Music

posts on music in Greater China

Freddy Lim, Taiwan’s new envoy to Finland

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Source: NYT (5/21/25)
He’s a Heavy Metal Musician, and Taiwan’s New Envoy to Finland
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Freddy Lim, the founder and lead singer of Chthonic, is well known in Finland, a heavy metal capital of the world.
By Ephrat Livni

A man wearing all black, with black marks painted on his face, is standing on a stage, holding a microphone above his head and screaming.

Freddy Lim, who was appointed as Taiwan’s envoy to Finland on Monday, performing with his band, Chthonic, in Tokyo in 2019. Credit…Nicolas Datiche/LightRocket, via Getty Images

Diplomatic appointments do not usually excite the world’s metalheads. But when Taiwan on Monday named the frontman for a band known as “the Black Sabbath of Asia” as its envoy to the heavy metal mecca of Finland, rockers on multiple continents rejoiced.

“Because if you’re gonna be an ambassador to any Scandinavian country, you better be in a metal band,” the Brooklyn-based publication Metal Injection wrote.

The choice of Freddy Lim, founder and lead singer of Chthonic, by President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan appears apt: Finland has the most metal bands per capita, with about 80 for every 100,000 citizens — a data point often cited by metal fans. And Mr. Lim already has an affinity for the country, where his band has played in major cities and performed with Finnish musicians.

“Working with my partners in the Finnish music industry for a long time has made me have a special feeling for this country,” Mr. Lim said in a social media post on Monday, noting that his band had released four albums with the Finnish-founded label Spinefarm Records.

His selection as Taiwan’s envoy is not based on musical fame alone. Taiwan’s foreign minister, Lin Chia-lung, said on Monday that Mr. Lim was chosen for his human rights work and international exchange experience: He served as a national legislator from 2016 to 2024 and was chairman of Amnesty International in Taiwan from 2010 to 2014.

Mr. Lim, 49, formed Chthonic (pronounced THON-ik) around 1995, creating a heavy metal mythology for the band using elements of Taiwan’s local lore instead of the pagan and satanic imagery of some Western bands. The band’s 2005 album, “Seediq Bale” (Real Person), which was released in the United States in 2006 and worldwide the next year, brought the band international attention. It got Chthonic a spot in Ozzfest — on a tour founded and headlined by the British heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne — playing 24 major American cities. The band also toured Europe that year. Continue reading Freddy Lim, Taiwan’s new envoy to Finland →

CHIME 2025

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Registration open: “Digital Futures for Chinese Music” (28th CHIME Conference, University College Cork)
28th CHIME International Conference, 4–8 July 2025
University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

Conference registration now open
Preliminary conference programme available here

Further information: please contact Dr. Lijuan Qian (lijuan.qian@ucc.ie) or visit the UCC Department of Music website

Registration rates: Please consider becoming a member of CHIME Worldwide Platform for Chinese Music – for a reduced conference registration fee (and to enjoy various other benefits): https://www.chimemusic.net/members

In this conference we focus on the various ways new media (digital media especially) provide spaces for preserving, creating, playing, sharing, teaching, or discussing music, and the ways these spaces are impacting what musicians, culture bearers, and others do in the musical part of their lives. Participants will share research resonating with this theme. Presentations of other new research in the broad area of Chinese music studies are also included.

New digital media provide for “repackaging” of traditions, access to distant events, gestures of sharing and commemoration, and spaces (and toolkits) for new creation, online learning, critical commentary, or playful remixing. We might study these situations in several ways: Continue reading CHIME 2025 →

Chime 28–cfp

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CHIME: Worldwide Platform for Chinese Music
28th CHIME International Conference, 4–8 July 2025
University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
“Digital Futures for Chinese Music”

Call for Papers

In this conference we focus on the various ways new media (digital media especially) provide spaces for preserving, creating, playing, sharing, teaching, or discussing music, and the ways these spaces are impacting what musicians, culture bearers, and others do in the musical part of their lives. Prospective participants are encouraged to submit proposals that resonate with this theme. However, presentations of any new research in the broad area of Chinese music studies are also welcome, whether these engage with the theme or not.

