Ever since I returned from the USA to China in the fall, I have made a point to visit live music scenes and to find out what has happened to them and to the musicians and players since the COVID crisis began at the beginning of 2020. Since one of my research projects involves studying the live music scenes in Kunshan, I’ve paid special attention to what’s been going on in that city.
Kunshan is a small city by Chinese standards. It has between one and two million people, depending on how they are counted (permanent residents only or also migrant workers). As a third-tier city, albeit one that is aggressively building up its reputation as a top manufacturing center and now moving towards becoming a high-tech hub, it’s an interesting place to examine the forces of globalization and localization that are taking place in China. The special focus of my research on the live music scene in Kunshan is the role played by Filipino bands in this scene.
Filipino bands and musicians abound in live music venues all over the Asia Pacific region. There are thousands of Filipino musicians and singers making a living in China alone. The total number is difficult to quantify, but one source claims that there are around 3,000 Filipino music makers working in China. This was prior to COVID, and since the outbreak began, many of those music makers have returned to their home country, so now it’s even harder to estimate how many Filipinos are working in this industry in China. Those who stayed here in China went through several months of hardship after the live music houses along with every other nonessential business shut down for a while, and they were forced to shelter in their homes. Things began to loosen up around June, and since then many establishments have re-opened their doors, although it has taken a while for some of them to reestablish themselves and attract customers once more. Nevertheless, the musicians and singers I knew before COVID who stayed here in China have been able to restart their jobs and regain their incomes over the past few months.
Eagle Bar
For several years now, I have been following one live music bar in Kunshan in particular, known as the Eagle Bar. The Eagle Bar used to be the home of a Filipino musician named Marvin and his partner Ama. Marvin plays guitar remarkably well, and he shares a great enthusiasm for the canon of classic rock music emanating from the USA and the UK. Ama was the singer in the band, and there was usually a drummer and a bassist, and sometimes a keyboard player (occasionally that was me) and/or an additional guitarist. The other band members changed over the years, but Marvin and Ama stayed on throughout the five years that I patronized the bar. Then in the spring of 2019, Marvin and Ama left Kunshan. Marvin headed to California and Ama returned to the Philippines to raise their daughter and have a second child.
The bar then hired another band led by a Filipino musician named Boby. This band was also a hard rock-oriented yet versatile band of Filipino musicians. They had been playing for many years in Cambodia, when they were “discovered” by the bar owner, Lina, who convinced them to come to Kunshan. They played at the Eagle Bar for nearly a year, joining with a Filipina singer named Melody whose bluesy, hard-rocking singing style was compatible with the band’s sound and style.
Meanwhile, owing to the construction of a new subway line running through the city, the old Eagle Bar located east of the Swissotel had to close its doors, and it re-opened in a new space in the sunken mall area in front of the Parkson Shopping Center and the Lamborghini Hotel. The bohemian quality of the old bar, located in a back alley surrounded by dim dives, was replaced by a more brightly lit but still woody interior located in a mall. I miss the old place.
Exodus
When the COVID crisis in China picked up in February of 2020, Boby and his band members decided to return to the Philippines to wait out the storm. Melody decided to remain in Kunshan. She spent the next three months sheltering by herself in her apartment. Once China had a handle on the crisis, things began to thaw, and places opened once more. Melody was able to rejoin the Eagle Bar over the summer, but since her band had already left the country, they needed to find other musicians to back her up.
Meanwhile, the musicians who had left China now found it impossible to return. As the COVID crisis mounted abroad, China had blocked off re-entry from many countries since early spring (me and my daughters were locked out of the country between March and September). Even with the ability to return to China in the fall, most musicians found it too costly, since flight ticket prices had skyrocketed, and bars weren’t able or willing to pay those extra costs.
