Why local DJs are going off the record
As electronic dance music booms throughout China's emergent nightclub scene, Chinese DJs are turning to the Internet to sustain their pastime.
While the country is awash with a superfluity of homegrown pop music, the scarcely found genres DJs seek as fodder for their mixes house, hip-hop and electro must be imported. And due to import tariffs which translate into high retail prices, the few such albums that do find their way to China's retail shelves are too expensive for most Chinese DJs to afford.
Chinese DJ Mickey Zhang draws upon cultural influences for musical inspiration. |
"In China, DJs can't find the music they want unless they go online," said Jack Zhu, 34, who runs the Beijing-nightlife-oriented website clubzone.cn.
Increasingly, China's DJs are relying on websites such as verycd.com and open-source file-sharing sites and software such as eMule to download MP3s. "They're free to download. Most Chinese DJs use CDs, and most foreign DJs here do too, because it's quick, cheap and easy," said Wang Xiaodong, 35, who is known as DJ Dio in the DJ booth.
The same problems Chinese DJs have with retailed CDs are even greater when it comes to vinyl records the traditional staple of the Western DJ. Vinyl is even more difficult to find and, like CDs, the records available rarely feature the desired genre.
Even if a Chinese DJ is able to amass an adequate vinyl collection, most of China's smaller nightclubs don't even have turntables.
"We (Chinese) never had the vinyl generation. We went from the cassette generation to the CD generation. Now, it's the MP3 generation, "said Zhang Youdai, a 20-year scene veteran.
"Records are so expensive that most DJs use digital equipment now," said Zheng Yue, a seven-year scene veteran. However, China's turntable purists with overseas connections and deep pockets have been able to circumvent the scarcity.
"Whenever my foreign friends return to their home countries, I send them back with a list of records I want them to buy for me. Or, I order them online, but they're very expensive," said Zhang Ran, who is known as DJ Mickey Zhang in electronic dance music circles.
Even those who have the resources to accumulate vinyl often have more difficulty than their digital-loving counterparts keeping pace with the newest music.
"People don't want to wait until a new track comes out on vinyl and is available here," said 24-year-old American Mikaela Pollock, who has DJ-ed in Beijing for a year and a half.
"If you want to be a versatile DJ and stay ahead of the competition, you have to go digital."
(China Daily 02/09/2007 page18)
