Tav Falco Reads!
Catch the Memphis pioneer's literary London spree!
1:31 PM GMT 22/05/2012
News
The Children Of Wham!
2:34 PM GMT 17/01/2011
Yu Quan are a popular male singing duo who have routinely topped the charts in China for the past ten years. They have model-ish good looks and perfectly coiffed hair. In their videos, they grimace a lot and strike dramatic poses designed to tweak teenage glands. Though they've had upbeat hits, the big favourites in their catalog are the earnest ballads.
What's remarkable about these ballads is how many of them sound like they were created from the DNA of Wham! The hushed verses. The soaring, emotive choruses. Even the occasional sax solo. This not only goes for Yu Quan, but for many contemporary Chinese boy bands such as Top Combine, Fahrenheit and Seventeen and singers like Jonathan Wong and Eason Chan as well. They're all the offspring of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley.
Not literally, of course (though the timeline would support that whimsical thought). But in 1985, when Wham! broke ground as the first western pop act to play Communist China, they planted the seeds of a music and fashion revolution that is still in bloom.
There were precedents for this kind of musical insemination. When The Ventures visited Japan in 1962, they started an electric guitar craze called "Elekiboom." And of course, wherever The Beatles went, from France to America to Australia, they created waves of clone-like beat groups.
The difference is that those countries already had indigenous pop music scenes. They could assimilate and adapt influences. The China of 1985 had nothing. It was a blank slate. Which cast George and Andrew as pioneers - a kind of Lewis and Clark with pastel suits and fake tans.
The lack of musical infrastructure also made getting the gig a huge challenge. Over an eighteen-month period, the duo's manager Simon Napier-Bell took regular trips to Beijing. From his hotel, he'd telephone the cultural ministries hoping to find someone who spoke English. His standard message: "Tell them Simon Napier-Bell has called to take them to lunch."
"It was two years of lunches," Napier-Bell later wrote. "I fed the whole government. 143 people three times each."
He eventually persuaded the Chinese that the best way for them to secure foreign investors was to show an openness to western influence. And what better way to do that than have Wham! perform in Beijing.
Funny side note: When Napier-Bell discovered that Queen was also trying to get into China, he made up two brochures for the cultural ministers. One featured Wham fans as clean-cut middle-class teens. The other showed Freddie Mercury in a variety of flamboyant stage clothes. The Chinese went with Wham!.
The concert's success was more symbolic than literal. The 15,000 people who filled the Workers' Gymnasium were prohibited from standing, and those in the floor seats thought that the film crew were secret police and sat frozen in the lights. When George Michael tried to get the audience to clap along, they answered him with a confused smattering of applause.
While Wham! helped lay a foundation for an east-west cultural bridge, the enduring musical imprint they've left in China has been unexpected. Especially today, when the country is besieged by outside influences, from Lady Gaga to Kanye West (who played at Workers' Gymnasium in 2008). They also have two different Pop Idol-style TV shows, and their charts are full of western sound-a-likes.
But there, beating beneath the vast, burgeoning Chinese music scene is the unmistakable pulse of Wham! - a fact that just may qualify them to join the ranks of Elvis Presley, The Velvet Underground and Led Zeppelin as one of the most influential acts of all time.
Bill DeMain
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 2:34 PM GMT 17/01/2011
Previous News
-
-
Beyond Glastonbury: SPOT Festival
On the trail of perfect Scandi-pop, Kieron Tyler is MOJO's man about Aarhus.
9:00 AM GMT 22/05/2012
-
Robin Gibb, 1949 - 2012
The Bee Gee brother has died at the age of 62. MOJO flags fly at half mast.
12:42 PM GMT 21/05/2012
-
Beyond Glastonbury: Kilkenny Roots
Our kind of festival, give or take Alabama Shakes.
12:22 PM GMT 21/05/2012
-
-
Bob Marley & MOJO: The Truth!
MOJO sets the record straight in response to false online reports...
1:19 PM GMT 17/05/2012
end of body content back to top
Footer
Join us on:
© Copyright Bauer - all
rights reserved.
Reproduction of this
website, in whole or in
part, in any form or
medium without express
written permission from
Bauer is prohibited. All
use is subject to our
Terms of Use
|
|
Comments
Comment on this post
Slow news day?
Posted by cuntycuntcunt at 4:13 PM GMT 17/01/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
This is fascinating. Somehow it never occurred to me that rock and roll culture hadn't seeped in to China. Makes me want to read (or documentary) up.
Posted by Fred Bullard at 4:37 PM GMT 17/01/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
Good article. I don't think the influence of Wham and others of their ilk is limited only to China, though; the sugar-soft pop genre is massive all through South East Asia, especially in countries like Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand. There, music which can (at best) be enjoyed ironically by a Western audience is treated with the utmost sincerity. Why? I can only assume that the more "corruptive" influence of rock and roll was eschewed and/or suppressed by the powers that be, in favour of more "pure" forms.
