Jazz strikes a chord in China again

The genre, introduced by expats, fell into disrepute in 1949 after Beijing's ties with the US soured, but a new set of fans is filling nightclubs

Saxophonist Liu Yuan, left, peforming at the East Shore Live Jazz in Beijing, China.

BEIJING // Liu Yuan and his band play to a packed audience every weekend in Beijing's East Shore Live Jazz. The jazz club that he opened in 2006 is one of a growing number of venues where Chinese go to listen to everything from big band tunes to Latin jazz fusion.

"It's amazing how many people come. You have to book a table well in advance," the bespectacled saxophone player says proudly. The jazz scene in China was not always so hot. Indeed, jazz has had an erratic history here. In the roaring 1920s, US expatriates brought the swing jazz and the bands to cosmopolitan centres such as Shanghai. Some of the world's top musicians, the trumpet player Buck Clayton among them, became part of the music scene and China produced its own musicians.

But when the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949 and relations with the United States soured in the decades that followed, jazz fell into disrepute. By the time the political chaos of the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966, it was completely banned. Even the villains in movies were shown in jazz bars. "China was in a Cold War with the United States and jazz was synonymous with United States. You could get into trouble if you played it," said Liu.

Only after ties with the United States were normalised in 1978, did jazz make a slow comeback. "When I first became interested in jazz, my family tried to discourage me," Liu said. Born into a family of well-known musicians, Liu was the fourth generation to play the suona, the traditional Chinese horn. He later went on to study at Beijing's prestigious Central Conservatory of Music. While the music was traditional, the opportunities it gave him were crucial for what happened later.

Selected to be a member of the Beijing Song and Dance Ensemble, Liu had the chance to travel and in 1978 he had his first taste of jazz while performing in Romania. A fellow socialist country, Romania had a different type of music from the patriotic marching tunes of Communist China, Liu quickly discovered: it had jazz. "There was a jazz group in the hotel lobby in Bucharest and we hung out and listened to them after our performances. I felt, wow, here was a music that suited me," he said.

As one of modern China's leading and pioneering jazz musicians, Liu, 48, has struggled to bring the music home. There were no teachers, no music tapes and no instruments. "I saw a saxophone in the military band, but we weren't allowed to even touch it," he said, laughing over a cup of tea in the office of the East Shore. But with the launch of China's economic reforms in the 1980s, instruments went on sale and in 1984 Liu bought his first saxophone. A US diplomat who was also a jazz musician taught him the rudimentary skills and had him listen to taped music.

"I was in my 20s and we were living in a closed society, so everything we listened to was interesting. Jazz was an old music, but for us it was new," he said. In 1989 he moved to the United States with his American wife and hung out in jazz clubs. It was a discouraging experience. "I felt American society needed the best and I didn't feel I was the best," he said. That realisation sent him back to China after only a year. "I wasn't afraid I couldn't be good, but I felt I could progress little by little in China," he said. Back in China, the only group performing publicly was in Shanghai's Peace Hotel. The Old Men Jazz Band had an average age of 70 and played standard jazz from the 1930s and 1940s. Liu went to listen to them, but felt the music was too conventional. "In China we were living in a time warp. For three decades we had not heard jazz so all we knew was the jazz of the 1940s," said Liang Heping, a jazz historian. In 1994 Liu launched his own group, the Liu Yuan Jazz Band, and had his first gig in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel in Beijing. "We didn't care that it was the lobby of a hotel. We were happy just to be playing our music," he said. That year Beijing organised its first jazz festival and invited local and international jazz musicians. Liu's band was the only Chinese group that performed. "At that time Chinese went to the festival to listen to the jazz groups from abroad," said Huang Yong, a bass player, who now organises Beijing Ninegates, an annual, privately funded jazz festival. "But now we have reached the stage where we want the bands from overseas to listen and play with our groups," he said. With the music improving, the audience is growing. "When the jazz festival started in Beijing, the audience was made up mainly of expatriates and Chinese musicians. Now we have younger white-collared workers buying tickets. That's a good sign because they have the money to support the development of jazz," Huang said. According to Liang, the jazz historian, there are now more than 10 jazz bands in Beijing alone and even more jazz bars. Improvisation has also taken off and some musicians are writing and recording their own music. "Jazz is a complicated music. The musicians and the audience need time to develop and the more China opens up, the faster we will develop. It's like western food. Before we didn't eat western food. Now we eat it all the time," said Liang, who is also a jazz pianist. "More people will study jazz. It's just a matter of time," Liu said. "Before we weren't allowed to even play it. Now there are no more restrictions, we can travel abroad freely and Chinese youth now go to study jazz at the Berklee College of Music" in Boston, he said. The phenomenon of jazz has indeed taken off. Jazz blog writers and websites have sprung up in China and jazz clubs and bars have opened in major cities. Private music schools have also been started, like the Beijing Modern Music School and the JZ School in Shanghai, which now offer classes in jazz to aspiring musicians. Liu has taught young musicians but admitted he warns them it is not an easy nor lucrative profession. "I tell young musicians that they should not choose to live off jazz but rather they should live for jazz," he said. With audiences growing and musicians improving, it is clear the Chinese jazz scene is finally coming into its own. "We now can say we have Chinese jazz, though it's still a young jazz," Huang said. * The National