New digital media provide for “repackaging” of traditions, access to distant events, gestures of sharing and commemoration, and spaces (and toolkits) for new creation, online learning, critical commentary, or playful remixing. We might study these situations in several ways:

  • as platforms and tools for new kinds of musical creation, curation, and participatio
  • as spaces for new formats of presentation, repatriation, and commemoration
  • as settings where performance facets like musical expression, liveness, or authenticity are open to striking reformulations
  • as a source of musical materials, influences, threats, or inspirations
  • as contexts that raise expanded economic and reputational possibilities as well as ethical or legal concerns

We welcome proposals that address one or more of these questions, or which pose other questions related to the digital futures for Chinese music, as well as those relating to new research more broadly. Continue reading Chime 28–cfp →

Ye to perform in Hainan

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Source: NYT (9/15/24)
China’s Censors Are Letting Ye Perform There. His Fans Are Amazed
The provocative artist once known as Kanye West has received approval that was denied to Maroon 5 and Bon Jovi. China’s economic woes might be why.
By Vivian Wang, Reporting from Beijing

Ye, in a black jacket, stands onstage against a black background amid vapor or smoke.

Ye onstage in Inglewood, Calif., in March. Credit…Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times, via Getty Images

When the news broke that Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, would be performing in China on Sunday, the elation of many of his fans was mixed with another emotion: confusion.

Why would the notoriously prickly Chinese government let in the notoriously provocative Ye? Why was the listening party, as Ye calls his shows, taking place not in Beijing or Shanghai, but in Hainan, an obscure island province?

Under a trending hashtag on the social media site Weibo on the subject, one popular comment read simply “How?” alongside an exploding-head emoji.

The answer may lie in China’s struggling economy. Since China reopened its borders after three years of coronavirus lockdowns, the government has been trying to stimulate consumer spending and promote tourism.

“Vigorously introducing new types of performances desired by young people, and concerts from international singers with super internet traffic, is the outline for future high-quality development,” the government of Haikou, the city hosting the listening party, posted on its website on Thursday.

But it is unclear whether the appearance by Ye — who would be perhaps the highest-profile Western artist to perform in mainland China since the pandemic — is part of a broader loosening or an exception. Continue reading Ye to perform in Hainan →

TV song contest inspires nationalist angst

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Source: China Digital Times (5/17/24)
TV Song Contest Inspires Nationalist Angst
By 

“I want the foreigners dead.” A still of Na Ying watching other performers on Singer 2024, photoshopped to resemble Empress Dowager Cixi in “Towards the Republic.”

China’s hottest television show, HunanTV’s “Singer 2024,” has inspired nationalist angst after two foreign contestants took first and second place—easily besting a field that included legendary Chinese pop star Na Ying. The show is wildly popular in part because it requires live singing without autotune or post-production touch-ups, common features of most Chinese variety television. The victory of relative unknowns Chanté Moore, an American, and Faouzia, a Moroccan-Canadian, has been called a “wakeup call for China’s music industry” by state-media tabloid Global Times. After the foreigners’ victory, a small subset of nationalist singers asked to be added to the show in order to defend China’s honor. The Tibetan-Han singer Han Hong took to Weibo to declare: “I am Chinese singer Han Hong and I ask permission to go to war!” Others followed suit.

To many, however, the nationalist outbursts were indications of deep national insecurity, as reflected in this partial translation of an essay posted by the WeChat public account 亮见 (liàngjiàn), run by a Nanjing University master’s student:

The writer Xiang Dongliang said, “Behind this wave of sentiment that ‘music is our national salvation’ lies a deep-seated inferiority complex.” Thinking that Chinese singers winning a competition is proof of China’s cultural superiority is a notion that only deeply insecure people would hold.

There may be some people who have never been personally “insulted” by foreigners, or who don’t feel much connection to grandiose terms such as “the Chinese nation” or “the Chinese people.”. Some sensitive souls need an intermediary to help connect them to these grand and lofty concepts. Continue reading TV song contest inspires nationalist angst →

27th CHIME Conference–cfp

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Call for Participation: 27th International CHIME – Meeting in the Field
Zhejiang Conservatory, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
7-12 November 2024
https://www.chimemusic.net/chime-27-zhejiang

Dear Friends, Colleagues and Chinese Music Enthusiasts,

The Zhejiang Conservatory of Music in Hangzhou is proud to announce the 27th International CHIME – Meeting in the Field, 7-12 November 2024. It will be a unique five-day event, combining three days of immersive fieldwork across Zhejiang province (8-10 Nov) with a two day-conference (11-12 Nov) at the Conservatory campus, in which the participants are invited to exchange experiences and present ad hoc reports on their musical fieldwork.

About the Conference

Inspired by the 11th CHIME meeting, held in Yulin, Shaanxi province in 2006, the 27th edition of CHIME once again takes up the format of a ‘traveling conference’ – a Meeting in the Field. This time we aim to explore local musical traditions scattered across Zhejiang province. Through hands-on fieldwork sessions and insightful discussions, we hope to uncover the rich cultural tapestry woven into the various landscapes of the Jiangnan area.

