The year's Beijing Pop Festival features big names, such as
Supergrass, Placebo and Heavy Metal artist Sebastian Bach.
Music promoter Jason Magnus wants to make Beijing's annual pop
festival as famous as Glastonbury in UK or Woodstock and Coachella
in the United States. The young Hong Kong-based Harvard graduated
started working on the project in 2003.
Last year he founded the Rock For China Entertainment Ltd and
forged a partnership with the Beijing Music Festival to present the
first Beijing Pop Festival at Chaoyang Park. A dozen bands from the
US and UK, including Ian Brown, the frontman for Stone Roses,
thrilled locals with a fresh experience of live rock music.
Magnus then promised the Beijing Pop Festival would be developed
into a full-blown, non-stop, weekend festival featuring more
headline artists.
If the line-up of next weekend's pop festival is anything to go
by, the Hong Kong entrepreneur has delivered again.
The second Beijing Pop Festival will be staged again at Chaoyang
Park on September 9 and 10, and features 28 bands from all over the
world belting it out on three stages. Chinese fans will enjoy a
diversity of genres from the glam rock of Placebo to the British
pop of Supergrass. There is the heavy metal sound of Sebastian
Bach, garage soul of DHAT (Japan) and the retro electro rock of Don
Juan Dracula (Norway).
In addition to these big names, who headline many of the major
festivals, this year's Beijing Pop Festival will also present many
rising artists from around the globe including New York's Johnny
Hi-Fi, Detroit's Mozella and Swedish starlet Karin Park.
?"The major international music festivals always present
legendary bands and artists, so we try to bring more and more bands
of high international reputation to Beijing Pop Festival year by
year," said Magnus.
"But it does not mean that we only invite the established
foreign bands. We also invite the rising local bands and provide
them stage to show their talents and communicate with their
counterparts. We hope to make the festival a window through which
the world outside China knows more about Chinese rock and pop
music."
When it comes to the latest trends in music, the majority of
people from the Chinese mainland would first think of karaoke, or
pop songs from Taiwan and Hong Kong. However, there are many young
Chinese who are fascinated by rock, punk, rap, heavy metal, jazz,
hip-hop, reggae and others genres.
Meanwhile, rock and roll has developed in China for some two
decades. Some rock bands are rising to the mass market scene. But
the current situation is that most of them can only perform at the
pubs or at small events and are limited to small audiences.
In past few years, a few rock festivals have been held in the
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Helan Mountains in the Ningxia
Hui Autonomous Region and Yulong Mountain in Yunnan Province.
"It's a shame that the urban community, which appreciates rock
and other genres of music have very few live concerts except for
Hong Kong and Taiwan pop, while the rockers have few public stages
to share their talents," Magnus said. "As China's cultural centre,
Beijing, which is surrounded by top universities, hosts a diverse
of cultural events every year except for a large scale rock/pop
festival."
Before he established Rock For China Entertainment Ltd, Magnus
considered staging the pop festival in Shanghai or Hong Kong. He
finally chose Beijing, because he believed Beijing had the best
public ground for rock music.
(Chinaculture.org September 2, 2006)
