Mirrors

The rock culture in China does not exist, as such. Rock is not dead; as a genre, it is falling apart into separate scenes that are supposedly different, temporarily stable, and – at the same time – held together by the same beliefs in rock. Rock is not dead, given the sustaining power of the rock mythology. It is this mythology which produces the crucial, spatially and ideologically inscribed divide between rock from Beijing and pop from predominantly Taiwan and Hong Kong. Whether it is folk, underground music, or pop-punk, rock musicians seem to agree on one thing: they are not making pop. In contrast to what is often perceived by musicians, record companies, journalists, and academics as the fake, commercial sound of pop, rock musicians express their ‘true feelings’ in their music. Pop is rock's most conspicuous constitutive outside.

Authenticity is of crucial importance in the rock mythology, especially when this mythology travels to places outside the West. Whereas musicians in the West are literally born in the imagined centre of rock, their counterparts in China constantly have to prove themselves in order to gain the right to make rock music. Compared to the Western claim to the origins, and therefore to the continual making, of rock, Chinese rock musicians must bear the burden of providing authenticating proof in order to avoid being labelled mere copycats. The production of a scenic authenticity involves an exploration of different aesthetic tracks. I have analysed the Dadaistic, vulgar, and metaphorical aesthetics coupled to the lo-fi recording techniques of underground bands; the chivalric aesthetics of heavy metal; the regular-guy aesthetics of folk-rock; the rhythmic DIY aesthetics of hardcore punk to which pop-punk adds a spontaneous mischievous pose; the urban, keeping it real aesthetics of hip-hop; and, finally, the eclectic, electronic, and cosmopolitan aesthetics of the fashionable bands.