Today’s episode of New Sounds of China is a special “Earthquake Edition” which is dedicated to the largely overlooked but nevertheless substantial fundraising effort by Chinese rock bands, organising concerts in Beijing Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other major cities around the country, bringing in major names on the China rock scene.
Presented by Paul Kendall and Wang Weilin, the programme featurs interviews with Niu Lei from Indiechina.com, Zhang Chu from Tree Music, He Yong, Kiki (from Milk@Coffee), Ding Taisheng, and three different benefit concert organisers, as well as music from Wan Xiaoli, Su Yang, Milk@Coffee, Cui Jian, Confucius Says, and Zhang Chu.
Today’s broadcast will be on Friday from 8-9pm on 104.4FM courtesy of Resonance FM and can be listened to live online from this link. Also please don’t forget to write in to the comments section with erm, your comments!
Really enjoying the shows, relieved to find there is something lurking behind mandropop and cantopop. Also a bit of Mandarin listening practice.
Carsick cars my favorite so far.
I have a question though, Western sounding isn’t a problem so long as some of it is original (which it is, I hope that makes sense). However do you think that there is a distinctive sound lurking in China somewhere that will influence world music in the same way Bhangra did?
Thanks for listening to the show, Chris. In return, I’ll try to answer your question, although it is a difficult one, so I fear I might ramble.
Since China has such a great diversity of traditional and folk music, there’s every chance that a contemporary and distinctive genre will eventually evolve from these foundations, as did Bhangra from Punjab culture. However, this certainly hasn’t happened yet. Although there have been cases of musicians mixing Chinese traditional and Western contemporary (e.g. Second Hand Rose fusing Errenzhuan and glam rock, or Wang Lei adding Sichuan opera samples to his electronic arsenal), these have been individual and isolated efforts, rather than parts of a cohesive new hybrid genre. Additionally, I don’t see a Chinese Bhangra emerging any time soon, since younger musicians increasingly seem to regard themselves as global citizens, and therefore don’t feel the need to incorporate Chinese elements into their music.