Beijing Debate

Everybody came. Big group. 15 people, 3 translators, 2 camerawomen, me and Gabrielle.

Most of the people are working in the musicscene:
Techno/house, Chinese Indipop, a Dj and a Hiphop gang, a skater and a few students.
We had a long discussion about music and its role in the world, in China, and in their lifes.
It is hard to make a living with only music in China, all of the people have a regular job as well, accept the hiphop gang, “We just hang around during the day”.
The good thing is there are enough and great places to perform. They all feel Being is a very interesting place now to make music, a lot of things to be discovered, new styles coming up. Chinese music could very well be the next big thing in the world of music, but than, Chinese music is very diverse.
From sweet Honkong-shit to post- punk, all the styles are there.

All the kids seem to feel a genuine love for Beijing. They would not rather be somewhere else. Not n the West not in Shanghai. Shanghai is business. The DJ told me that he is playing there for 1000-2000 people a night from 1pm-6pm, but 95% of them are foreigners. Only 5% are Chinese. With the hiphop gang in Beijing it is 50-50. In smaller clubs, like Mao’s we were in, the audience is mostly Chinese.
There is sort of a competition, a love-hate relation between Shanghai and Beijing, as there is in any country between the big cities.

Than we talked about images the West has of China, about being angry and how to get over it (express yourselve!)and about being gay. It became clear to me that the tolerance I felt on The Boat a few days ago is a thin layer. Some of the debaters were very much against gay people and questioned me about the attitude of Amsterdam about it. They heard about the gay marriages and adopting children by gaypeople in Amsterdam
“ We think it is not natural”. I told them that i think the Amsterdam attitude is pretty cool. The other debaters agreed with that.

Themes of the lyrics were love, childhood memories of TV series and games in the '80s, poverty, hunger as passion, life on the streets in Beiing, in short: they are making music because they like it , to make people dance and to express themselves.
As one of the musicians said:” Music has no country, it is just music in itself, we just make music, our music, about us, about the world”.

Links:

Hedgehog band

www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%E5%88%BA%E7%8C%AC%E4%B9%90%E9%98%9F&search_type=&aq=f

milk&coffee

www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%E7%89%9B%E5%A5%B6%E5%92%96%E5%95%A1&search_type=&aq=f

The youth

www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%E9%9D%92%E5%B9%B4%E5%B0%8F%E4%BC%99%E5%AD%90&search_type=&aq=f

spanline
www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2lR0C5VV0M&feature=related
Lvxingtuan
video.baidu.com/v?ct=301989888&rn=20&pn=0&db=0&s=8&word=%C2%C3%D0%D0%CD%C5%C0%D6%B6%D3

We will edit the debate the next weeks and it will be on line as soon as possible.