http://iht.com/articles/2008/01/31/arts/melvin.phpCui Jian: China's rock rebel updates his appeal
By Sheila Melvin
Published: January 31, 2008
BEIJING: When Cui Jian - "the godfather of Chinese rock 'n' roll" - took the stage of Beijing's Workers' Stadium last month, he greeted the cheering crowd of 8,000 by proclaiming, "So much has changed in China since the last time we played here, and so fast. But there's one thing that hasn't changed. . ."
Before he could deliver the punch line, the audience roared out its own answer: "Cui Jian! Cui Jian hasn't changed!"
Cui Jian, of course, has evolved considerably since that heady day back in 1986 when he jumped onto the stage of the Workers' Stadium in peasant garb and sang the now-classic "Nothing to My Name" on a nationally televised talent competition. The performance brought him instant popularity - and, in older, more conservative circles, a seemingly unshakeable notoriety - and set him on a lifelong odyssey as China's most prominent rock musician.
In the years since, "Old Cui," as the 46-year-old is affectionately known, has incorporated elements of jazz, electronic music and hip-hop into his works and produced a number of very different albums. But to his fans - and detractors - he remains the same unrepentant rebel and cynical idealist that he was at 25, tirelessly battling myopic censors, greedy promoters, lip-synching pop stars and anyone else who stands in the way of an artist's right to make good music and an audience's right to enjoy it.
"I'm not a cheerleader, I'm a troublemaker," Cui explained in English the evening after his concert. "That doesn't mean making trouble, it means discovering a new way to solve problems. The biggest problem is that nobody is telling the truth - but rock musicians do."
Cui's determination to tell the truth led him to perform in Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989, when "Nothing to My Name" became the anthem of the student protesters who occupied the square. Many other musicians went to Tiananmen Square, too, including entire symphony orchestras, but it is his performance that is best remembered. For much of the 1990s he was effectively banned, albeit unofficially, from performing in Beijing and carefully monitored when he gave concerts elsewhere.
"Rock 'n' roll lost most of its market for political reasons - at least it lost the best timing," he said wistfully. "But, nobody really thinks about politics anymore."
Instead, he argues, the continued failure of Chinese rock to gain a mass audience has more to do with traditional culture than with politics.
"In China, it's not in our history that it's important to be different from the older generation - it's dangerous if you are different, it's bad. And there are old concepts of art, and what is a serious artist. Rock 'n' roll music is not considered serious - it's for people who drink, meet girls, take drugs, and don't want to work on a schedule."
Since rock can't shake this negative image, it is harder to gain sponsorship or arrange concert tours. And, with pirated recordings comprising an estimated 95 percent of music sales - according to IFPI, an international recording industry group - the only way to make money is through live performances, endorsements or commercial tie-ins. The industry thus sticks with the safe bets, like the Canto Pop stars who are Cui's bête noires.
"There is real talent in China, but Canto Pop is too active - it's just money, money, money," he said.
In 2002, Cui launched a highly publicized campaign against lip-synching at live and televised performances. The prevalence of lip-synching allows pop singers to perform to digitally manipulated studio recordings. This frees up producers to create "stars" who may barely be able to carry a tune, but who look good on television and can attract sponsors.
More recently, Cui has taken on the music video industry. "Music video is not an art for musicians - it's for directors and marketers. That isn't how music tells a story - music goes to people's minds and each person reacts" in his own way, he said. "I think the whole business should put up a sign saying 'This is not real.' "
But Cui has had to adapt in order to survive. He makes music videos - although he says that afterward he hates the songs - and he used a director for his Workers' Stadium concert, which incorporated children playing samba drums and dancers who were variously costumed as soldiers and monks. But his music remains very real, as does his fundamental respect for his audience and his devotion to rock 'n' roll.
All this was evident at the Workers' Stadium concert, a retrospective that mixed classics - to which the ecstatic audience sang every word - with newer, hip-hop-influenced pieces, like "Blue Bones." His early roots as a classical musician - he started out playing trumpet in the Beijing Symphony Orchestra - continue to serve him well. His band, which includes the saxophonist Liu Yuan, plays with the tightness and professionalism of an orchestra and many of his songs incorporate such classical Chinese instruments as the guzheng. Cui also used the opportunity to sing his first English-language song, a hard-driving love ballad called "Outside Girl" that is laced through by the haunting melody of the xiao flute.
This first attempt at singing in English was widely interpreted as an effort to engage more deeply with the global rock community. And, indeed, though Cui's talent and importance to Chinese rock is such that Western observers regularly compare him to Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain or Bruce Springsteen, he is essentially unknown outside the narrow confines of the Chinese-speaking rock world. This is precisely the sort of cultural inequity that the Chinese government is hoping the 2008 Olympics will help vanquish, and many of Cui's fans hope that his version of "China's homegrown rock 'n' roll" will be included in the Olympics' opening ceremonies.
The odds of this happening are essentially nil - the Olympic opening ceremony is likely to have a lot of lip-synching, and no rock 'n' roll - but Cui is nonetheless hopeful that this Olympic year will bring more attention to lesser-known aspects of Chinese culture. He himself will be touring internationally, beginning in May with an American tour that so far includes three stops in California, at Stanford University, San Jose, and Los Angeles, and then moving on to Italy in June. And he hopes that his high-profile Workers' Stadium concert will pave the way for a major domestic tour and the chance to awaken a whole new generation to the transformative power of good rock.
"Rock is something that gives so many different perspectives," he said. "You can pick up something from every word, or even if you don't understand the words! China needs rock 'n' roll to come back."
AfroShanghai
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