This week our Shanghai correspondent delves into the music scene and its most notable subcultures, by interviewing four prominent faces from each scene. Here is Part One of Shanghai’s Subculture Scene….
The beginning of October is a great time for those in China with its seven-day national holiday. This year for rock music lovers in Shanghai it also signalled the arrival of one of China’s biggest music events: Midi Festival. Over 150 artist groups performed on nine stages at this three-day open air festival, including the big names: AK-47, Carsick Cars, Top Floor Circus, Queen Sea Big Shark, King Muma & Third Party, Brain Failure, Cold Fairyland, Miserable Faith, Omnipotent Youth Society – in the Chinese rock scene, with my minimal knowledge, I had to agree at least those were the more creatively named!
Intent on correcting this ignorance I joined in with the rock fans and approached one of the festival organisers Yang Yu, who explained how the event was meant to create a real playground for young Chinese musicians and bands. “The festival started out from our Beijing Midi School of Music as the annual exam showcase for our school bands, but more bands came to participate just to have gig opportunities. With them, rock kids came by the thousands.” When it grew too big for the school grounds it was moved to a public park in 2004. From then on Midi Festival has become an annual open-air rock festival, expanding to different locations in China.
He continued by describing the event as a place where their youth culture can be freely expressed in any way they like – as long as nobody gets uncomfortable with it.
“For now the West still might see Chinese bands as exotic but the more Chinese artists go West and represent this brand the less exotic it gets. Now being a Chinese band alone can be a selling point since not too many have performed there yet, with time we need to do better than just be ourselves. In terms of market demand, now what does the West expect or see in Chinese music? The image of a country’s culture goes hand in hand with its general image as a country.”
Taking this as an excuse to find out more about these subcultures, I met with some of the well-respected local faces to talk about their individual experiences and the music scenes they’re part of: ChaCha a female artist, known for her reggae, China’s champion DMC DJ Cavia, Chachy the American guitarist of punk-rock band Round Eye and Duck Fight Goose – the futuristic rock collective.
CHACHA
Who: ‘My name is ChaCha, a multiple personality musician from China.’
Age: 32
From: Shanghai
Main influences: blues, soul, funk, trip-hop
First record: Some Hong Kong pop record, I can’t even remember the name now.
Music hero: DJ Krush
Most memorable musical experience: Red Bull Music Academy 2011 in Madrid, Spain
Current focus: My first reggae album.
YOU’VE JUST RETURNED FROM PLAYING AT THIS SUMMER’S FESTIVALS, WHICH WAS THE MOST INTERESTING?
At a two-day festival in Chengdu city, Sichuan province, the venue was an old violin factory – now art space, with three stages, lots of local musicians, a second-hand market, hand-made motorbike show, fire-ball dance show, screen-printing workshops, live art, live tattoos. The festival was run by local top bars and live houses and Clubs owners, with no commercial support, no security guys, it was very impressive.
CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR CHACHA PROJECT?
ChaCha is my main and first music identity as a singer, since I was 15 when I started my first rock band. In the past years I’ve worked with a lot of great local producers and musicians on some very different genres of music, I’ve had a lot of fun and learnt from each collaboration.
AND YOU LIKE TO COLLABORATE WITH INTERNATIONAL PRODUCERS…
AM444 is a project with Amsterdam producer Jay.Soul, started in 2011. We’ve released an 8 track EP and a 14 track album, this is the first time I’ve worked on that many songs with one producer, and its brought about a very unique style – his funk soul hip-hop background mixed with my dreamy moody trippy Chinese vocals.
YOU DEVISE MORE CONCEPTUAL, EXPERIMENTAL TRACKS UNDER YOUR FADED GHOST PSEUDONYM, WHAT MADE YOU START MAKING MUSIC IN THIS WAY?
Faded Ghost is my solo project as producer and DJ, I started after returning from RBMA in Madrid. Before I made music in my bedroom studio by myself, but at the academy I hung out with 28 other great musicians and saw more possibilities of making music. I just want to adventure, sampling, looping and manipulating my own vocals, together with field recordings and synthesizers, vocals are not the main part of a track any more. And I start to work with other multimedia artists for some exhibitions and film sound tracks.
WHAT WAS THE REGGAE SCENE LIKE IN SHANGHAI AND CHINA WHEN YOU WERE FIRST INTRODUCED TO IT?
I’m a member of a reggae group in Shanghai called Uprooted Sunshine, their first reggae party was in 2005, but I joined two years later. It started with only 2 DJs and few people on the dance floor, I went to their weekly reggae party at a small bar when I first moved and have been to every party since. In the past eight years the reggae scene has grown for sure, now some parties have over 400 people and local Chinese people start to get into reggae music. We’ve played all over China and Asia, have met some great Chinese reggae artists too.
WHICH SHANGHAI VENUES DO YOU LIKE TO HOST PARTIES AT?
