Shenzhen is a starting point for bands trying to make it on the mainland

It's a Friday night and there's a good turnout at the Brown Sugar Jar in Shenzhen. But while customers in other pubs are partying up a storm or noisily playing drinking games, the crowd here is far quieter. Ensconced in comfortable sofas, they're all listening to a Canadian soul-jazz outfit called Ask Your Sister.

"We have a pretty good audience tonight and many of them are very open-minded," says the group's singer Kamila Nasr. "We focus on so-called feel-good music. The audiences may not understand the lyrics, but they can feel the energy from our performance."

Brown Sugar Jar or Hong Tang Guan is one of several pubs and live music venues in Shenzhen that regularly showcase foreign indie bands to attract a young, affluent clientele that is willing to pay for more diverse sounds. While the gigs may not be very lucrative for the bands, they welcome the chance to cultivate a following on the mainland.

Most Hong Kong bar owners see little value in bringing in relatively unknown acts from countries as far afield as the Czech Republic, Iceland, Mexico, Ukraine and other places they might not have heard of. But their Shenzhen counterparts think differently.

Setting ticket prices at between 50 yuan (HK$63) and 120 yuan, the performances can attract up to 500 people, depending on the genre and the performers' popularity.

"We're optimistic about the local market for indie live music," says Chen Mingmin, who started work co-ordinating shows for Brown Sugar Jar a year ago. "There are many underground music fans in the Pearl River Delta region, and we have now opened two more music pubs, one in Shenzhen and the other in Dongguan."

Wang Yahui, who was a show co-ordinator for three years, says there are about 15,000 people in Shenzhen who regularly attend music performances.