Xiao He on Resonance104.4fm

By Josh, 2010年 9月 11日

British visual artist and musician Dominik Salter Dvorak turned me on to a radio show he did last spring with Bruno Rinvolucri of London’s Resonance104.4fm. The show documents the Beyond the Wall music festival and, more specifically, a day in the never dull life of Xiao He. The radio show also excerpts a live performance at LSO St. Luke’s that Xiao He gave along with Yan Jun, Wu Na, White, and FM3:

Xiao He Live at LSO St. Luke’s, London, 26 April 2009

This performance was picked up by the venerable music rag Wire, whose Deborah Nash seemed to glean only part of the whole: “An introverted and static show in itself, it had one redeeming feature: in a culture with strong adherence to tradition, where control, discipline and careful choreography can give rise to the spectacular (sic) of the Olympics, to go on stage, drink a glass of wine and improvise is, in itself, a revolutionary act.”

I’ve seen my fair share of “introverted and static” shows in Beijing, no doubt. Instead of rationalizing them away with armchair hypotheses about the broad trajectory of Chinese cultural evolution, however, I think it’s much more illuminating and rewarding to experience this music by participating, talking with the musicians and letting an understanding slowly unfold in the context of day-to-day experiences as opposed to drawing conclusions from a single performance.

Maybe this opacity is an inherent barrier to creating an “East-West bridge” between contemporary experimental musicians. Certainly it’s not well suited to the festival model typically favored in the West, where a band is expected to make or break on the strength of a single performance. However, Dominik and Bruno do an excellent job of delving deeper, even in the limited time they spent with Xiao He and co. The majority of their show consists of incidental conversations, subtle epiphanies and free-flowing, honest exchange as opposed to the normal “who are you, why are you here” interview or passive music criticism. To me this is a much more constructive bridge-building exercise than putting a few bands on a stage and using one performance as a proxy to judge “Chinese music” as a whole.

You can stream or download the full radio show here:

Running The Marathon: In Session with Xiao He

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