The Shelter, I started from there and have played there almost seven years now. When you have a chance to go, you will know why!
CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE AIM OF YOUR ASIAN CONNECTION PROJECT AND BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENTS TO DATE?
This project is run by our Sub-Culture crew, after years of promoting music, we have met lots of talented musicians from all over Asia, this market is still fresh for Western countries, so we decided to focus on that. We started our music label to release Asian musicians productions, and distribute it worldwide and are happy to see audiences interested in Asian sound, especially China sound. Overseas artists contact us to find ways to play or work on collaborations with local musicians, more interaction will bring this scene into good circulation.
AND WHAT ARE YOU HUNGRY FOR?
There are so many great books and documentaries to introduce music and music histories, but there are NONE in Chinese, that’s what I’m hungry for!
DUCK FIGHT GOOSE
Who: ‘We are an alternative rock band from People’s Republic of Shanghai.”
Age: around 30…
From: Shanghai
Taste in music in 3 words: Good quality music
Main influence/s: Krautrock, 60-70′s psychedelic, modern electronic and minimal, some chillwave
First record: SPORTS
Music hero: Coltrane
Most memorable musical experience: Recording our first album
Current focus: Next album
CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT HOW YOU ENDED UP MAKING MUSIC AND HOW DUCK FIGHT GOOSE CAME TOGETHER?
In 2009 I moved from Hefei to Shanghai and it just began naturally. We have been friends for a long time and it just went quite smoothly. Our current drummer JB joined in this year. Actually we did not “end up making music”, we all have day jobs…
WHAT HAVE BEEN THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES IN STARTING A BAND IN SHANGHAI?
No challenges actually. Here we have plenty of livehouses and practicing rooms. The biggest challenges are always the first step. Most of us have been in a band for over 10 years so the first step is long gone…
CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WESTERN AND CHINESE ROCK? ARE YOU TRYING TO DEVELOP A STYLE FOR CHINESE ROCK?
No we are definitely not trying to develop a style for Chinese rock. Chinese rock is by no means parallel to Western rock. If we are talking about rock music then it is purely western. When we are talking about rock bands in China, I would say 10 years ago, 95% of them are just copycats. People worship the first generation of rock bands in China because they saw those bands as a fake illusion of the freedom of mind and they are hindered from western music then by the language/culture/information barrier. Now we know the western world is just the same as it’s here, where mainstream cultures and collective cognitions of the world is manipulated by economy and politics. Young people are more open-minded and they are sort of gradually aware of what’s going on outside, or in a broader view. Rock music itself is just an illusion and purely ideological, we would rather focus on music itself.
WHAT DO YOU WANT YOUR AUDIENCE TO EXPERIENCE WHEN THEY LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC?
I would like them to imagine a moment that belongs only to them. It’s not a hi-resolution picture of blue sky that you can download from Google. It’s something only in your brain. That’s unique, and awesome.
IN TERMS OF THE ENVIRONMENT FOR FOSTERING NEW ARTISTS AND BAND, HOW HAS THAT CHANGED IN THE LAST 10 YEARS?
In Shanghai I would say bands are more matured, and more creative than before. But the size of the crowd keeps almost the same. At least we have more decent places to play.
BEIJING IS KNOWN FOR THEIR ROCK SCENE, ARE YOU ATTRACTED BY THAT AND THE COMMUNITIES/AUDIENCES THAT THEY COULD OFFER?
No, because I know what’s going on there. Sometimes I think Beijing’s even worse than Shanghai because they have tens of thousands of bands, but the number of livehouses are almost the same, and they still have not captured the attention of mainstream culture. There are no good and bad or right and wrong, just Shanghai’s more chilled and Beijing’s more hard-working, more socialised.
IS THERE MUCH SUPPORT AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR MUSICIANS IN THIS CITY?
We don’t have those kinds of confusions or struggles, like I said we have day jobs… From what I know if you only play original rock music and do nothing else in China, you will die soon with your guitar. Maybe can’t even afford a decent guitar. I think there are at least 3 kinds of musicians, one is that he’s properly trained from very young and talented and his target is to be a full-time musician, from what I know those people are mostly connected to the jazz scene here and they could earn their living by playing what they like; 2nd is that they found they are talented gradually and they become full-time because they are sort of running a business – meeting more people, more gigs, more opportunities coming, etc; 3rd is that they are not talented at all they think they will become some sort or rock hero but they don’t do nothing, and all the songs are about how they hate the world or something. It’s universal, you got to know what you are really good at before you
WHAT ARE THE FUTURE PLANS FOR YOURSELF AND DUCK FIGHT GOOSE?
We are working on the next album. It’ll be totally different than before. I don’t know what it’ll be like but it won’t be that noisy like SPORTS.
AND WHAT ARE YOU HUNGRY FOR?
I’m hungry for a band assistant right now…..
Stay tuned for Part Two tomorrow…
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