Results tagged “folk” from Andy Best

Tonight was the 'warm songs for a winter's day" folk night at Yuyintang.

This was a rough continuation of the Dew 11 showcase involving some of the same artists and organisers. Read about the first show here: Lushui Shiyi CD release

This time around the big draw was folk artist Dongzi. You should start by listening to his Western China flavoured songs at his page right here.

I want to start with the good. These guys are very similar to the Miniless collective in that they do good marketing. They have flashy tickets, flyers and a selection of their artist's CDs that are always available at the shows. Yuyintang was full again, I got there quite early but was in the 180's.

Here was the complete line up:

冬子 (Dongzi)
乔小刀 (Qiu Xiaodao)
cover people
蘑菇红 (Mogu Hong)
吴雪颖 (Wu Xueying)
candy*dreamer
P&P

Of these, only Dongzi and Mogu Hong have decent pages. If anyone knows of others that I'm not aware of, post them in the comments.

The show was actualy a big let down. The artists and the sound was all taken care of by the show organisers but it was misjudged. There were seven bands on, five before main draw Dongzi, and they were allowed to ramble on, talk for minutes between songs and generally play to the front row of their friends as if there wasn't 200 paying punters right behind them. The sound was so quiet that acts couldn't be heard at all at the back of the packed room. 

Before I add the final remark, regular readers know I almost never say negative things in that annoying paternal way that so many scenesters do. In fact, Brad was half joking with me that my big upping of everyone verges on misrepresentation. Alas, this time there's no way to not say it without being dishonest - a good half the artists tonight were simply not competent enough live to go in front of a paying audience. And I have got very very low expectations. I'm happy to see any band and hang with friends ay YYT. A couple of artists who sound ok on their MP3s took the stage with an acoustic guitar and played so poorly that the music was merely a tinny buzz, not to mention painfully out of tune - accompanied by a barely audible weak whisper.

As you will know if you went to the page, Dongzi is an interesting artist and despite the quiet sound he was worth the wait to hear. Also, Yuyintang have made some mid-week changes. The stage is now higher and the bar has been cleverly extanded via a hole in the wall so you can stay in the main hall and get a drink. Both of these are reactions to the turn out for Sound Toy last week. 

Some classier venues, such as Dream Factory in the Tong Le Fang development, have managed to get around a total ban this month. And so, we have a show in my neck of the woods before the official restart next weekend. Dream Factory is a really good venue that is cursed with being in an expensive up-market corporate venture. They only get people at shows when events there are promoted by other people in the scene, such as Abe Deyo or Yuyintang, who have more idea how to do it. Brad Ferguson has his rescheduled PK-14 show coming up there and Yuyintang also have a big back-to-business multi band party there next week.

Wang Juan is a gifted indie-folk artist with two CDs out now. I add 'indie' to the genre there because the term folk here is a bit of a casualty. I'm not going to divert into some history thing but needless to say that Wang Juan is a guitar act that writes their own stuff and has no patriotic opera songs or old instruments - but they are still making music that represents a more traditional side of their own cultural experience.

And with that, why not just have a listen - here.

The turn out was not so good but enough to put a few seated rows in front of the stage. It was a diverse crowd that included Zhang Haisheng and Gemnil Lin from Yuyintang (the organisers) and artist Popil. I previously blogged about Popil's Eno show with Hard Queen here.

Wang Juan and her band are excellent musicians and they did a super tight set of beautiful compositions. I've been playing music myself since I was 13 and at one point was hypnotised by a duet that featured Wang Juan's Chinese classical singing chops and some virtuoso guitar magic. But aside from the appreciation factor, as i've said before, I'm a rock fan. It was guitar-ish enough to keep me going till the end but when it comes down to it - I get more from a song about breaking up then realising your favourite sweater is trapped at your ex's house than I do from a song about a small bird flying over the Xinjiang landscape or what have you.