Thus, the musicians who remained in China found themselves in a situation where their skills were in higher demand than before. This new demand was tempered by the loss of business, since so many of these live bars depend on foreigners as one of their mainstays, and most foreigners had fled the country during the crisis and like the musicians were finding it very difficult to return to China, or simply chose not to return. Also, many live bars had shut down for good during the height of the crisis. So, the supply and demand ratio probably did not change that drastically.
Given Kunshan’s proximity to the larger city of Suzhou, of which it is a part administratively, it made sense for bars in Kunshan to seek out musicians based in Suzhou to fill in the gaps left by the departing musicians earlier in the year. The Eagle Bar hired a Suzhou-based drummer named Flash, a bassist named Ryan, and a guitarist (whose name escapes me), all Filipino band members based in Suzhou, to back up Melody the singer.
I returned to China in September. When I finally got out of quarantine in October, one of the first things I did after settling back in Kunshan was to visit the Eagle Bar and find out what had happened in my absence over the tumultuous year of 2020. Much of what I’ve written here is what Melody related to me as she filled me in on the past few months.
Melody’s new band was just hitting its stride when I started visiting the bar again last fall. It seems that much of the band’s leadership was coming from the drummer Flash, a very experienced musician and a good singer as well. He and Melody alternated with the singing and it seems he was making many of the musical choices. I was surprised to find out that Flash still lived in Suzhou and that he had to make the trek back home every night after the band finished its last set. He did this on an e-bike, taking a long journey that was at least 45 minutes in the cold winter air.
Robert Arrives
Marvin and Robert during Marvin’s birthday party at Eagle Bar in 2016
Towards the end of 2020, I learned that Robert, an accomplished Filipino guitarist and bandleader based in Suzhou, was going to join the band at the Eagle Bar. I’ve known Robert for several years. I first met him at the Eagle Bar on Marvin’s birthday back in 2016. He and some other musicians came to celebrate their friend’s birthday and jam with them on stage. It was the first time that the Eagle Bar really felt more like a music scene rather than just a live music bar. It turned out that Robert and Marvin are close friends, and both of them told me that Robert had “secretly” taught Marvin some guitar skills. The reason for secrecy was that Marvin was widely known as the “guitar king” and he already had formidable skills and a great reputation as a rock guitarist, with the ability to play solos from the classic rock gods, such as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and the Allman Brothers.
Left to right: Melody, Robert, Flash, and Ryan, the house band of the Eagle Bar
Whereas Marvin has a passionate and hard-rocking/bluesy style, Robert is a more methodical and studied guitar player. His precision-oriented guitar style evokes guitarists like Mark Knopfler, whose Dire Straits song “Sultans of Swing” is a perennial favorite of Robert’s. He is very versatile and can play just about any style of guitar. Even when playing blues or rock classics, Robert’s mellow onstage presence exudes a calmer vibe than Marvin’s “rock guitar god” style. Robert also runs several guitar schools in Suzhou and Kunshan and he is known as the “guitar teachers’ teacher” in the region.
Thus, it was great news for us in Kunshan that Robert was joining the band. The guitarist whose name escapes me moved to Shanghai to join a band there, and Robert quickly filled in the gap, also taking over as the bandleader. Pretty soon, he had Melody, Flash, and Ryan playing tight and well-practiced versions of a wide range of pop and rock tunes, ranging from 1970s disco-era anthems and medleys, to Fleetwood Mac, Van Halen or other oldies, to more contemporary hits. Melody was working hard at learning the new songs and memorizing lyrics to songs she hadn’t performed before.
Another thing that happened over the next two months was that the bar itself took on a new life under Robert’s musical leadership. I have to attribute this at least partly to Robert, since he really “woke up” the band and got them playing a wider and tighter list of songs than before. Also, he seems to be a master at catering just enough to the Chinese crowd without overdoing it. As we’ve learned from studying this scene for the past few years (I say “we” because I have a student research assistant who has been helping me over the past two years), there’s a delicate balance between catering to the musical tastes of the international crowd and those of the “local” Chinese crowd.