Chinese and international scholars from diverse corners of the globe are expected to join forces in this meeting. Ethnomusicologists who carried out little or no fieldwork in China so far are welcome to take up the challenge. The gathering in Zhejiang will offer them rare chance to engage with China’s musical heritage and native fieldwork practices. Those who have already carried out extensive fieldwork elsewhere in China are equally welcome to take up this opportunity to access a rich and varied panoply of rural musical traditions in Zhejiang. Scholars with backgrounds in Sinology or Anthropology are also explicitly welcomed to list up! A team of seasoned local music scholars will join the event as guiding experts. Continue reading 27th CHIME Conference–cfp →

26th CHIME Conference–cfp

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CFP: 26th CHIME Conference
Sustainability and Chinese Music
University of Music, Drama and Media
Center for World Music, University of Hildesheim, Germany
3-6 October 2024
https://www.chimemusic.net/chime-26-hannover

Call for Papers

Theme: Sustainability and Chinese Music

Urgent contemporary challenges have brought sustainability (可持续性) into sharp focus as a basic concern across musical worlds and research into music and sound. What are the historical and contemporary threats to the vibrancy of traditions and practices in Chinese music (technological, economic, political developments) and how have people acted to secure dynamic futures (heritage work, education, advocacy)? How has Chinese music been affected by the acute climate and environmental crisis, and can it become a potent force for change? Against these backdrops, how do individual musicians and researchers build lasting careers?

We welcome the following forms of proposal engaging with the broad theme of sustainability and Chinese music:

  1. Individual paper (20 minutes plus 10 minutes for questions): submit an abstract of max. 250 words
  2. Panel sessions of three to four papers: submit a panel abstract of max. 250 words plus abstracts of max. 200 words for each contribution
  3. Performances, workshops, film screenings or roundtable discussions: submit an abstract of 250 words; please indicate the length of the contribution. Continue reading 26th CHIME Conference–cfp →

Music of Dao Lang

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Source: The China Project (9/28/23)
The eclectic, anti-mainstream, surprisingly popular music of Dao Lang
By Charles Laughlin

Dao Lang’s latest studio album, “There Are Few Folk Songs,” with its incorporation of multiethnic instruments and strange rhythms, has touched a nerve among the Chinese public. Listen very carefully and you just might hear the cracks forming in China’s pop culture edifice.

Illustration for The China Project by Alex Santafé

Veteran Chinese pop singer Dāo Láng’s 刀郎 purported comeback, signaled by the release of the new album There Are Few Folk Songs (山歌寥哉 shāngē liáo zāi) in July, has created a huge sensation on the Chinese internet. In particular, fans have claimed that the strange song “Luochahai City” has broken the Guinness Book of World Records’ record for impressions for a music video, because the aggregate number of clicks on Chinese social media platforms (8.5 billion) has far surpassed the record held by “Despacito” on YouTube (5 billion impressions). Regardless of whether that’s true, Dao Lang’s immense popularity indicates a deep sympathy for the artist among listeners, and identification with the satire apparently embedded in the song’s lyrics.

The album’s Chinese title phonetically suggests the title of Pu Songling’s Qing-dynasty short story collection Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (聊斋志异 liáozhāi zhì yì). The titles of all the songs are titles of Pu’s stories, and like much of Dao’s music ever since his breakout hits of almost 20 years ago, there is a mixture of traditional Chinese elements and an eclectic take on contemporary Western music.

After a jazzy instrumental overture, “Luochahai City” is the first song on the album, with a Western musical aspect that dominates throughout. “Luochahai City” is framed in a recognizably reggae style, with chords sounding on the heavy backbeats, but the time signature is 7/4, which may be unprecedented in reggae music. (Notable exceptions are songs by non-reggae bands using 7/4 with a “reggae feel,” such as Pink Floyd’s “Money” and The Grateful Dead’s “Estimated Prophet.”) With the exception of 3/4, odd time signatures give a song a backward-moving feel, and make it harder to dance to. The instrumentation is classic rhythm and blues — bass, guitar, drums, and synthesizer — but at midpoint there is a suona (a double-reed Central Asian instrument akin to the oboe) solo, which remains until the end, embellishing the verses and refrains. Continue reading Music of Dao Lang →

Chinese delegation all in for Russian invasion (2)

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Source: NYT (9/10/23)
Chinese Singer Denounced Over Video at Bombed-Out Ukrainian Theater
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The singer Wang Fang drew criticism after she performed “Katyusha,” a Soviet-era patriotic song, at the ruins of a theater in Mariupol.
By Javier C. Hernández

A photo of a theater with a white-columned facade that has extensive damage to the front, and windows that show the destruction inside.

