Mapping China: Music - Cities & Scenes: Shanghai Scene

Chinese Popular music started in Shanghai in the 1920s. During the 1980s Shanghai re-emerged as the PRC’s economic center and, with reference to the 1919-1949 period, reestablished itself as a liberal, cosmopolitan and world-class entertainment city.

Shanghai Jazz 1920-1949

Colonialism. The French Concession and the Anglo-American-run Shanghai International Concession were major hubs for international trade with China. In these areas an entertainment industry sprang up that provided employment for White-Russians and Jews who fled Europe as well as American jazz bands.
Modernity. Since the 19th century missionaries, and later military and educational reforms brought choral singing to China. Print media helped spreading songs written in cypher notation. These efforts focused on making China a strong nation after European and Japanese examples, and many melodies were adapted from these places.
Hybridization. Li Jinhui is often credited as the father of Chinese popular music. He started by composing children songs inspired by folk songs, disseminated through magazines such as Little Friend, founded in 1922. He also staged musicals with his Bright Moon Troupe. Within a few years Li’s daughter Li Minghui, ‘golden voice’ Zhou Xuan and other adolescent girls of this group went on to perform in nightclubs and become China’s first pop stars.
Music Industry. Multinational record companies such as Pathé, RCA Victor and Columbia established early subsidiaries in Shanghai. Shanghai had over sixty radio stations by the mid-1930s, further enabling the emergence of individual voices and hence the first pop stars, including next to Zhou Xuan also Li Lili, Bai Guang and Li Xianglan (Shirley Yamaguchi).
Cinema. The music and film industries were indistinguishable. Peking opera and other local stage traditions show that in China music is always combined with narrative and visual elements. Prior to the introduction of the word yinyue through Japanese translations of European concepts, there had been no separate category of music in the Chinese language. Whereas cypher notation, radio and gramophone isolated sound from its visual context, the emerging film industry reestablished this connection.
- The first Chinese talkie was Singing Girl Red Peony (1931), starring Hu Die.
- “When Does the Gentleman Return” became a hit after Zhou Xuan sang it in Three Stars, Half Moon (1937), but it was still included in another film in 1939.
- In 1937 Zhou Xuan also starred in Yuan Muzhi’s Street Angel, singing the now classic songs “The Four Seasons Song” and “The Wandering Songstress”.
Politics and Mass Music. With political tension rising in the run-up to the Second World War, Shanghai-style pop music was increasingly criticized as decadent, escapist and pornographic. In Leftist Cinema stars such as Zhou Xuan embodied the hardship of China’s underclass and even the ‘rape’ of its daughters, inviting the audience to come into action. Musically, choral singing regained prominence.
- The March of the Volunteers, a film song composed by Li Jinhui’s student Nie Er which would later become the national anthem of the PRC.
- Anti-Japanese songs, “The East is Red” (adopted in 1937 from a folksong in Yan’an) and other songs that would become part of the PRC’s mass music heritage. Since the 1980s this musical heritage is called ‘red songs’.

In 1949 the CCP moved those media companies that hadn’t relocated to Hong Kong or Taiwan to Beijing.

Contemporary

The rivalry between Beijing and Shanghai goes back to Peking opera in the late 19th and early 20th century, and successfully made Han-dominated east coast the core of the emerging Chinese nation (away from the stress on multi-ethnicity of the Manchus). In this rivalry Beijing claimed artistic superiority (supported by its educational institutions and imperial patronage), discrediting important contributions by haipai (‘Shanghai style’) performers and entrepreneurs, such as modern stage equipment, management and promotion.

This rivalry came back after the entertainment market re-emerged in the 1980s. Shanghai gradually rehabilitated its early 20th century identity as China’s commercial and entertainment center, subtly discrediting the intermediate Revolutionary period.