Since most foreigners had left the city and were only beginning to return to China, the crowd was almost entirely Chinese on any given night. Sometimes Chinese customers expected and desired to listen to the band perform well-known Chinese pop songs. Yet the band’s main repertoire consists of English-language pop and rock songs meant for a more international audience. This creates a dynamic tension between the realities of the audience base, and the training and musical leanings of the band.
The band does play Chinese pop tunes on occasion. Melody and Flash can sing a few different songs in Mandarin and Cantonese. One of the favorite songs in this music scene is a Cantonese song called Hai Kuo Tian Kong 海阔天空 originally performed by the Hong Kong rock band Beyond. This song is often requested at the Eagle Bar and we’ve also seen the band at the Wonderful Bar perform it many a time (I will get back to the Wonderful Bar in a future entry). Chinese customers will often hang out in tables in front of the band during this song and will sing along.
Karaoke Club?
A customer enjoys a karaoke moment on stage with the band at Eagle Bar in January
Last month, I was at the Eagle Bar hanging out with the band as usual and watching them perform, when Melody was approached by a Chinese woman who requested to sing a song onstage. This happens on occasion, and it is up to the band to decide who can join them onstage. In this type of live music scene, the bar sometimes functions as a public karaoke hall, occasionally allowing customers to sing songs. Usually, they only allow people whom they already know to have some musical talent to join them, but occasionally they seem to bend to the will of the customers and allow them to come up and sing a song.
While the woman was singing a Chinese pop ballad, two of her female friends suddenly decided to join her onstage. Managing the stage is always a challenge for the band, since customers at the bar sometimes drink heavily and get over-eager to join the band onstage. Usually the band members can find ways to shoo the customers off the stage or keep them from climbing onstage, but in this case, the women mounted the stage and one of them tried to take the mic from her friend and join in the song, whereupon she was pushed—kicked, rather—offstage by the woman who was already singing. Fortunately, nobody was injured, although spirits were dashed and egos were certainly bruised. The table in question consisted of several Chinese male and female customers, who were consuming copious quantities of alcohol and were obviously inebriated. The group retreated to their table for a while to massage egos and try to restore harmony in the group, before they finally called it a night. This was not the first time I had seen such behavior, and it will probably not be the last.
Thus, there is a fine and delicate balance between catering to the desires of customers and maintaining a high level of professional musicianship at the bar while playing a repertoire consisting mainly of western pop and rock tunes. One other thing I’ve noticed lately is that under Robert’s leadership, the band will now almost always play a Filipino song sometime during the evening, which is a nice addition to their repertoire as well as a statement of pride about their own cultural and linguistic heritage, something that they often have to mask in a way as they imitate western or Chinese pop artists.
Music Scene?
Grandmaster Flash, a superb drummer and singer, and all around good guy
One question we’ve been asking during this research is whether and how the live bar scene featuring mostly Filipino cover bands constitutes a music scene in the more typical sense of how we view music scenes. If one defines a music scene as a venue or set of venues, where musicians and fans get together to explore, enjoy, and celebrate specific styles and genres of music, this is a somewhat difficult fit. It’s not because of the music per se. Music scenes don’t necessarily have to be “original” in the sense that the bands or musicians are performing songs that they themselves wrote or created. But there does have to be a gathering of people who are interested in developing their craft and/or their appreciation for certain musical styles and tastes.
The reason why I find this concept of a “music scene” to be a difficult fit with the live bar scene in Kunshan is that most of the audience members are not familiar with or even all that interested in the foreign rock and pop genres and styles that the bands are performing. Most of the customers in these live bars are Chinese. They seem to use the bands and their music as a backdrop for their own socializing, rather than foregrounding the music as the primary experience of the bar. In fact, the Eagle Bar functions more like a restaurant, where most customers sit at tables, order food and drink, and chat or play games (dice drinking games usually, popular in China). It is only when the band plays a Chinese pop song familiar to them that they tend to become more animated and more focused on the music, sometimes singing along or even attempting to join the band onstage.