The shell of the destroyed Drama Theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, in December 2022. Credit…Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA, via Shutterstock

The Chinese singer stands on a balcony inside a bombed-out theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the site of a deadly attack last year by Russian forces. Looking at the camera, she sings an excerpt from the Soviet-era patriotic song “Katyusha” and lifts her arms triumphantly into the air.

The video of the singer, Wang Fang, a 38-year-old performer of patriotic songs and Chinese opera, has circulated widely online in recent days, fueling outrage in Ukraine and abroad. She appeared in Mariupol last week as part of a visit by a small group of Chinese media and cultural figures.

The exiled mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boychenko, said the theater, which was hit by a Russian air attack while civilians sheltered there, was a “symbol of tragedy, a symbol of Russia’s war crimes” that should not be used for entertainment.

“People died there, among them children,” he said in a statement. “To turn the theater into a tourist destination and to sing on the bones of the dead is incredible cynicism and disrespect for the memory of the dead civilians.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called the performance “an example of complete moral degradation” and said that Ms. Wang and the other Chinese visitors had entered the city illegally. Continue reading Chinese delegation all in for Russian invasion (2) →

Chinese delegation all in for Russian invasion (1)

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Wang Fang the ‘opera singer’ and her husband the propagandist are doubling down on their support for the bloody Russian invasion of Ukraine. Traveling in the illegally annexed areas of Ukraine occupied by the aggressor, Russia, they now come out and copy Putin’s genocide propaganda directly, calling the heroic Ukrainian defenders ‘Nazis’ and insinuating Ukraine is killing its children — this while the International Criminal Court has issued a formal indictment of Putin for stealing Ukraine’s children, as in genocide.

As long as China’s own government does not immediately reject and withdraw these gross propagandists, it must be assumed that China’s government itself is officially behind this, and the signal they are sending is that China is the ally of fascist Russian aggressor in its illegal invasion, “no limits” as Xi said, so now they are the self-chosen enemy of Europe, the world, and of the UN charter.

We also note that genocide is what China is doing at home, including against the children, in their own simultaneously ongoing genocide that is aiming to erase the Uyghur people.

Wang Fang’s and her husband’s inability to care about either genocide, them choosing instead to go celebrate with the aggressor, is a sad testimony to how huge swaths of Chinese people, lacking true news, just slide defenselessly into the regime propaganda, much like the Nazis under Hitler, or Russians under Stalin or now Putler.

Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Chinese delegation all in for Russian invasion

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According to Russian media, a delegation of Chinese journalists, bloggers and public figures from China is this moment traveling and performing in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, including the so-called “DPR” fake “republic” and in the occupied city of Mariupol! Opera singer Wang Fang even performed a Soviet “Katyusha” song in the Mariupol drama theater where hundreds of people were killed by a Russian missile in March 2022, now being rebuilt by the Russians.

This disgusting behavior is relayed by Ukrainian media:

And, Chinese artist Badiucao reminds us, Wang Fang ‘s husband Zhou Xiaoping 周小平 is a famous propagandist writer singled out for praise by China’s Xi, Continue reading Chinese delegation all in for Russian invasion →

Rock ‘n’ Roll according to the CCP

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Source: NYT (8/13/23)
Rock ’n’ Roll According to the Chinese Communist Party
By Vivian Wang and Weiyi Cai

A man spends decades working a monotonous factory job. His wife grows increasingly insecure about the future. Their son is withdrawn, seemingly struggling at school. Then a building collapses, and their world comes crashing down. It was a story of disillusionment and hopelessness in the industrial city of Shijiazhuang, and it was one of China’s most influential indie rock songs.

Then a local Communist Party group decided to rewrite it.

China’s government has long used censorship to control expression. But sometimes, instead of outright erasing a form or message it doesn’t like, it co-opts it instead, transforming it to spread what the government calls “positive energy.” (Beijing has also promoted patriotic hip-hop.)

The party rewrote nearly the entire song. But can it write lyrics? Continue reading Rock ‘n’ Roll according to the CCP →

Dao Lang’s hit satirical song goes viral

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Source: SCMP (8/5/23)
‘Curse people without dirty words’: China singer lauded for satirical song packed with coded lyrics mocking corruption in showbiz and wider society
Hashtag for song by singer-songwriter Dao Lang, which refers to ‘horses’ and ‘pigs’ gets 6.4 billion views on social media platform Douyin. Online observers say lyrics take aim at influential figures in China’s entertainment industry, problems in wider mainland society
By Fran Lu in Beijing

Billions of people online have viewed a video of a new song by mainland musician Dao Lang, the lyrics of which are being interpreted as a coded attack on sleaze and corruption in the mainland entertainment industry and wider society. Photo: SCMP composite

Billions of people online have viewed a video of a new song by mainland musician Dao Lang, the lyrics of which are being interpreted as a coded attack on sleaze and corruption in the mainland entertainment industry and wider society. Photo: SCMP composite

A new song by mainland pop musician Dao Lang has become a viral phenomenon on social media because its lyrics have been interpreted as being a biting satire on the corrupt nature of show business in China.

