Musing On Blue Note

The news received quite a bit of attention, though critics in China continue to wonder if such an endeavor can succeed in the way it is supposed to succeed. Though Western pop and rock and dance music have done very well since China started opening up to Western culture in the early ’90s, jazz remains a niche pleasure, not to mention a refined, more expensive one. Dave Liebman, a jazz musician who recently toured China, was quoted on the news site Yibada as saying the new Beijing club will be a “commercial operation tied to the upper class.” Not too many people in China can afford $150 for a night out of music and food, and he predicted that the patrons would not be “the more adventurous listeners.”

As with most Western music and bit of Asian as well, jazz was banned during the People’s Republic’s formative years, but in the ’80s more young people sought out all sorts of outside sounds as the government became less paranoid about their influence. Beijing’s jazz scene was born in the ’90s and is still a rather small community, certainly smaller than Shanghai’s, where jazz is played in a variety of places, not just dedicated clubs.

The main problem is that there are no places for musicians to learn jazz, and the better ones usually have to go abroad. If anything, the Blue Note organization may be hoping that the future of jazz is in places like China, since its popularity in its country of origin is dwindling.