The author, Tom Mangione, plays a one-man acoustic show around town under the name Ho-Tom the Conqueror. He's a regular at Oscar's Wednesday Open-Mic Nights run by Paul Meredith, the subject of this piece.

Paul Meredith is a family man. When you get to know him, one of the first things that Paul constantly brings up is the love and joy that he feels for his family. What you might not realize until you get to know Paul a little better is that Paul really has two families -- his wife and children, and a group of Shanghai musicians. We're a motley group, some of us are professional musicians, others are just folks who love to make music. Some of us are Chinese natives, others expats like Paul himself. Our "house" is Oscar's and its weekly Wednesday open-mic night which Paul has hosted for the last three years. The older players see him like a kindred spirit, a brother. The younger players look to Paul for guidance, almost as a father. In fact, Rob Villanueva, a local Filipino-American singer-songwriter who often takes to the mics at Oscar's with his own brand of brooding, syncopated anthems of love and loss, says: "Paul is like a father to me. He's the reason that I started to get into making music in Shanghai. Before that I didn't think it was possible."



Paul's own interest in music began at a young age while growing up on a farm in rural Michigan. As he remembers, "There was always work to do -- milking cows, bailing hay. We had horses, too. I was envious of the other kids who had more time for after school stuff. But it was good in a way though. I had lots of time to myself to think about music. I taught myself how to sing while doing chores."　From a very early age, Paul's father brought music into Paul's life, encouraging him to pick on the mandolin at five (his hands were too small for the guitar then), and strum chords on the guitar at seven.



Paul began a career as an aid worker, working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refuges (UNHCR) in Hong Kong with Vietnamese refugees from 1990-1999, beginning what would become Paul's almost twenty-year stay in China. During this time, despite his day job as a professional aid worker, Paul's passion for music never faltered. In 2000, after a brief stint in Kosovo with Catholic Relief Services, Paul decided that his work with aid organizations was taking away his time with his family. After quitting his job in Hong Kong and relocating to Shanghai, Paul found himself teaching guitar and playing regular gigs as a musician.

As Paul says: "Living in Hong Kong was like living in a bubble in a lot of ways. I wanted to give my children a real Chinese experience. For me, going to China was leaving the UN career and doing something that I knew I could do and while giving my children something better. I could have music and be close to them. I don't make as much [money] as I could have had I taken the other career. China to me is the ability to do that." Paul may be a Michigan farmboy at heart, but China has become a second home to him.

That's the thing about Paul's music that makes it so unique. In Shanghai, you're likely to encounter a number of foreign singer-songwriters who continue to play songs that sound like and refer to life back home, as if their experiences in China were non-existent. To be fair, Paul readily admits that "musically, my experiences in China have had little impact, what's impacted me more are the musicians that I've listened to over the years: Bob Dylan, Pat Metheny, Bruce Cockburn, James Taylor." However, despite his Western musical basckground, it's undeniable that China is present all throughout his songs lyrically. As a result, you get a musical experience that feels like reading the travelogue of a longtime China traveler, a real China-hand relating all his experiences to everyone back home.

***


Many of these are experiences that expats can relate to not in terms of distant nostalgia for the countries they left behind, but in their daily lives, living and working in this city. There's a kind of communal bond that comes with hearing this type of music that resonates much more than neo-Radiohead wailings about the girl you left across the sea. There's the transience of good friends made abroad heard in "Missing in Manila": "my heart's hangin' back in old Shanghai, I don't want to say goodbye... I can't just yet."


There's the experience of trying out your half-formed Chinese on the locals in "China Train": kids dirty faces, lookin' up / laughin' at your Chinese but you know, they're just sayin' hi."


There's the realization that many of the local friends you meet here are trying to go abroad and follow their dreams just as you have yours in "Lantau Legend": "She longed to see America, maybe study over there / And I the western friend encouraged her to go." In his twenty years of writing songs in China, there are few experiences of being a foreigner here in China that Paul doesn't touch on in some way or another.

***

For me, the thing that's most intriguing about Paul's music, more so than the proximity of his lyrics, is how inclusive he makes his musical experience for all the people who know him. His enthusiasm for supporting and promoting the musicians around him is almost inexhaustible.

Of particular note are the bluegrass duo from Inner Mongolia, Tom and Jerry, who accompany Paul at almost all of his gigs. Outstanding musicians in their own right, Tom is famous for his pyrotechnic mandolin playing and his flamboyant style, while Jerry provides solid banjo licks with a steady and reserved demeanor. Paul has made it a priority to constantly promote them to musicians and critics both in China and abroad, most recently helping Tom to gain admission to the world-famous Berkley School of Music. You can catch all three of them in action every Wednesday and Friday night at Oscar's, playing both Paul's original material and American bluegrass standards.



In his upcoming series of shows called "China Train" Paul plans to showcase his music with an onstage ensemble of a whopping seven performers, all musicians who have cycled through Paul's life as a Shanghai musician at some point or another. For Paul, this kind of inclusiveness is what he considers to be the essence of being a musician.

As he puts it, "Being a musician is finding other musicians. You go to where the music is, and you build a community from that."

For Paul, musicianship is what brings his community together and China is the backdrop on which he does it. As he puts it in his song "China Train": "All alone but you’re not lonely / You're a foreigner but only / One more stranger in a land / that's not so strange anymore... not anymore / on a China Train, get on the China Train."

Catch Paul Meredith every Wedneday and Friday at Oscar's.

Paul Meredith and his China Train Upcoming performances:

Sunday 16 May, Dulwich College Shanghai Mei Lan-Fang Theatre, 2pm.

Monday 17 May, Melting Pot, 288 Tai Kang Lu, 9pm

All Nightlife Articles » All Articles »

All Dining Articles » All Articles »

All Art & Stage Articles » All Articles »

All Activities Articles » All Articles »