Few expected that a new album by the 52-year-old – a singer and songwriter who is widely considered to be past his best – would achieve the level of success that it has, becoming the biggest musical hit of 2023 by far.

Luocha Haishi, one of 11 original songs from the album Folk Song Liaozai, which was released on July 19, has topped the hot list of Chinese music apps, with the song’s hashtag attracting a whopping 6.4 billion views on Douyin.

The song is billed as a combination of Chinese folk songs and stories from the classic satirical fantasy, Liaozhai Zhiyi, or Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, by Qing dynasty (1644-1912) novelist Pu Songling.

It is adapted from a Liaozhai Zhiyi tale of the same title, which tells the story of a businessman’s adventure in a distant kingdom called Luocha, where people regard ugliness as beauty. Continue reading Dao Lang’s hit satirical song goes viral →

Onstage and online, it’s the Party’s rules

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Source: China Media Project (7/25/23)
Onstage and Online, It’s the Party’s Rules
As the pandemic raged, live online performances took off in China, filling the offline gap and giving post-90s audiences a much-needed outlet. Now, say the authorities, it’s time to retune — and reassert control over a growing market.
By David Bandurski

Image by Azchael available at Flickr.com under CC license.

Over the past three years, as the global pandemic and China’s strict lockdown policies closed the curtain on performances at live venues across the country, the spotlight turned instead to streaming platforms, which offered a new way for performing artists to be seen and heard. By June 2022, the audience in China for live online performances through streaming and short video platforms reached 469 million, more than double the audience at the start of the Covid lockdown just two years earlier.

Those numbers point to a market rapidly on the rise. But last week, a state-backed professional organization for the performing arts sector offered a more mixed assessment as it issued a set of new standards for live performance on streaming platforms.

“The rapid development of live online performances has played a positive role in boosting consumption, especially during the difficult period during the Covid-19 pandemic,” said the China Association of Performing Arts (CAPA), which doubles as a control and regulatory body for the performing arts sector. “However, it has also led to problems and negative events. The healthy environment for live online performance needs to be strengthened.” Continue reading Onstage and online, it’s the Party’s rules →

Interview with Yan Jun

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New interview with Beijing-based poet and musician Yan Jun, on Asymptote.
To Save My Own Life With Experimentation: A Conversation with Yan Jun
by Matt Turner

Yan Jun is a poet, experimental musician, impresario, critic—and, notably, a creative driving force in Beijing’s experimental music scene since the early 2000s. In his illustrious career, he has published not only his own poetry and music, but also the work of colleagues who might not easily be seen elsewhere. A local fixture with global presence, he’s been featured journals of both literary and sound culture, played in venues from Beijing to Berlin, and has collaborated with many international musicians. His work stands out for spanning genres and straddling media, and his perspective is important not only as an artist, but also as someone negotiating different traditions.

I first came to know of Yan Jun through his Sub Jam label, and subsequently through his Waterland Kwanyin experimental music night, which featured different musicians every week for improvised performances. Much later, I had the pleasure of co-translating (with Haiying Weng) his 2018 sequence of irreverent poetry, 100 Poems of 10,000 Elephants, and then his new book of prose, Berlin Reflections, a collection of reminiscences and reflections on aesthetics and the function of art. In this following interview, I spoke with him on his various writerly and musical projects, which span intimate experiences of ritualized sound-making to large-scale installations of ambient imagination. 

Matt Turner (MT): To begin, can you say a little bit about your poetry, as well as the relationship of your music to poetry?

Yan Jun (YJ): I started writing poetry when I was thirteen years old, when around half of my classmates were also writing it—it was a bit of a trend in school for a while. Back then, I thought I would be a poet, but I just spent many years pursuing the phantom of being a poet, complete with romantic cliches like being drunk on stage, having a chaotic personal life, that kind of thing.

When I began making music around 2003, the way I wrote changed, and I slowly adopted a rather quiet and reflective style. Of course, my music had already been already going that way; eventually, I no longer wanted to scream out in public as either a musician or poet. After some turns musically, I arrived on a new stage—where I no longer concerned myself with reputation, but instead allowed myself to make stupid, or even failed music. Continue reading Interview with Yan Jun →