Woodstock-like concert planned for west China desert this weekend

Asian Economic News, August 9, 2004

BEIJING, Aug. 4 Kyodo

About 10,000 music fans and 3,000 motorcycle riders will converge in a desert in western China this weekend for a rare outdoor, Woodstock-style concert featuring Chinese rock & roll, local officials said Wednesday.

The Aug. 6-8 music festival, called Glorious Path of Chinese Rock & Roll, will bring 18 bands together at Helanshan, an arid mountainous area, about 30 kilometers from the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region capital of Yinchuan.

It coincides with an annual off-road motorcycle gathering in the same region.

Ningxia authorities hope to bring tourists to the region, which Yinchuan's foreign affairs vice director Wang Xi says are lacking despite the mountain lake scenery, North Silk Road relics and an abundance of fruit.

Concert organizers hope to raise an interest in Chinese rock, which struggles commercially because of CD piracy and lack of airtime on state-run media.

The official Xinhua News Agency estimates there are 10,000 rock bands in China. The bands will perform for a total of 15 hours this weekend, Xinhua reported.

Cui Jian, China's best known rocker, is the main attraction at the desert festival. He will play on the final day, said his manager, Paul Fry.

''I wish them the best of luck (on) anything that promotes music in China,'' Fry said. ''Concerts are still a new thing.''

Rock fans should pitch tents at the venue, Wang said. This setup would give the concert the flavor of the Woodstock Music and Art Festival, which drew 40,000 people to a town in New York in 1969 during the hippie years.

Two years ago this month, Cui organized China's largest outdoor music festival in the mountains of Yunnan Province.

Although rain deterred crowds, the festival generated name recognition for the nearby tourist city of Lijiang.

Beijing punk rocker Xiao Rong, whose band Brain Failure has performed in Japan and the United States, doubted whether a concert in west China, away from the Chinese rock center of Beijing, and dominated by older bands, would be a commercial success.

''They don't have any performance ability,'' Xiao said. ''They might not have performed for seven or eight years.''