These days, I find myself busy in the struggle to find a place to live in Beijing. And it is, no doubt, a struggle. As James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem might say, "Beijing, I love you/ but you're bringing me down." I jest. But, at times like this, I'm extra glad to have a huge repository of Chinese rock available for streaming on Baidu Play. And so, here I have my ode to Chinese rock, the cure for the Beijing Apartment Shortage Blues:
Most associations people have with Chinese music are undoubtably with Peking Opera:
And while there's a ton of great traditional Chinese music out there (specifically a lot of Daoist music utilitizing the Chinese zither), there's also a lot of great indie and punk rock in the Sinosphere as well. Here's just a brief primer:
A lot of China's contemporary rock scene owes a huge debt of gratitude to early metal/folk-metal acts like Tang Dynasty (唐朝乐队), who deftly used Chinese traditional leitmotifs and instrumentation in creating a truly native rock tradition (I'm not a metalhead, by any means, but these guys were really great musicians, and wrote really good music):
In more recent years, former members of Tang Dynasty have moved on to other projects. Most notably, Kaiser Kuo, the guitarist and co-founder of the group (as well as the host of the truly excellent Sinica Podcast on current affairs in China) went on to found a new group called Sping and Autumn (春秋乐队). Spring and Autumn follow very much in the vein of metal with a flavor of Chinese folk music, and often draw on literary themes or Daoist/Confucian/Chinese traditional imagery in their lyrics. Take for instance this song "Between the Mountains and the Sea":
Or this song, "Legend":
Or even this song, "Tianxia" which draws on a line from one of my very favorite contemporary Chinese poets, Gu Cheng, in its lyrics:
Beyond metal, Beijing has also been home to a growing number of punk and indie acts over the past several years. For instances, there's the band Hedgehog (刺猬), offering up some pretty solid garage rock that at times almost reminds me of early work from The Smashing Pumpkins, or The Pixies:
There's also the dance-punk of groups like Queen Sea Big Shark:
Or the more traditional, driving punk of a group like PK-14
And last, but certainly not least, the Carsick Cars, a band whose music reminds me of acts like The Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, the Japandroids.
Needless to say, this only scratches the surface (notice we didn't even touch on Chinese hip-hop... there's some of that, too). There's plenty out there to love. But there's more than enough here to give you a little taste of what's out there. So plug in your headphones, and enjoy!