The Creamcast, Ep.18: JUE Festival

JUE | Music + Art is an annual labor of love, a privately run, basically not-for-profit gathering of creatives in Beijing and Shanghai, with live performances, workshops, exhibitions, and talks. Founded in 2009 as a protest against “the big, homogenous mega-festivals emerging in China at that time,” JUE Festival has just concluded its 7th program, featuring acts from around the world.

Host Anthony Tao is joined by Morgan Short, editor of Smart Beijing / DJ-about-town, and JUE Festival organizers Sophia Pederson and Doris Yan, both project managers at Split Works, the China-based promotion company that puts on JUE, to talk about the challenges of organizing the festival, the highlights, and what exactly happened with the high-profile cancellation of Japanese rock band Boris (“sensitive climate”?).

Also, the story of Sontag Shogun, a Brooklyn ambient piano trio that was thrice cancelled: at Club XP (after Acid Mothers Temple lead singer Kawabata Makoto, who is banned in China, was unsuccessfully booked to play a show there), Zajia Lab, and another place. They did play, however, at School Bar and Bookworm; you can listen to a snippet of their performance in the interview below:

Toward the end of this week’s podcast, we preview another independently run, privately funded festival, the Bookworm Literary Festival, which is entering its final weekend of events.

The Creamcast would like to thank Popup Chinese for letting us use their studio and Great Leap Brewing for their generous support.

Download Episode 18 of The Creamcast here, or listen to it on iTunes.

Related Episodes: Episode 16, Bookworm Literary Festival preview; Episode 17, The Female Voice In Contemporary Chinese Art