Good explanation for concert behaviour.
Rowan Callick | October 28, 2008
DIANA Krall, the Canadian pianist and singer, one of today's greatest jazz drawcards, was held up on her way into a Beijing theatre earlier this month by a scalper, determined to sell her a ticket.
He was so insistent, she told the audience later, that he wasn't deterred even when she told him it was her show.
The sold-out concert was Krall's first in China.
She was outraged by the price he was demanding, but perhaps failed to realise she could have bargained him down. Rule of thumb in Chinese negotiations: start at one-third or one-quarter of the first asking price, and pay no more than half.
Krall was generous about the response of the audience. But as well as appearing to have caught Beijing throat, which caused her to cough throughout, she was a victim of the China concert syndrome.
China is increasingly on the map for international artists, even though as a market it remains promising rather than lucrative.
The party-state imposes a tax on every activity it knows about. In the case of cultural events, this greatly complicates costings and imposes a hidden burden on genuine supporters of the arts.
A substantial percentage of all tickets available at every venue usually has to be given by the promoter -- free of charge -- to the local Communist Party organisation, to the Culture Ministry or its regional offshoot that must ultimately approve every performance, and to the state-owned enterprise orgovernment agency that invariably owns the concert hall.
The Poly Theatre in Beijing, for instance, was developed by the People's Liberation Army and retains close military connections via the Poly Group.
This helps explain the ubiquitous huangniu, or scalpers. Tickets find their way into the hands of cadres who have no interest in the occasion. But someone in their family knows someone who knows someone who may be able to ensure some money winds its way back up that chain.
It also helps explain the sections of empty seats, usually the most expensive, near the front of the house, even at concerts where every ticket ostensibly was sold. They were "taxed" to officials who had no interest in attending.
This was the reason for the extraordinary divide between sections of the audience at Krall's concert. The hollering and applauding fans were overwhelmingly in the cheaper seats. The behaviour of those in the $240 seats was intriguingly different.
Many were children, some of them clutching light-sticks that they did not switch on. It was clear that many in that section of the audience had little notion of the music they had come to hear.
Perhaps they had seen the promotional photos of Krall and imagined that a blonde Canadian of about 40 must sing sentimental ballads in the vein of Celine Dion, the goddess of Chinese music fans, whose 1997 theme song from the movie Titanic, My Heart Will Go On, has yet to hit an iceberg in the world's most populous country.
Many of those in the $240 seats began to chat among themselves and soon they began to walk out in the middle of songs.
The tickets had been passed down to them for nothing: they did not particularly value the opportunity to hear world-class jazz, a musical idiom with which they could make no connection.
This strange setting for live music emanates from the desire of the Chinese Government, via its Culture Ministry and other agencies, and of the party via its propaganda department, to host concerts by international artists to boost the country's image, while insisting on controlling the content of all performances.
Even the Rolling Stones had to submit a playlist before their 2006 concert in Shanghai was approved. And classical music concert programs are combed scrupulously to weed out works with any religious element, such as Mozart's Requiem.
The conservative Chinese party-state also tends to distrust any event that draws crowds. Hence its extraordinary efforts to restrict the audiences for the Olympic torch relay and its advice to Beijing's laobaixing, or ordinary people, to stay at home and watch the Games on television.
Beyond the official parameters, though, large numbers of fans can be found for almost every type of music. And they are determined not to be railroaded out of their serious musical pleasures, which find no place in the popular media: Chinese TV, for example, despite its 40 or so channels, plays only middle-of-the-road American pop or patriotic melodies. Thus, when music enthusiasts are provided a rare opportunity to hear an exemplar of the genre they enjoy, they make sure the performer knows just how delighted they are.
Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu, singing in the Divas in Beijing concert series during the Olympics -- an outstandingly successful event organised by Australians -- was called back for six encores.
When Emma Kirkby sang 16th and 17th-century songs accompanied by a lute in the Forbidden City concert hall, a large group of Beijingers in their 20s hollered in delight, and the English soprano came to the edge of the stage after the show and engaged them in a discussion about music.
Another, smaller section of serious music audiences comprises older people, whose attention is reverential, veering on the religious.
Their stories are, of course, varied, but they mostly share the experience of having survived terrible times, especially during the Cultural Revolution, when their seemingly harmless pleasure in Western music threatened to gravely imperil them and their families. Their joy today at being free to listen to what they want to, for the most part, is moving and stands in stark contrast with the cadres' families with the free tickets in the stalls, who prefer to spend the time sending and receiving text messages on their mobile phones.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24561193-25837,00.html