Chinese rock the Kenny G

Since returning to Australia a few months ago, I'd stopped writing my blogs about China. However, the other day I was in a music store and came accross a Kenny G album. Now usually I'd breeze past the Kenny G collection without a sideways glance, but that day I was suddenly filled with memories of the consistent droning of Kenny in the background of multitudes of Chinese shopping centres, offices, metro stations, waiting rooms, restaurants, in fact anywhere where complete silence is not required. Just recalling that little quirk about China reminded me of all the other little quirks
and funny observations about China life that I never got around to writing about, usually due to not being in the right frame of mind and downright laziness! But now that I'm back in Oz and have a bit of sprare time on my hand, I thought I'd try to finish off what I started. Besides, I think it's much more interesting than writing useless facebook status updates about what I'm having for dinner tonight, or writing about my routine and familiar life in Oz. I'll leave that to a Chinese national doing a working holiday here in Oz to write about the quirks of Aussie culture and society.

So why Kenny G? Who the hell knows? Maybe he did a tour of China back before the industrial boom in the 80s. I certainly don't recall seeing him at the Beijing Games openning ceremony. He is one of several foreign artists that seem to get a lot more air time and exposure
there. It's probably either clever marketing by their promoters or whether a particular artist's music appeals to the chinese ear. Of course, the biggest pop stars past and present, like Michael Jack
son and Beyonce are well known and received, but certain other artists seem to be mentioned and feature more consistently than others in the media, like Linkin Park, Sarah Brightman, Taylor Swift and Avril Lavigne. Avril, as they simply call her there, is absolutely huge in China. My theory behind her marketability is that she's small and doll-like (moreso in her early career), which is a look that many Asian girls like. It can't be all about her music, because most of her tunes sound nothing like the usual Mando mushy-soft breeze love tunes the local artists churn out.

Certain genres of music are more popular than others in China. As mentioned above, the Chinese soft mushy love songs dominate the Chinese music scene, so naturally western pop songs get more air time, as does soft rock. You won't hear a lot of hard core rock, or heavy metal or grunge there. Rock is still catching up to the other genres after many years of government censorship back in the late 80's and early 90's after Tianamen Square, being seen as spreading anti-establishment sentiments.
Rock groups (Asian and Western) though are becoming more and more popular in mainland China, and one of the biggest bands amongst my students is a rock taiwan group called 五月天 May Day, who refreshingly don't exclusively sing songs about breaking up or gentle love.

One last thing about music is that the Chinese love to play music scores from movie soundtracks in a lot of promotional material, especially the Jerry Brockheimer action flick, The Rock. They seem to have a penchant for the melodramatic, and what better way to promote a sale, or display the alert readiness of the Chinese Custom official by playing a bit of car-chase music in the background.