Note of optimism for Chinese music abroad
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In a recent conversation with a director of a European record company, I asked him how much access an average European has to Chinese music. He replied that often Europeans were only exposed to Chinese music when eating at a Chinese restaurant.
There are many Chinese restaurants in Europe, but there's not nearly enough to popularize Chinese music.
Every year we read in the press that some Chinese orchestra or vocalist embarks on a tour to Western countries and gives concerts at such prestigious venues as the Vienna Musikverein Golden Hall or Sydney Opera House, but how much have these events promoted authentic Chinese music to these international audiences?
With China's rising profile on the world stage, it is not difficult for some Chinese organizations to rent a concert hall abroad and hold concerts of Chinese music, but I believe that the audiences for these concerts are mostly Chinese diplomats, and guests who are given complimentary tickets, and few, if any, foreigners buy tickets to attend these concerts.
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Kazak musician Mamer (right) and his band performing in the United Kingdom. [China Daily] |
Being able to sell tickets does not necessarily mean being commercial. The will to pay to hear music is merely the demonstration of audiences' appreciation, which is not won too easily either. As was proved by Sa Dingding, a female Chinese singer who is said to "sing in putonghua, Sanskrit, Tibetan, as well as an imaginary self created language".
Several European friends have asked me, "Sa was promoted as the most successful singer in China when she performed in Europe. Is that true?" I told them that she was not, and that her name is known in China because she is promoted in China as "the Chinese singer who is most successful in the West".
To me, she is a singer packaged exclusively for Western audiences. Her music has been made to sound "Chinese" or "Oriental" to Western ears, just like those fancy restaurants in Beijing that target foreign tourists.
However, these efforts to promote Sa haven't really paid off. My Dutch friend said that Sa's concert in Amsterdam was not well received, although her record company spent a lot of money promoting it. The weakness of Sa is that her music is not natural. It is more the result of her production team's efforts.
Now is probably the best time to promote Chinese music to the rest of the world, as the world is eager to know more about China. But what music do we have to offer the world? China has accumulated a glorious music heritage over thousands of years, but how can we make that heritage accessible to the world?
Perhaps we should first ask ourselves how to make Chinese music appeal to today's Chinese people. Unlike Americans who have the Blues, the Portuguese who have Fado, and Jamaicans who have Reggae, we don't seem to have a popular music style that is intrinsically associated with China.
To address this, some Chinese minority musicians have taken a lead, namely Kazak musician Mamer and the Mongolian band Hanggai, who have won acclaim in the international media with their CDs and are warmly received by foreign audiences. Their blending of traditional folk style and western music idioms has also proved to be appealing to Chinese audiences.
Some Western media have created a term "Chinagrass" to denote the trend of reviving Chinese folk music, kicked off by Mamer and Hanggai. It is probably still too early to announce such a movement, but we should take the term as a good omen.
