Mandarin Course

Cui Jian 崔健King of Sino Rock Chinese Music 中國搖滾Art Rock Avant Garde Non Pop

A clip of a live concert in front of a 50000+ audience in Shandong city of Jinan province. CJ’s usual cast of Liu Yuan on woodwinds, Eddie Randriamampionana (i’m pretty sure i got that right!) on guitar, Beibei on drums, and guest bassist Wu Junde (of the hardcore industrial rock band Tongue {Shetou)) filling in for then regular bassist Zhang Ling; CJ’s current bassist is the upright-string jazz bass persona Liu Yue. It was a big night of colorful rock music renditions featuring bands like: Tang Dynasty, Hei Bao, The Flowers, Hang on the Box, Zero Point, Wang Feng and 43 Baojia St., Sick Pupa, and etc. Like in a variety of other Cui Jian songs, his lyrics depict a story that appear to be something about his past love and personal relationships, but as always, they’re quite cryptic and may be interpreted in a larger and more worldly sense; CJ’s “lover” may be an entity or mindset that we all have to deal with at certain points in our lives, and this/these entities may boast a certain high ideology, but in real life and practice, we seek reform from this/these high-ideology. Cui Jian is very much the rare push-the-envelope avant-garde musician-songwriter and his creations very much grooves and speaks universally for all people of our planet Earth. NOTE (response to the question of “avant-garde”): Cui Jian is among a legion of modern music-artists that represent a cutting edge (and cut-throat) avant-garde music composition and performance; in this particulary video, I’ve …