Thus, it’s interesting to see how a live bar music scene that originally developed to cater to a more international crowd of Asian, European, or American expats has to accommodate itself to a primarily Chinese and local customer base, as well as the strategies and challenges involved with doing so. One winning strategy that we’ve seen time and again is for the band to occasionally play a familiar Chinese (or Cantonese or even Taiwanese) pop song that “hooks” the Chinese crowd for a spell, before going back to a staple of western pop and rock tunes.
Playing with the Band
In my years of visiting the Eagle Bar, I’ve steadily become accepted as a sort of honorary band member. This is mainly because I can sing and play keyboards, and occasionally guitar as well. Back in the days when Marvin and Ama reigned as the king and queen of rock in Kunshan, I used to jam with the band and sing songs with them. We performed “Red House” by Jimi Hendrix on many occasions, and I even wrote a blues song about Kunshan for the band. When I started bringing my keyboard to the club, eventually leaving it there in the care of the band, we’d perform keyboard-oriented songs such as Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”. After Robert joined the band late last fall, I brought my keyboard back to the bar and left it there. So now every time I rock up to the bar, it’s expected that I’ll join them for at least one set, often the last one, and we play “Comfortably Numb”as well as a few other tunes.
In my soon-to-be-released documentary film Jazz & Blues Ala Shanghai, one of the musicians remarks that the best way to improve your skills as a musician is to play with people who are far better than you, and you will learn from them. I couldn’t agree more. After being a wannabe musician who mostly plays songs on piano and guitar in my own home, I have really enjoyed getting out onto a public stage once more and jamming with a band whose musical skills are way beyond my own. Every time I do so, Robert throws out a challenge or two, making me jam to a song with which I’m barely familiar (at least, playing-wise). Or he asks me to sing a song I’ve never sung before. Chances are that I know the tune well, so that’s not too difficult, but playing on the keyboard is more challenging. In addition to finding the right key and right notes and chord changes on the spur of the moment, there’s also the additional challenge of having a guitar, bass and drums making ear-crushing sounds right behind me. And if I’m trying to read from a musical “cheat sheet” that shows the lyrics and chords, I’m challenged by the task of looking at the “score” on my iPhone while keeping up with the band. Still, it’s great fun to be up there with a real live band, playing in real time.
I also throw in an occasional Chinese song. My standard is the Taiwanese folk song Ai Pin Cai Hui Ying 爱拼才会赢which I learned to sing in native Taiwanese back in my old Taipei days (early 1990s). The owner Lina seems to really like it when I sing that song, and it always gets the Chinese crowd going. In future, I hope to work on more Chinese tunes with Robert and the band.
In addition to showcasing my own modest musical talents, the Eagle Bar has also become a place for other bands to jam and share the stage with Robert and the house band. In this sense, it really is starting to feel like a music scene, even if it’s a scene for cover bands to share and develop and hone their craft and their skills. Robert definitely encourages this, and he’s even organized an open-mic jam night on Sundays.
Ann, one of the teachers in Robert’s music school, comes pretty frequently to play drums with the band and learn from grandmaster Flash, the band’s house drummer
One of the musicians who has been joining the band on frequent occasions is a young woman from Shandong province named Ann. Ann has been a teacher in Robert’s music school for a while now, and she plays drums for a Suzhou pop-rock band. We first met her two years ago at the Feelings Bar in Suzhou. She is now a regular at the Eagle Bar and comes to jam and learn from her teacher Flash. In addition, she has an all-Chinese cover band whose members also show up to play. Later in the evening, Robert will ask Ann to play drums for a set or will give up the stage for Ann and her band to play. The band plays a combo of Chinese pop and rock tunes along with some English tunes. They can play some jazz standards as well as classic pop and rock including old Beatles songs. When Ann and her band are jamming at the Eagle Bar, it really does feel like a live music scene, with musicians honing their craft, learning from each other, and sharing their love for different styles of music.