Chinese rock makes cultural beachhead with Central Park festival
Chinese rock has gained its first foothold in the US at a mainland-organised festival held in Central Park
Shen Lihui is positively aglow on this gorgeous if crisp Sunday afternoon in Manhattan. Sipping craft beer from a plastic cup on a backstage patio in Central Park's Rumsey Playfield, the head and face - mop-topped and thick-spectacled, respectively - of Modern Sky, the mainland record label-cum-music festival-producing machine, is chatty and relaxed.
Nearby, indie-star tag-team The Both are dropping pleasant pop-rock across the park on this second and last day of Modern Sky Festival NYC, the company's first festival foray outside the mainland. Shen's calm is shocking not only because this is his company's first American event: it also represents the biggest step outside China for yaogun, as Chinese rock'n'roll is known.
Shen's happiness is at least partly related to the fact that it is the New York team's job to stress over the crises that inevitably emerge in any large-scale event. But it also has to do with the ingenious and unexpected way in which The Both's set kicks off. Co-frontperson Ted Leo introduces the band in Putonghua: one can actually observe the words finding their way into and between the ears of the nearly 2,000-strong, primarily ethnic Chinese spectators. This quickly takes on the giddiness that overcomes Chinese audiences around the world when non-Chinese muster a mere "ni hao" to altogether new heights, literally freezing them in place.
This is all part of Shen's plan. "[New Yorkers] never see this many young, hip Chinese in one place," he says. "They're showing up in Central Park, going: 'Where are we?'"
This is at the heart of the festival's mission: confronted with an unknown "other", audiences - and artists - have no choice but to mix and mingle. However, this mingling is artistic rather than demographic.
