Sugar Jar
Sugar Jar at 798
http://www.sugarjar.cn
Sugar Jar is a small but remarkable place to find independent music. (clwc)
Read the New York Times article about Sugar Jar (click on continue below)
Source: NYT (10/27/07):
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/27/ar...ic/27expe.html
Growing Underground Is Making Noise in China
By BEN SISARIO
BEIJING ‹ Down a short alley in the sprawling, tourist-mobbed 798 art
district here ‹ a complex of 1950s-era military factories converted into
galleries and studios ‹ is a tiny shop that serves as one of the centers of
Chinaıs small but thriving experimental music scene.
[Buddha 1 (mp3):
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/audiosr.../buddha01.mp3]
The store, Sugar Jar, is barely big enough to accommodate a half-dozen
customers, and one wall displays all the essentials of the genre, from discs
of abstract electronica and brutal noise-rock to anthologies with bold
titles like ³China: The Sonic Avant-Garde.² Playing samples from his stock,
the proprietor, a lanky, soft-spoken man named Lao Yang, noted proudly that
his store is one of the only spots in all of Beijing to buy much of this
music.
Like Sugar Jar, avant-garde music occupies a minuscule niche in Chinese
society, overshadowed by the larger and vastly more lucrative world of
contemporary visual art. Only a few dozen musicians around the country make
up this circle, but their work has begun to attract international attention,
and over the last several years a steady stream of Western musicians,
including Brian Eno and the New York guitarist Elliott Sharp, have visited
and given their blessing.
³The feeling of the scene in Beijing is exciting and reminds me of New York
in 1979,² said Mr. Sharp, who last performed here in April. ³Thereıs a
tangible sense of discovery and transgression.²
Though China may be in the beginnings of a new love affair with consumerism,
rigid cultural controls are still in place, and discovery and transgression
are values not widely held by the Communist government. Following President
Hu Jintaoıs call for moral purity in society, broadcasters have come under
increasing pressure lately to keep potentially subversive material ‹ which
means anything but sugary, shallow pop ‹ off the airwaves. At the end of the
Communist Party Congress in October, the official Chinese Music Association
denounced the ³vulgar² pop music reaching the nationıs youth through the
Internet.
Growing out of rock and electronic music, and operating outside the
state-supported classical sphere, the experimental scene in China has
existed for barely a decade. Its hub is Beijing, with the electronic
performers Wang Fan, Sulumi, Yan Jun [see
http://mclc.osu.edu/rc/pubs/yanjun.htm] and FM3; Sun Wei, who creates sound
collages under the name 718; and Dou Wei, one of Chinaıs biggest rock stars,
whose solo career includes numerous spacey, dreamlike albums that
incorporate traditional instrumentation.
Shanghai has one of the most extreme noise groups, Torturing Nurse, which
sometimes performs with a female member in a nurseıs uniform. Huanqing, from
Sichuan Province, makes field recordings from the hinterlands of China and
manipulates them with electronics.
Though Western styles have influenced them, the Chinese musicians have for
the most part developed in isolation, and their work is flush with the
excitement of creating a new kind of music with no previous national model.
³Chinese people donıt know the best music system,² said Mr. Yan, who is also
an influential critic. ³There are no rules. No teacher. I can use this, I
can use that ‹ thatıs all interesting. In the West everything was created
already. But here we donıt know that.²
In Beijing the subculture that surrounds this music is so small that most of
the major participants often turn up at a weekly concert and gathering at
2Kolegas, a bar inside a drive-in movie complex on the east side of town.
One recent night Mr. Yan led an audience-participation performance that
involved strips of plastic sound triggers laid on the floor, to be danced
on, stepped on or smacked.
It could have been a musical game of the kind that flourished in downtown
New York lofts in the 1970s, except for the overhead ambient music with
Chinese instrumentation that played through a sound system. Among those in
the crowd were the members of FM3, who frequently employ Chinese sound
elements, as well as Wu Na, who plays the zitherlike guqin.
Despite the new openness of Chinese society and its arts, the stultifying
influence of the state is still felt in mass entertainment like the candied
pop that fills the airwaves, and even in the often dull music coming out of
the universities.
Kenneth Fields, a professor of electronic music at the Central Conservatory
of Music in Beijing, complained of a lack of creativity and free thought
among students at his and other universities. The most exciting new music in
China, he said, comes from the underground.
³Media is very centrally controlled at the top; at the bottom it seems to be
a mirror of anarchy,² Professor Fields said. ³Thereıs no innovation at the
top, but on the bottom thereıs a lot of informal freedoms.²
The experimental and underground rock musicians represent the most creative
contingent of Chinese music, and the scene has had its first bona fide
international hit: FM3ıs Buddha Machine, a device slightly bigger than an
iPod that plays nine electronic drones, has sold nearly 50,000 units around
the world and already spawned remix albums.
Christiaan Virant, an American-born musician who is half of FM3, arrived at
2Kolegas in a spiffy black suit with a while silk scarf and a white Panama
hat. (The other half is a Chinese man, Zhang Jian.) His new prosperity, he
said, is ³all 100 percent thanks to the Buddha Machine.²
But this music has received scant attention at home, from the marketplace
or, for good or ill, from the government. The Buddha Machine is not widely
available in China, because the low price demanded by the domestic market
would make the cost of distributing it prohibitive, Mr. Virant said. (It is,
of course, for sale at Sugar Jar.)
Like most pockets of avant-garde music, the Chinese musicians have no real
commercial prospects. And while relatively few links exist to contemporary
visual arts, that world and its moneyed clientele provide essential
ancillary income.
Artists who might have minimal record sales ‹ meaning hundreds of copies, or
even fewer ‹ can make money doing sound installations at galleries and,
increasingly, through commissions from real estate developers looking to add
a cool factor to their buildings by using sound art commissioned from
underground musicians.
³There are huge amounts of rich people in China who lavish huge amounts of
money on weird stuff,² Mr. Virant said.
The attention did not seem so lavish one recent afternoon at Sugar Jar. Over
a few hours several curious gallerygoers wandered into the shop and looked
around at the CDs for sale, though none bought anything. Mr. Lao said he
operates the store without a proper retail license ‹ that, he said, would
necessitate stocking music for mainstream tastes, an intolerable concession
‹ and until recently slept in the back.
He said he had no illusions that the music he sells will be accepted by a
mass audience. He added that what he hopes for most is support from the
government in the form of public festivals and other profile-raising events.
³Even though this music canıt be accepted by most of the people,² he said,
³this is the real music of China.²
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/clyne003/art...ol_places.html