Because real estate is more expensive in Shanghai it has proven difficult for live music venues to survive in inner-city locations. For instance tourist hotspot Xintiandi lost its pop/rock stage when Ark Livehouse closed in 2008, and now only has upscale venues such as CJW (jazz classics) and more recently Fusion (EDM).
Because it hosts many international offices, Shanghai has a relatively large expat community, which patronizes nightlife and foreign artists. Shanghai audiences are also said to be more internationally oriented, and willing to spend on (top) international acts.
As a result major international artists tend to choose Shanghai over Beijing in their tours, because of its audiences, but also because its permit system is more liberal.

Venues

Concerts

Shanghai Gymnasium 上海大舞台, capacity 8-10.000.
Mercedes-Benz Arena 梅赛德斯-奔驰文化中心, capacity up to 18.000. The venue was built for the World Expo 2010, and is located on Pudong (at some distance of the inner city). Partly owned by AEG, this is where most major international stars perform, including Metallica, Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift. The Mixing Room is this venue’s smaller room.
QSW Culture Center上海浅水湾文化艺术中心 consists of four rooms, the largest of which can hold around 2.000 people. Located on the edge of the inner city.

Band Scene

Opened in 2006, Yuyintang育音堂is Shanghai’s longest standing rock venue. Located just outside the center it has space for 500 people.
After 2009 Mao Livehouse became Shanghai’s principle rock venue, with a 800 m2 and 200 m2 room.
Smaller live music venues include Windows Underground, 288 Melting Pot and 021 Bar.

Jazz

Much as in the 1920s and 1930s, from the 1990s onwards Shanghai’s colonial neighborhood offers a wide range of jazz bars, often staging foreign artists. In recent years a number of high-end restaurants and clubs have opening on the Bund itself.
House of Blues and Jazz is an upscale venue located on the Bund, no cover charge.
Opened over 20 years ago, Cotton Club is the veteran in Shanghai’s jazz scene. Live shows every night of the week.
JZ is Shanghai’s most successful jazz-oriented venue-cum-music company. It started in 2005 and has now opened several other venues (On Stage, Wooden Box, JZ Latino). JZ also organizes a yearly jazz and world music festival with international headliners.

Clubbing

Shanghai hosts a range of trendy, posh nightclubs. High-end clubs capitalize on the conspicuous consumption of China’s nouveau riche. Typically their space is dominated by several levels of open booths and VIP spaces, with minimum group consumption (usually a bottle whiskey, cognac, champagne or other expensive imported liquor). Customers typically socialize (and get drunk) in their own group. Dance pits take up a relatively tiny part of the space, and venues offer additional entertainment in the form of exotic dancers, and highly visual treatments for big spenders. Music is one element of many, and clubs such as Bar Rouge (on the Bund), M1NT, LYNX, DIVA and venues owned by Sino Group (MYST, The 7th Floor, S2, Fusion) and Muse Group (Muse, M2) have profiled themselves by attracting world-class (top 10) DJs.
A number of venues have pursued a grittier esthetic. Clubs like Shelter, Arkham (run by S.T.D.), Dada and Lola attract predominantly foreign audiences with more egalitarian and affordable experiences. Rather than a servant (catering to the wishes of audiences and investors) or a celebrity (a model of success), here DJ’s are artists, and as a result these venues provide a stage for more experimental, edgier sounds. Indeed, the promise of hearing new and upcoming sounds is part of the attraction.
- The Mansion has taken this avant-garde esthetics furthest by hiding away in a villa neighborhood (where their modeling agency is also located). The Mansion is run by a Dutch-Chinese couple (Tommy Hendriks and Rainbow).
Storm is China’s largest yearly outdoor EDM festival.

Festivals

I will discuss Shanghai’s festivals in the subsection “Shanghai Pioneering New Trends” in “PRC Festivals”.

Beijing-based festival brands such as Midi, Strawberry and Moma Festival
JZ for jazz and world music
Storm for EDM
Echo Park Festival (and Jue Festival) with upcoming Western artists
Simple Life 简单生活节and Spring Wave Music and Art Festival for Taiwanese artists.

Mapping China: Music - Cities & Scenes: Shanghai Scene