Herein that follows is a bit of a long-winded essay. If you want to skip all this blah, blah, blah, and just have a look at the highlights of the Jue Festival, running in Shanghai from Jan 7-17, go down to the sentence in bold, "Here is the stuff I'm looking forward to in the Shanghai leg of the Jue Festival:"

***

One of the worst things about going home for the holidays is constantly being called upon by friends, family, and acquaintances to justify living in China. When "China" inevitably rises in conversation, most people get this quizzical, baffled expression on their faces, as if you had been living in Narnia having scones with Mr. Tumnus for the past year or so.

"You live in China? Seriously? China?... Why the fuck are you doing that man?"

This year, living in China was easier to justify than previous years, because this year I made a point to ask all my friends in bands, friends working in recording and producing, friends in media, and friends doing DJ parties, about how their life was going in terms of the public and critical reception of their work, and if they still enjoyed what they were doing -- if it was still "worth it" in the 2-double-0-9.

From the varied group of people I talked to the common thread was dejection -- dejection with having anything to do with the "music industry." Really good bands I knew from way-back-when has stopped touring, DJs were sitting around not doing anything or presiding over the death of their styles, people working in recording were forced into commercial work, and just a general feeling of drained malaise was shared by all.

I'll paraphrase one of my friends who has been touring around North American and Europe in punk bands for the last fifteen years. He's sort of the most "big-time" guy I know because his band is on a reputable label, they played at SXSW two years ago, and there were in the Rolling Stone magazine (a fine accolade indeed):

"The creative supply and demand of bands is all out of wack. There are just too many bands, and people couldn't care less anymore. And really, why should they. It's just rock and roll anyways. So we've basically stopped touring because we can't pay for gas, and after 10 years of playing small towns for 5 people, all your energy is just drained. And those small towns are better than the big cities because when you play in any big city, the audiences have the 'been there done that' attitude that is impossible to get beyond. It's funny because they actually came to see you play and they don't care when they get there. It's not like they hate you but everyone at the show is in their own band anyways so they're not really into it. And it's not like we're playing old-hat shit. It's new, forward-thinking music, but so much of it is out there that no one can latch onto anything permanent at all.

People at the shows just say 'fuck it, I've got my 30 bands I like on my Ipod at home and I've got no room for more."

So basically in my home town, bands and their small followings have circled the wagons, and to combat the constant barrage of the 'next-big-thing', everything is fragmented into small, insular little scenes that have closed themselves off to anything else -- the crusty punks hang with the crusty punks, the hardcore kids hang with the hardcore kids, the goths with the goths, the headz with the headz, the techno people with the techno people, the "hipsters" with the "hipsters", and so on. No one trusts the print media because its all sketchy corporate bullshit, no one listens to the radio, and the only people who read indie mp3 blogs have their own indie mp3 blogs.

Basically, there is no crossing of set boundaries, and it's like people want it that way. To bring new stuff and ideas into you're little segment of pop life would be to kill it off, because it would change the few bedrock aesthetic ideals it's built on.

And thus the defense of living in Shanghai:

Because there is no real possibility of people making real money on music, because there are only a few places to do it in, and because there just isn't really a dominating audience for one genre of "underground music" over another, everybody is sharing audiences, everybody is sharing venues, and the people who are involved in making the 'soundz from the underground', such as they are, find middle grounds to collaborate with one another.

Personally speaking, before I moved to Shanghai, I couldn't have given one sweet fuck about techno, drum n bass, electronic music or any of its variations, but because I've been forced into these situations where I'm directly confronted by it, I find myself stealing more of that stuff from the internet that any other kind of music -- you find the good aspects of the stuff that you never though you could relate to.

In Shanghai, drum n' bass kids actually do go to the shitty rock shows and the rock kids go to shitty clubs, get drunk, and dance like idiots all night and it's alright. They look for ways to bridge the divide, rather than working on ways to intensify a connection to a closed social community.

And that's why you should try to go to as much of this Jue Festival as you can.

Because this shit would defiantly not fly where I'm from. There is no way the same people at a Demerit show would be at the Liman show or the South Rakkas show. Hell, there is no way a pop punk band like Pink Berries would be able to be on the same bill as a band like Demerit.

I'm not saying you should give a shit about this sort of thing. No one is saying you should care, really. But if you care even a little bit, you should really take this opportunity to take in the diverse stuff going on for this little shindig because it really can't happen just anywhere.

Cheers to the logistical necessities that force us all in the same clubs, galleries, and theatre spaces to confront the stuff we're not used to.

The only real issue is helping the promoters break even by laying down a few RMBS so they can pay rent. That's fair.

Also on that note: GO SEE DOA AT YUYINTANG THIS SUNDAY!

Long-winded essay over.

Here is the stuff I'm looking forward to in the Shanghai leg of the Jue Festival:

Music

The music kicks on January 8, TOMORROW, at The Shelter with a performance by South Rakkas Crew, an electro-dancehall act from "Southern Canada."

What the shit is "Southern Canada"? Oh! They're from Missassauga! Missassaga is a suburb of Toronto, murder capital of Canada, and a great place to just keep on driving through.

South Rakkas will be joined by local dancehall and dub crew Uprooted Sunshine. Very nice. We have some MP3s for them for next week. Starts 10pm. Cover 50rmb.



There's a lot of good stuff going on, but the one I'm definitely not going to miss is the air guitar champion of Northern France, Funky Fingers, playing January 9 this Friday, at LOgO. He looks turbo French and turbo insane. Check it. He's joined on the bill by another act whose French-ness will not be questioned We Are Enfant Terrible, who do that fashion-forward Nofriendo, glitchey, 8Bit stuff that's all the rage. I can dig it.

One of my New Year's resolutions was to start giving French people the benefit of the doubt. All is forgiven, Frenchies!

Funky Fingers does a sequel this Saturday at The Shelter, this time joined by two of Beijing's most experimental and critically-lauded DJs Liman and Dead J. If you like your blips and bleeps weird-as-fuck, don't miss out. Both Liman and Dead J are releasing CDs.

Next weekend is when the rock comes to town with a performance by Demerit (read about and download some mp3s here) and a Maybe Mars record showcase (download some Ourselves Beside Me here).

Beijing is so stylin'.

Art

The art segment of the Jue is a collection of exhibitions that have been ongoing for a little while, but are joined in a common theme of artists addressing contemporary commercial ("Daily Prosperity" @ Art Labor), social ("Painting Skin" @ FQ Projects), and aesthetic ("The Artist Died Yesterday" @ Island 6) circumstance.

Make sure you check out that last one "The Artist Died Yesterday" at Island6. This exhibition features 26 local and foreign artists and in curated by Zane Mellupe.

It also has this little piece of awesome:

Theater

And also not-to-be missed is an encore run of the locally-conceived and produced three-act play Marriage Counseling: Three Sessions. This production is the first outing for new theater collective 5th Wall, and was warmly received when it debuted last month at the River Arts Center. They've retooled it a bit, sanded down some of the rough edges and are doing two encore performances at the River Art Center on January 16 and 17. Go see it. Seriously. It's good.

More on Marriage Counseling and 5th Wall in this interview with troupe member Jason Lasky here. And click here to have a look at a photo gallery from that earlier run.

JUE FESTIVAL ON THE WEB:

More in depth events and artists background info can be found at the Jue Festival webpage: www.juefestival.com.

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