Jazzin' in Shanghai

To many, British-born Mark David Elliott might seem to be living out a dream, working as an international liaison for a famous jazz club in the bustling city of Shanghai. Perhaps surprisingly, though, Elliott had never planned for a career in the music business, but then, how many of us can really plan the course of our lives?

Elliott first visited China in the summer of 2002, and immediately fell in love with the country. At that time, however, he was studying law in England, and had to return home to finish his degree. A little while later, with his new law degree in pocket, he was free to leave Britain to explore what the Middle Kingdom had to offer. At first, he took on a job in a British law firm in Shanghai, only to soon discover that it was not his cup of tea.

Mingling with people from the local music scene proved a lucky strike for Elliott, who at first befriended famous Shanghai singer Coco Zhao and eventually landed a job at the renowned Jz Club. Although much less predictable, a career in music seemed much more meaningful and fulfilling to the disillusioned lawyer.

“I was never really a 100 percent into law, so, after finishing my degree, I came back to China and started to get involved with music. And eventually I ended up working at the Jz Club about two years ago. It was quite difficult, because in that career (law), obviously, you can see a stable future quite clearly but in this, and especially in China, you really don't know what's going to happen from one day to the next. But that was a conscious decision, a choice to live for what makes me feel like myself.”

Forays into China

The Jz Club was established by Chinese bass player Ren Yuqing (任宇清) in 2004 and has since become the most well-known venue for jazz music in China, not least because it also produces the Jz Shanghai Music Festival, the city's biggest annual music event.

Jazz, jue shi yin yue in Chinese, was first introduced to China in the 1920s and 30s, but remains today a relatively unknown music style, due to a decade of suppression during the Cultural Revolution. Nevertheless, Shanghai's history as a vibrant immigrant city makes it the ideal backdrop for nurturing the Chinese jazz scene back to health, which has been ongoing since the 1990s. And as a veritable jazz haven, the Jz Club has played a key role in this renaissance.

The Jz Club was opened in 2004. (Image: Jz Club Shanghai)“There is a definite history here, but it's only really like an echo or a shadow because it was completely wiped out during the Cultural Revolution. You know, the people who play jazz now, they didn't grow up with jazz around them. It's like an echo or something... If they wanted to find out about jazz, they had to try and get CDs from where ever they could. You only have to go back ten years to a period where jazz is really hardly happening at all in this city. If you go back twenty years, there was nothing. So, it's really quite amazing. And Beijing and other cities don't have this history. Also, it's got something to do with the spirit of Shanghai: Shanghai is more suitable, for jazz, I think, than Beijing.”

Jazzin' Shanghai

Elliott says that his work at the club mainly consists of booking bands for the club and corporate gigs outside, as well as of making arrangements for the Jz Shanghai Music Festival.

“My job title is international liaison, which is a little unusual in the jazz world – but basically, I'm the booking manager. The difference though between a booking manager in any other country and one in Shanghai is that I’m also dealing with an entirely different culture and logic in producing events – that is where the International Liaison part comes in. My job is split in two halves: I book bands for the club, for the festival and for our concert series, and the other half of my job is - I'm acting as an agent, so when people phone us and want a band for their event, then I deal with that. But for the majority of the year, the festival work takes up most of my time. I would say, predominantly, I'm booking the festival acts but there's all kinds of auxiliary jobs around that.”

The 2009 Jz Shanghai Music Festival was a huge success. (Image: Patrick Wack)When the Jz Club first opened, it was an immediate success, but unfortunately it had to soon relocate to make way for a redevelopment project. This was also around the time that the first Jz Music Festival saw the light of day. Since then, the festival has grown to become the biggest outdoor music event in Shanghai.

“I'd say that in the last couple of years, it's grown very rapidly. It's an outdoor music festival. It was only jazz, but now it's other forms of music. In 2008, the first year in which I worked on it, it was in Jing’An Park in the center of town and we sold out, we had to actually stop letting people in, because there was just not enough space. So, this year, we moved to a bigger park, the biggest in Shanghai. It was the biggest live music festival in Shanghai this year.”

“The music festival this year (2009) owes its success to a few reasons. I think a lot of the Chinese audience came for the Chinese acts, which can be also some kind of pop or rock singers but once they are at the festival they love to be introduced to the foreign acts and jazz music. There were Chinese people hanging out at the jazz stage it was just what we wanted to happen. But generally, the vast majority of people in China do not know the English word 'jazz' – they don't actually know what this word is, they don’t have much reference for jazz even if you translate the name... So, then when we come to promoting artists, if you talk about a certain jazz act being very well known that doesn't mean very much over here.”

The festival has established itself as one of the most notable annual events in Shanghai. It is hard to predict what will happen in 2010, but as thousands of international tourists flock to the city for the Shanghai World Expo from May to October, it is sure to help develop the scene.

And the Jz Club will not be the only one ensuring that Expo visitors will have a “jazzin' good time” in Shanghai.

Renowed jazz singer Coco Zhao performed at the festival. (Image: Patrick Wack)“Electronic music is quite popular here, so there are a lot of DJs and venues that cater for various sub-genres of electronic sounds. And then you've got jazz clubs, some rock clubs, Yu Ying Tang is the best, but there is more rock and puck happening in Beijing, and there are a few independent promoters that I really admire for their ability to promote great music in a very complex market. I'm completely excluding classical here because it's not my area of expertise, but there is a strong classical music scene here in China. I think that's a little bit more understandable if you think about the recent history of China... There's a lot of people who a very technically gifted or skilled on music. Maybe for jazz, you need to have some larger variety of life experience to be convincing on the stage. That's my take on things. So, the bars, clubs and venues which are producing music or hosting music, those are really changing very, very quickly. There's one place which opened recently, called Mao Livehouse, and I think its maximum capacity is about 1,000, this place has a great sound system, a decent-sized stage, lights that you can do a lot of things with, but can Shanghai fill a 1,000-capacity club each weekend? I think that is a big question. Personally, I don't think it can, but things are changing quickly.”

The golden saxophone

Although the jazz music scene is definitely burgeoning in China, it is still a very young market and may prove a disappointment to musicians hoping to strike it big in the country of 1,3 billion people. In addition, success in China often requires adapting to a whole other method of doing business.

“I think you've got to look at that in two ways: one is that if a jazz band or jazz musician would like to come and live in Shanghai, I think they can have a very nice life here. For bands which pass through or want to come on tour, they will most likely have an absolutely fantastic experience, but they will be lucky to break even, and that's with a lot of funding as well. They won't make money out of it. Some of the artists that have come to our festival this year and wrote back to me afterwards and just said that in all their years of touring, they've just had the best time ever. But a lot of the jazz musicians who live in town can pick up corporate gigs: because of all the investment in China, there are so many company parties and networking events and celebrations and jazz is quite popular as entertainment during those parties. So, it's a good place for that, especially for the cats who’ve been here many years and have the connections.“

When talking about the music industry in China, many immediately think of problems linked to copyright protection and piracy. How big a problem is this from a jazz musician's point of view?

Mark Elliott has worked at the Jz Club for two years. (Image: Courtesy of Mark Elliott)

One of the most important things to keep in mind before setting out to test the waters in China is that the business world there is quite different from the West. The best way to embark on the adventure is to just basically hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

“The way that people do business here is just completely different to the way it is done in the West. And I think that if anyone is interested to really know more, there's no better way than actually to just come here and get a feel for the place, because no matter how ever much I talk about it, I can't really explain what is going on here... It is a fascinating place.“