Readers of my blog may wonder why I haven’t posted anything for the past two months. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in the tunnel of filmmaking all that time, sitting for endless hours in front of my iMac while manipulating clips on the timeline of Final Cut Pro.

For over fifteen years, I have been documenting the jazz and blues scenes in Shanghai. When I first arrived in Shanghai 25 years ago, the city’s jazz scene was just beginning to form. Over those years, while researching and writing about the “golden age” of the 1920s-1930s, I witnessed its development firsthand and saw the rise of a new golden era of music for Shanghai. My new doc film tells the story of the revival of jazz and blues in a city that was once known worldwide as a great jazz metropolis.

 The film focuses on three clubs in particular, which had the greatest influence on the development of jazz and blues scenes in the city. They are the House of Blues & Jazz, the Cotton Club, and the JZ Club. The film follows the story of their rise and development in the city. The House of Blues & Jazz was started by Lin Dongfu and his partner Xing Songlan circa 1995. I recall going there in 1997 when it was the hottest live music club in town. That same year, an American named Matt Harding started the Cotton Club, or at least turned it into a live music venue focusing on jazz and blues. He was soon replaced by his friend Greg Smith, a superb guitarist and bandleader who presided over the club for the next 20 years. I was there at the beginning, and in the film I document the club’s development all the way to the end of its life in 2017.

 In 2004, a bass player from Beijing named Ren Yuqing founded the JZ Club. This club quickly became a lodestone for jazz musicians all over Shanghai, who converged on the club for the late night jam sessions. It became a clearinghouse for jazz, where musicians met each other and formed new bands. Presiding over the club was the American saxophonist Alec Haavik, and also the trumpeter JQ Whitcomb, who helped found the JZ School as well. In addition, an American jazz guitarist named Lawrence Ku performed there regularly. 

 These clubs attracted and nurtured some of the best Chinese jazz and blues musicians. One person whom I profile in the film is Coco Zhao. I have known Coco since at least 1997, when he started singing at the Cotton Club. In 1999, Coco and his band played at our wedding in Shanghai (this personal moment is not in the film). Coco was one of the first openly gay celebrities in the city. After majoring in oboe at the Shanghai Music Conservatory, he took up jazz singing and has never looked back. Coco has been one of the innovative voices in the jazz scene, blending American jazz styles with Chinese folk music traditions. 

 Another is Jasmine Chen, who also got her start as a jazz singer in Shanghai’s JZ Club back in 2004. She has since built a stellar career as a Shanghai jazz diva, even though she hails from the northeastern province of Liaoning. Recently, she appeared in the feature film Crazy Rich Asians, singing old Shanghai songs to the Singaporean elite society.

 These clubs also nurtured and trained many other talented Chinese jazz and blues musicians, who are profiled in the film as well. In addition, they brought a steady stream of talented musicians to Shanghai from abroad. Many of them chose to stay here in Shanghai and continue to build their careers.

The film also features the famed jazz bar of the Peace Hotel, where a Shanghainese jazz drummer named Bao Zhengzhen first started a band in the 1980s. Yet in 2012, a brilliant young trumpeter named Theo Croker also played there along with his sextet. These musicians and their stories are also featured in my film.

 The film is based on a chapter of our book Shanghai Nightscapes, which I co-wrote with sociologist James Farrer. Many of the interviews that go into the film were conducted by James and myself back in 2011-2012. But my earliest footage goes back to 2004, when the JZ Club was just beginning to transform the city’s jazz scene.

 I have spent the past three years or so editing the film in spurts. This has largely been a solo project, although I did have some help with the filming and with the interviews. I started editing the film in 2018, when it was an amorphous mass of live music footage and interviews. I screened a rough cut of the film to friends and family in my hometown of Acton Mass that summer. Two years later, while sheltering with my parents and daughters in Acton, I worked on another cut of the film, which I showed to my parents. They enjoyed it, but it still had a ways to go. I was missing some crucial footage which I’d left in China. When I returned last fall to Shanghai and Kunshan, I began editing again. Starting in January, I showed a series of versions of the film to small, select groups of friends, colleagues, and students. The feedback I received after each screening was invaluable. 

 I am now on Version 18 of the film. I feel it is now approaching what my intentions were for the film. I am ready to start screening it to larger audiences. Next week, I am holding two screenings. The first screening, which is effectively the world premier, will be held on Wednesday evening on the Duke Kunshan campus, as part of an arts and music festival. The second screening will be in Shanghai on Friday night, and many people in the film are expected to attend.

 There are still many things to sort out in order to bring this film to the world, including some technical issues as well as release rights for the music and some of the footage. I hope that these screenings and others will give the project the momentum and support that it needs to get to the next stage where it can be released to the world, either through film festivals or public screenings and eventually through distribution.

 This has been a labor of love, involving countless hours in my home editing studio, sometimes from sunup to midnight. During the editing process, one of the key insights I received through private screenings was the need to write a narrative for the film. I had been resisting this, hoping that the people I interviewed could carry the story, but now I see that all along this was a necessary component of the project. 

 Why do I make films? I sometimes ask myself this question. The answer, for me at least, is that the medium of filmmaking integrates together everything that I love: visual storytelling, art, music, and conversations with interesting, intelligent, artistic people. It also involves a great deal of writing and editing, which is what I do regardless as an academic. But the writing has to be tailored for a different kind of audience than the academic crowd. And with the medium of film, we are influencing people’s emotions and carrying them on an emotional journey through the story, which is something that academic work rarely does well.

There’s another reason why I make films. I want to see this film, but nobody has made it, and I’m not sure anybody else can, so I make it myself. Sure, it takes a few years and thousands of hours of hard work, but what the hell?

Why not write books instead? After all that is what academics are supposed to do. True,, and I’ve done that already. Still, writing about music and art can be very challenging, and ultimately somewhat frustrating, since it’s hard to convey music in words. Presenting the world with a film gives people an immediate understanding of the music and the people who make it. I can’t imagine doing what I do without the medium of film.