BEIJING UNDERGROUND

May 2003

(Photo by Stacy Kranitz)

Most developing music subcultures borrow from the ghetto or from history, taking a little from this decade, a little from those people, rarely acknowledging their roots. While Beijing’s underground music scene is no exception, it is difficult to say how long its theft, far more fascinating and enterprising than most, will last.

Rock n’ roll initially ‘broke’ fifteen years ago in China as a challenge to both Party-approved folk music and Mandarin bubble-gum pop. It wasn’t until the late 90’s, though, that Beijing saw the birth of its present musical renaissance. At that time, banned and undistributed music began infiltrating China through shipments of surplus black market CD’s partially damaged to prevent resale. Exposed to a startling new influence, a generation of Chinese musicians known as the Dakou (dakou, trash, referring to the damaged CD’s) has suddenly emerged, eager to overthrow history in favor of the sounds of punk, heavy metal, rapcore, and electronica.

Without MTV or radio play, the Dakou have forged an identity and a means of protest out of musical genres long since grown tame in their country of origin. Punks gather in Beijing’s Kentucky Fried Chicken’s to pen anti-government lyrics. Hip-hop artists have begun to craft rhymes out of stubbornly arrhythmic Mandarin. In a country still wary of its devastation by opium, club-goers have discovered Ecstasy and amphetamines. Rising Beijing bands such as Chinese MC Brother and Kill Tomorrow have achieved distribution through local record stores, avoiding regulation in the protective shadow of Mando-Pop, the very music they disdain. And every night, young urban Chinese, mohawked, pierced, blenched, and often unruly, go searching for a novel and tenuous freedom in the mosh pits.

While the Dakou are strongly attracted to the aggression of hip-hop and punk, their innocent and awkward rebellion more closely resembles that of young white R&B fans in the 1950’s. Unfortunately, this analogy appears lost on the Chinese government, which has begun limiting the growth of underground music by denying performance permits and severely punishing club-drug use. Considering the cultural suppression already being enacted in anticipation of the 2008 Olympics, the Dakou’s existence may find itself suffering the quintessential rock ‘n’ roll fate: living fast and dying young.

A writer based in Los Angeles, Justin Clark spent four months last year in Beijing.