There’s clearly a western bias to the fact that before Covid the only thing that non-Chinese people knew about Wuhan, if anything (and I’m including myself in that), is that it’s the Detroit of the Chinese music scene. I asked a colleague from Wuhan about it once and she said she had never heard anything about it at all.
That said, this morning Google Nest read me some variation of this story about how the indie live houses opening up again, and I was just glad that there was a national news story about Wuhan that was about anything other than Covid – I guess this does also count as a “life getting back to normal” Covid story, but I’ll take it.
I want NYCs live houses to be reopening, if only we had a responsible and reasonable governing body that felt the safety of it’s people is more important than the flow of capital :deeper-sadness:
You are right. I suppose the US doesn’t really have a good counterpart to Wuhan’s thriving manufacturing industry and thriving music scene. I guess the closest analogy would be taking the Detroit of the 1950s and mixing it with the music of the Twin Cities in the 80s (Husker Du, The Replacements, and so on). Since Wuhan is a runner-up tier one city and Chicago is the second city it’s probably the best point of comparison today
We could also compare it to Austin, but then again let’s not.
Detroit like Motown or Detroit like Eminem? Got any tunes as examples?
If you’re looking for Chinese rap then Sichuan is where it’s at. Last I checked Higher Brothers were still on top: https://youtu.be/23p11nppcyo. They started out a little gimmicky but got good real fast.
If you’re looking for 90s altrock vibes I’m a big fan of Beijing-based Hedgehog (they’ve recorded with Steve Albino and toured on the US west coast): https://youtu.be/Xnocas7VkKo
If you’re looking for Explosions in the Sky/Godspeed post-rock…lol I dunno there’s too many of them to choose. This album from Wang Wen out of Dalian is my personal faves, it’s goddamn fantastic: https://youtu.be/8MSQ-y3l58Q
Detroit like MC5 and the Stooges.
The article mentions these guys as the old guard of the garage rock scene: 生命之饼 (Bread of Life): https://youtu.be/AstEkQKzD4w
As it happens, depending on the song I’d put them somewhere on the intersection of the Pogues and Gogol Bordello.
So what are the Austin, Seattle, Chicago, Nashville, and Portland of China’s music scene?
Shanghai is Portland. Seattle is Beijing. I already said in another response that Chicago/Detroit/Minneapolis is Wuhan, so I guess Wuhan is the entire Midwest?
Austin is tricky. I’m going to say Dalian in the NE just for kicks since the post-rock band Wen Wang is from there. Plus I think they got a pretty high profile fashion week a few years back, and when I was first in China it seemed weirdly expensive and hard to find a hostel in Dalian, so I never went. Just like I’ve never been to Austin. So let’s go with Dalian.
Lol this is all just a bunch of free association (some of them aren’t wrong though). Also I saw a good folk band at a quasi-open mic in Xi’an once, so I’m comfortable saying that Xi’an is Nashville. Plus, I had a boss from Dongbei (NE China, kind of the stereotypical man’s man land of China), and he got really drunk at a department party once and nearly wept while singing John Denver’s “Country Road,” so I think it checks out.
