It is said that in China a generation lasts five years. The country has opened up and seen so much change over such a short period of time that youth culture is constantly evolving. Greater access to world media is now available to a youth that harbors new attitudes - a generation growing in confidence.
This evolution is impacting upon all fields of the arts in China, and in no area is this more evident than the recent emergence of alternative music.
Beijing's music scene has done in six or seven years what had happened over a 30 year period in Europe.
Quickly developing from anti-establishment focussed punk, underground music here has evolved into much deeper and richer forms.
Almost from nowhere new strands of physcedelia, experimental and progressive musics are evolving in Beijing, all sharing a fresh theme of honest, unsynical passion and a disregard for the mainstream. It is a musical environment that buzzes with similar sentiment and characteristics of early '60s California and the emergence of the beatnick generation. A collective non-mainstream sub-culture, inadvertently finding itself at the heart of something important.
Last month's Jue Festival was a case in point, showcasing just how this new generation are creating
an underground culture all of their own. A sense of burgeoining confidence permeated shows and the festival felt like a significant event. Also evident at these shows was an underlying theme of physcedelia and experimentation, another throwback from 1960s America that seems to influence a majority of Beijing's key artisits, something to which Shou Wang of Carsick Cars testifies
"You could call it New Physcedelia! "
A key figure in the city's alternative music scene, Wang is one of a phalanx of new artists that are gaining international recognition. Of his numerous projects it's garage rock band Carsick Cars that have set the precident for others to follow. Their brand of rock jangles and stomps through Pavement and Meat Puppets, trailing off into spaced out feedback drone before returning to perfectly constructed surf-pop. Probably Beijing`s best known band in the west, they've reached European audiences playing at All Tomorrow's Parties. Noise group White recently supported Einsturzende Neubarten on their European tour and is another of Shou Wang's projects. Sounding like a mash of Cornelius, The Boredoms and the popier side of Throbbing Gristle they recorded with Blixa Bargeld of Einsturzende Neubarten and produced one of 2008's most interesting noise albums.
Other notable Beijing bands include Ourself Beside Me making stripped down, physcedelic garage rock tunes with a nod to Suiside and Velvet Underground; The Molds kicking out slack and druggy rock and roll with reference to The Cramps or Johnny Kidd; and The Gar producing drawn-out streams of ..trail of dead like rock with extra ambience and drone, occasionally touching on The Jesus and Mary Chain.
The Carsick Cars frontman loyally professes to the state of things in his city's music scene
"Beijing is the most exciting place in the world right now !"
There are many aspects that could take testiment for this explosion but it can be linked to a few key cultural changes that have culminated in just the last decade. The kids that are coming of age now, making things happen, are the first generation of only children in China, the result of a government sanction impossed on almost all families since the early '80s. This has changed the cultural landscape of the country completely; in a land steeped in traditional values, Chinese youth are becoming less family centric, more international, less religious, more individual.
"I'm part of a generation that has grown up with television and computer games instead of brothers or sisters.
It changes things. You think more about yourself and what you want to do; more selfish I guess!"
Wang continues to explain how twenty-somethings are moving away from the traditional and towards the contemporary.
"Many people are not interested in religion now, we are a totally new generation with no beliefs and new attitudes. Also, we have no musical history, our parents don't even know what Rock and Roll is! so we are starting afresh, and that is an inspiring thing."
Like all great movements, there needs to be a mediator(right word?), something or someone to provide the vision and direction. In the case of the Beijing movement this role is played by independent record label Maybe Mars. The brains behind this imprint is former New York stockbroker Professor Michael Pettis, a man considered to be the godfather of Beijing's music scene.
"Now is the right time for Beijing, so many crutial elements are coming together."
Pettis moved to Beijing seven years ago and has seen the full cycle of this cultural development
"When I came to China none of my university students had any interest in music or art except for the
most sentimental and insipid Chinese and western pop. Now students listen to alternative music, read Jack Kerouac and watch underground films. In a sense it feels like we are in the US in the early sixties."
The growing confidence admist this exciting environment is a key factor in the movement's progression and as Pettis explains, it's a confidence that is changing the mindset of Beijing artists.
"Rather than simply assuming as they used to that only foreigners can create interesting and relevant music, more and more
young Beijing musicians see themselves as fully equal members of the international music scene."
It's not only within the confines of Beijing that this is making waves. The scene is receiving more and more international interest with big name producers lowering their fees and offering their services simply to be a part of it. Blixa Bargeld lived in Beijing for a year in 2006 and has been involved since. Other notable producers to work on Maybe Mars records include Martin Atkins, Wharton Tiers, and Brian Hardgroove and the American influence is set to continue with Lee Ranaldo and These Are Powers indicating strong interest in working with the label soon.
So, is Beijing the most exciting place in the world right now? The environment that is
cultivating in the clubs and practice spaces is certainly a catalystic one. Confidence is growing and a movement is being created that is gaining recognition not just nationally but globally. It seems that in 2009, all the right elements are coming together to create a new platform for musical expression in Beijing and this may prove to be historically relevant.
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