk songs (Long Black Veil, Plastic Jesus, etc.) while resisting the temptation to perform "Man of Constant Sorrow."
Not sure when they'll take the stage again -- possibly not for a while as Luke, one of the vocalists (the other is Christine, a.k.a. Daisy), lives in Kunming -- but you can catch my other friends playing every Tuesday at Tun's Open Mic night, where Dumpy Loves was discovered (the manager agreed to pay for Luke's air fare to play Thursday; the band had been rehearsing over Skype). Next step: original songs. Not sure when that'll happen, but I'll keep you posted.
