Why Beijing Is A Great City For Jazz Music
Jazz musicians Liang Ying, Nathaniel Gao and Zhang Ke (left to right) perform at East Shore Jazz Cafe, in Beijing. Source: Terence Hsieh
Beijing’s underground music scene has been heralded as an epicenter of creativity in China: you can find everything, from dark noise, to grunge, rock, hip hop and avant garde jazz. Lately, however, I’ve been getting the impression that people believe that the Beijing music scene is dying, for lack of a better word. Jonathan Kaiman at the LA Times accredits the closure of venues and festivals, and denial of visas to President Xi Jinping’s anti-foreigner campaign, citing reports of increased pressure by local artists and venue owners to affirm the pro-socialist movement being carried out by the state.
I’ve been a jazz musician in Beijing for nearly four years now, and it’s hard for me to see the scene as “dying” here. In fact, I’ve had the privilege of seeing and even sometimes performing with some of the most amazing jazz headliners in Beijing, over the past few years: The Yellowjackets, Herbie Hancock, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Robin Eubanks, Jaleel Shaw, Snarky Puppy, Richard Susan just to name a few.
Ami Lee, managing editor at City Weekend Beijing recently posted an op-ed in which she criticises this “decline narrative” that’s been used to describe the arts scene in Beijing– that is, it’s convenient to wrap up all the venue and festival closures, arrested artists, deportations and canceled concerts within this simple idea that political forces have it out for Beijing’s music scene.
This notion of a convenient narrative is important to better understanding of Chinese society. First of all, it highlights a double standard leveled against Chinese artists: that they are (or should be) eternally locked in a black-and-white struggle against the iron fist of the Communist Party, although this expectation doesn’t exist for western artists. Second, this narrative doesn’t account for the increasing financial pressures on venues and artists in 2016: rising rents, an ageing artist demographic and skyrocketing back-of-the-house costs like beverages and food.
That aside, political forces have always played a role in determining how large shows or festivals with international acts are allowed to play out, here in China. In 2008, Bjork got herself famously banned for performing her song “Declare Independence” and shouting “Tibet! Tibet!” and even jazz icon Harry Connick, Jr. wasn’t allowed to play with his band due to an unapproved set list.
“The main difference now I think is just that music festivals are getting harder to operate, and I guess more and more bands coming from abroad are getting cancelled, but that’s different from the local scene,” says Nathaniel Gao, a jazz saxophonist who’s been in Beijing on and off for 10 years now. Indeed, it’s important that one separates the politics involved with booking international acts, which ARE decidedly political; and the local scene, made up of primarily musicians living and working in Beijing, who perform their own art, mostly independently. For the most part, the politics of art have largely stayed out of the local scene with a few notable exceptions. There’s crossover, especially when it comes to these large festivals, but for the most part, artists are free to do what they want. I recently saw an album released by a rapper known as MC Da Wei in which I heard him drop some of the most scathing political criticisms to date, at a club called DaDa.
Let me bring this back to what I’m most familiar with: jazz. Jazz musicians are privy to a special seat at the table of music in Beijing: we’re largely ignored by both the expat and the greater music community. Maybe it’s the lack of accessibility to the music we play: listening to jazz shows is hard, especially if you’re not familiar with the conventions of the music.
Maybe it’s the lack of stereotypical behaviors that people expect from jazz musicians: you won’t find the musicians here doing drugs, getting rowdy or doing crazy performance art on stage, like historical tropes of jazz. But maybe it’s also the lack of exposure: while the gigs we play are advertised in magazines and websites, they’re not easily found, often tucked away in the back section of weekly events, if at all in print. My point is not that we are neglected, but rather, that the jazz scene here is comprised of a small, but growing group of both Chinese and international instrumentalists who are dedicated to producing creative instrumental music in the jazz tradition despite being paid the equivalent of $50 a night or less.
There’s creative jazz music nearly every night of the week in Beijing: from jam sessions, where musicians congregate to play jazz standards and talk shop and network, to international headlining acts, where world famous musicians come to share their craft with the community. Last week, New York saxophone legend Antonio Hart, who spends time in China every year, quipped, after a workshop at Beijing’s East Shore Jazz Cafe: “Beijing cats don’t mess around!”
Scott Sawyer has been playing drums in Beijing for nearly as long as rock and jazz music has existed here. “From the jazz scene perspective, it’s far from dying,” he says. “I’d say if anything, it’s thriving more than it ever has: we’ve got these new venues that are opening, though some of them come and go, and I’m not aware of any political pressures that are placed on the jazz scene. If anything, the scene is thriving and growing more than it ever has but it just doesn’t get the attention that a lot of that other stuff does.”
Zhang Ke, Source: Terence Hsieh
There’s also a sense of authenticity that resonates with many of the musicians here: “There’s a strong sense of Chinese culture and authenticity in Beijing, being a foreigner here you really experience that,” says Anthony Vanacore, a drummer from New York who’s been in Beijing for just a year. Traditional Chinese melodies infiltrate into the jazz idiom: musicians like guitarist Liu Yue and pianist Xia Jia have written modern jazz arrangements that include such melodies, reharmonizing and reworking them for piano trio with bass and drums, and even with horns and traditional Chinese instruments.
But most importantly (and concretely), there seems to be a community in Beijing that forms around jazz music– one that doesn’t necessarily exist in other music scenes in other places in China. On any given Tuesday, a crowd of jazz musicians descend on the jam session at Jiang Hu bar, an old traditional courtyard house that’s been converted to a performance space. It doesn’t feel like a New York session where the musicians are there to prove a point and call each other out, but a place where people are trying new ideas, patterns and concepts they’ve been practicing on their own, over jazz standards with a live band. Sometimes there’s a great crowd. Other times, the house is practically empty, but the band plays just the same.
Despite the fact that they make about $30 a night, you’ll find the same guys coming back week after week. Do they need the money? Probably, but they’re also in it for the musical work out. Perhaps it suggests that a creative music scene can exist not just in spite of, but because of a lack of mainstream support. When you can make a lot of money playing a particular style or even song, it can affect your aesthetic judgment. In other words, it allows us to keep the main thing–the art–the main thing.
