Princess Nokia, Thurston Moore in eclectic line-up at Shanghai Concrete & Grass Music Festival

Name changes, headliner no-shows and torrential downpours. As it approaches its third year, Shanghai’s Concrete & Grass Music Festival may still be in its infancy, but already it’s had a colourful history within the context of mainland China’s general climate of censorship and uncertainty surrounding live music events.

Yet organisers Split Works are determined to make the festival take root, and so on the weekend of September 16-17, Concrete & Grass returns to the Shanghai Rugby Football Club with a typically eclectic mix of rock (The Thurston Moore Group, Diiv, Toy), hip hop (Princess Nokia, Ho99o9), electronica (Jai Wolf, Mumdance) and randomness (Japanese idols-with-attitude Gacharic Spin).

It might not be a line-up with as many eye-catching names as previous editions, but it’s a collection of artists that rewards exploration. And in many ways, it’s quite an achievement that the festival is being held at all.

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After Split Works’ Black Rabbit Festival was cancelled in 2012 due to concerns over “the politically sensitive September/October period”, the Shanghai and Beijing-based promoters got back into the festival game in 2015 with Echo Park. Headliners included My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way, pop singer Kelis and hip-hop duo Black Star (Yasiin Bey and Talib Kweli), though after Bey (previously known as Mos Def) pulled out at the last minute, the festival ended with Kweli taking to the stage alone.

However, Bey’s somewhat predictable refusal to get on a plane to China paled in comparison to the headaches of last year’s festival. Less than three months before the 2016 edition, Split Works announced another name change after what they termed “a sharp, threatening letter” from music platform Echo App “ordering us to cease and desist using the name for a festival that we’d already launched seven months before.”

Having rushed to get word out about the now-named Concrete & Grass Music Festival and its headliners Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks, The Cribs and Hong Kong’s Edison Chen, the organisers suffered a further setback when two typhoons swept through the region in the preceding days. The effects of the first essentially undid their initial site preparations overnight, while the second brought heavy rain to the festival on Saturday night, curtailing the second stage’s schedule.

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You’d think they were due a break this year, but a slower-than-usual permit approval process combined with indecision from some artists meant that the line-up was only fully released on August 29, a month later than planned.