Once scorned, jazz is suddenly thriving in the Chinese capital
Shen Lu
When Liu Yuan started playing the sax in the mid-1980s, few people in China knew what jazz was.
There were only four or five professional jazz musicians in Beijing, Liu recalls. It was brutal.
Bars and clubs were rare in the city. Liu says he had to beg the few bars that existed to let them perform.
But the music that originated in the U.S. African-American communities in the late-19th century as an emotional reaction to racial oppression has taken root in Chinas capital over the past two decades and theres now a vibrant and fast-developing jazz scene.
Seeing the potential in the market, New Yorks Blue Note Jazz Club, one of the worlds most renowned jazz clubs, is set to open a branch in Beijing in March 2016.
Steven Li, who manages the Blue Note Beijing project, told CNN that the new club aims to bring in top-level international artists, targeting Chinas ever-growing middle class and overseas returnees. Jazz was regarded in China as bourgeois Western music in the 1960s and 1970s during the turmoil of the countrys Cultural Revolution.
As young hipster Chinese embraced more personal freedom the 1980s, Liu, then a folk-musician in his twenties, learned to play the saxophone through tapes that his Western friends brought back from overseas, while performing rock n roll with Chinese rock legend Cui Jian.
It was a really fascinating time, says Liu. The young people simply were in love with jazz and played hard, and nobody cared about return.
It was mid-1990s, when he became dedicated to jazz, and determined to build a scene in Beijing. He recruited talent from music schools and he and his new jazz scenesters began teaching, learning, and jamming together.
Locally grown jazz Liu, now 55, doesnt play as much as used to. Now he co-manages Beijings only venue dedicated for jazzEast Shore Live Jazz Cafe.Vladimir Putin Goes Shirtless Again For New 2016 Calendar. CNN
