Hello Beijing Cream readers. My name is Morgan and I work at this other website called Smart Beijing, wherein we specialize in the long ball. The Tao is outsourcing these Friday Musical Outros to me so he can concentrate on his true journalistic passion, which is… hey, whoa, wait a minute. Hold on. Hold on. What the fuck… is this guy’s dick on fire?
With all the festivals and hoopla and blah, blah, blah going on, this might be flying under your radar. It shouldn’t. You should go. And you’ve got two chances on it so don’t mess it up!
So yeah. Tonight at Temple and tomorrow night at Zajia Lab, the good-time punks of Genjing Records are hosting record release concerts for their latest release, Music for Advertisements by Li Daiguo. That’s him in the video.
Li Daiguo is a Chinese American from Oklahoma in super comfortable clothes playing all kinds of instruments – violin, cello, pipa and erhu – to some pretty flabbergasting results. Pretty astounding. Musically, he seems concerned with globetrotting in the nebulous non-genre that people like me who don’t know any better call “world music.” In various ways, he presents some pretty interesting juxtapositions of Eastern and Western musicks as in this video here: pipa and beat-boxing together at last. He’s some beatific prankster huckster saint, this guy.
Anyways, hopefully that peaks your interest to search out more of his work and check out his show. His well goes pretty deep.
Intermediate reading: Genjing Records’s website has some great pieces on him leading up to this release. Click here for an exhaustive interview with the man, and click here for an exploration of all the wackadoo instruments he rocks out on.
“Wackadoo” is a relative term, of course.
If you miss out on the shows, you can grip this album at Genjing’s store, as well as many other fine releases. Every day is record store day, eh!
Last link: if you’re on the fence about going to Midi Festival this year because it’s in some faraway asshole place, reread BeijingDaze on the Miserable Faith 2010 performance in which they played to crowd of thousands without any power.
That’s just a magic moment, my friends. Go out and celebrate with your city.
Morgan is the editor of Smart Beijing and fake DJs around town. Suggestions for Friday Music Send Outs and feedback to editor@smartbeijing.com.
Is it me or is that video only 18 seconds long?
Sorry, fixed.