It's not that rock isn't present, it is; it's just not mainstream. Mind you, a cursory glance at the music charts of the UK, the US and Australia would suggest that it's not that mainstream here anymore, either.
Posted by Mike Mueller at 1:29 AM GMT 18/01/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
It's certainly an interesting proposition, though things like this are seldom as clear cut as they seem (or as Napier-Bell would likely have you believe.)
Eason Chan's Hong Kong-Cantopop stylings have their roots long before George and Andrew got their Young Guns leathers out, and the Taiwanese boy band Fahrenheit have a lot more to do with the Take That-Westlife model than a long defunct dup like Wham.
I don't mean to suggest that Wham had no influence at all, for as a major international act they obvious would have seeped into the consciousness of Asian listeners as well as industry types, but there are long traditions of pop music from HK, Taiwan, Korea and even Japan that been creeping into the consciousness of Mainland China for decades now as well, and which have just as much to do with the way their pop culture has developed.
Case in point - If i were to ask a dozen teenagers here in HK if they knew Wham or the Japanese pop duo Puffy, i certainly know which would be the better known... and it ain't the Bushey boys.
Posted by Ange Tsibogiannis at 3:01 AM GMT 18/01/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
Perhaps WHAM! are indicative of the beginnings of modern pop music, not just in China, but everywhere. The interesting part is that despite the machinations of a guy like Simon Napier Bell, at the heart of WHAM! was the songwriting talent of George Michael. The group had some pretty accomplished pop music in their short time. And Andrew Ridgely married Keren Woodward !
I think the boy bands/Britney Spears/Spice Girls thing were ultimately more influential, and not in a good way. The only person in that whole scene to emerge as a major talent is Justin Timberlake, but in N'stynk ( sorry N'Sync) he wasn't given a lot of freedom to write his own songs
Posted by Robert DuPont at 1:56 PM GMT 19/01/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
Perhaps WHAM! are indicative of the beginnings of modern pop music, not just in China, but everywhere. The interesting part is that despite the machinations of a guy like Simon Napier Bell, at the heart of WHAM! was the songwriting talent of George Michael. The group had some pretty accomplished pop music in their short time. And Andrew Ridgely married Keren Woodward !
I think the boy bands/Britney Spears/Spice Girls thing were ultimately more influential, and not in a good way. The only person in that whole scene to emerge as a major talent is Justin Timberlake, but in N'stynk ( sorry N'Sync) he wasn't given a lot of freedom to write his own songs
Posted by Robert DuPont at 1:57 PM GMT 19/01/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
China does remember Wham was here, but the Chinese music scene is not dependent at all of that Wham visit. On one side the mandopop scene is very conservative and mostly producing empty music, except for some few cases as is Wong Fei, who has nothing to do with Wham.
The Chinese rock scene started based on heavy metal/ glam rock (Tang Dinasty, Black Panthers) or during the 80s, some melodic rock (few bands as The Honeys, that had the chance to listen to U2). Then punk came in and the underground scene of rock move on (although more recent, you can check PK14, now a Chinese classic band, pretty young band, but old given the average of years that bands last here).
Recently post-rock took a lot (Wangwen is one of them), and there's some kind of psychedelic rock growing now, with bands like Duck Fight Goose, bands like there's a lot of plain rock and roll too (The Fever Machine) or Tookoo who are commonly tagged as emo, as other many Chinese bands, that are more like dance rock, but still punk is the dominant in China (Boys Climbing Ropes, Hedgehog, ReTros etc etc).. so, as for Wham to influence much of the Chinese music scene, I think you maybe talked with people that just approved your theory to be kind with you, but probably the question should have been what western bands have influenced you? instead of has Wham influenced you?
Check www.layabozi.com, and www.rockinchina.com. You can ask me too ;) , I write on Layabozi.
And yes, China has been opening more and more to the west and so to western music. But Chinese kids that were into music and could access to some western music (they were really few until 7 or 8 years ago) they sure did listen to much more punk than what they did to Wham.
Although, as a fun tip, because we all know Wham was here , during the last Halloween on 2010 local bands in Shanghai did a show covering "creepy" and fun bands like The Mistfits and Kiss, and one of them, Pairs, chose Wham, Pairs is a crazy raw punk band.
Posted by Mache at 7:29 PM GMT 24/01/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
RE: Robert DuPont
"Perhaps WHAM! are indicative of the beginnings of modern pop music, not just in China, but everywhere"
That is one of the funnier things I've read for a while. Cheers
Posted by Bill at 5:20 AM GMT 29/01/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
RE: Robert DuPont
"Perhaps WHAM! are indicative of the beginnings of modern pop music, not just in China, but everywhere"
That is one of the funnier things I've read for a while. Cheers
Posted by Bill at 5:20 AM GMT 29/01/2011 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
Comment on this post