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Joyce Siu

As an influential figure in Beijing's alternative music scene, Yan Jun is plugged into a gamut of genres - electronica, metal, punk  - but he has little aptitude for performing any of it.
'Music doesn't want me; I can't play any instrument or even count the right beat,' he says, smiling. 'But sounds are generous. They accept me. If you listen to them with your heart, you can make something interesting out of them.'
That's why the 36-year-old Lanzhou native has gravitated towards sound experiments. 
Yan, the brains behind Mini Midi, the experimental programme within the mainland's Midi Music Festival, has immersed himself in music since his teens, organising concerts and writing reviews.
'I listen to all types of music,' he says. 'As I listened to more, I realised that I'm not only touched by music with a melody, but by sounds from nature and noises.'
So he began exploring the potential of everyday sounds, such as the reverberations when an empty oil drum is struck or the rhythm of people talking. 'I'm fascinated by the noises from washing machines and engines too.'
He has been capturing sounds from daily life and manipulating them digitally to create often hypnotic soundscapes. Yan has presented his sound installations at events on the mainland, in London and now Hong Kong, where he is a featured artist in Around, a sound art festival with activities scheduled throughout this month.
His contribution Walk ...Stay... is 60 minutes of miscellaneous recordings including noise from a Beijing street corner, phone ringtones at an underground station and even the sound of toenails  being cut. 
The audio collage - available for download at the website of festival organisers Soundpocket (soundpocket.org.hk)  - is created for a 'soundwalk' on Lamma Island, providing stimulation as participants explore Tung O Beach and nearby villages.
Cui Jian's rock anthems first sparked Yan's love for music two decades ago as he was growing up in Gansu province. However, a flood of dakou albums in the 90s - surplus CDs and cassettes with damaged casings shipped in from the west as industrial waste - instilled a more eclectic musical appetite.
'The influence of dakou is that we were exposed to different musical genres - oldies, jazz or rock from different periods - all at once,' Yan says. 'In Hong Kong, people probably listened to certain types of imported music. For us, they were all mixed.'
Hooked, he began organising concerts for student bands in 1993 while in university. In  his last two years at college he often skipped classes to attend gigs and hang out in bars, he says.  
Yan says Chinese society was in a negative mood then in the wake of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists.
'In the past people were still talking about poetry, dreams and the future. [In the 90s] they only talked about buying houses and cars. Their faces lost the romantic glow they once had. They didn't want to talk about the painful past.'
Still, he says, an idealistic few continued to express their anger at social injustice and longing for freedom through music.
When he relocated to Beijing in 1999, Yan got to know many waidai (out-of-town) bands at Tree Village in the northern suburbs, a former farm community that attracted young musicians from  smaller cities pursuing their dreams in Beijing.  
Their idealism inspired Beijing Rocks - director Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting's 2001 film about a young Hong Kong songwriter who befriends an impoverished rocker and his stripper girlfriend in the city.
Yan and a number of musicians were hired as consultants but when they were shown the script, many felt it was a commercial love story rather than a realistic portrayal of the underground rock scene. On behalf of the bands, Yan drafted the Tree Village Declaration to outline why they rejected further co-operation with the film company.
The rock boom fizzled out soon afterwards, as groups disbanded.    
'The underground rock scene died,' Yan says. 'In the past, young people played rock music to rebel against conservative parents and the government. But parents were less conservative.  Some would buy guitars for their teenage sons. What were you going to rebel against?'
The country also seemed more liberal after President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao took office in 2003, Yan says, citing how shops in the 798 art district were now selling badges with wacky slogans such as 'I Love Tao Tao [Hu]' or 'I Love Bao Bao [Wen]'.  
'But by liberal I mean society seems more tolerant but politically I don't think it's really liberal.'
Lacking rock concerts to organise or rock music to review, Yan focused more on his own sound work and giving young experimental musicians a platform. In 2001, he set up a record company, Sub Jam, to promote promising bands such as P.K. 14. His other label, Waterland  Kwanyin,  is a more adventurous project featuring foreign and Chinese acts, including Dou Wei  and electronic outfit FM3. And since 2005, the annual Mini Midi festival has featured more than 100 outfits making improvised electronic and sound art.
While the mainland's old rock groups took an anti-establishment stance, Yan says the new bands are more focused on self-discovery. 
'Now young bands want to create their own standards. They don't want to be  number one; they just want to be themselves.' 
Yan says he likes helping new musicians kick-start their careers. 'Many bands are waiting for big record companies to sign them up and promote their albums. But I think there should be more small independent labels to help new outfits and organise live gigs where they can polish their techniques.' 
Yan plays a pivotal role in alternative music, says Kenneth Fields, a former professor of electronic music at the Central Conservatory of Music. 'Yan is the primary interface to new Chinese electronic music. Whenever western musicians came to Beijing and wanted to play music outside the conservatory, I would connect them with him.' 
This year Yan has taken a break from running Mini Midi to  work on ways to make the festival more inventive, but his schedule hasn't let up: he's constantly travelling to take part in international sound art festivals. Most of his performances are interactive. His popular Stethoscope project, for example, has  audience members listening to each other's amplified heartbeats. 
Yan next plans to compile a sound diary from recordings made during his recent 10-day stay in Hong Kong. 'I've recorded the sound of a ferry, which is beautiful - it's hypnotic. I also find the way the 'tik tik tik' sound at railway stations and traffic crossings pushes people to move faster interesting,' he says. 'The sound and rhythm of Cantonese is sexy too.'



Music to his ears