Interview with The Swamp about the Kaiping festival

From Rock in China Wiki

Interview with The Swamp about the Kaiping festival

ongoing interview activity by User:Azchael and The Swamp vocalist Hai Liang about the Kaiping festival series.

Interview on October 26th 2008

Azchael: Thanks once again for helping me to figure out about the Kaiping festival. What is the Kaiping festival? Who is organizing it and where can I get more information (website / email)?

Hai Liang: We held this music festival in Kaiping city, and so it comes the name.

In the very beginning, it was organized and held by our band, and some friends working at the radio station and television station.

As one of the backbones, we kept in organized this festival for many years. The latest one was the 6th Kaiping music festival.

Actually, there are plenty of large scale music concerts and festivals in Guangdong but few gives first place to indie musicians or rock bands. Since 1996, Kaiping music festival was held with the purpose of providing them with a chance to play, which still has special significance in Guangdong today. However, it cannot go on due to many different kinds of factors. We still wish to hold this festival again in the future.

Azchael: When was the first Kaiping festival and who joined it?

Hai Liang: The first Kaiping festival was held in 1996. So many bands took part in, such as Wanglei, Yufeimen, Iron spider, Chuibotang, Huangbo (since that he’d gone to Beijing and formed “the verse”) and us, certainly. Just as I’ve said before, most of these indie musicians and bands came from Guangdong.

Azchael: What were in general the first big Guangzhou events that took place in regard of rock music?

Hai Liang: In my view of it, a rock concert held in 1995 can be considered the first big shows in Guangzhou. It was held in Butong 100 bar. Besides the bands of the earliest time like Wanglei, Mangliu and Laozai, there were also some Hongkong indie musicians attended it, such as Black&Blue(the leading vocal Lu Qiaoyin has now become a pop star), and Huang qiusheng, However it’s known to many more people, he is a movie actor. Actually, he wrote songs as well, and those were rock music.

Very few rock show held in Guangzhou those years. As an audience that time, when seeing so many bands playing together, I felt like celebrating a festival. I think many of us might have the same feeling. It must give the young people there a very deep impression.

Azchael: Where can I get more information about Guangzhou and its rock scene in general?

Hai Liang: In the old days, there was lots of information and news about the rock music in Guangzhou, and we could even find some specialized websites. But now these websites have gradually closed. The newly ones aren’t popular yet.

It’s easy to find the up coming rock band shows from some websites like Douban and Mosh. But it may be hard to find other information of it.

Azchael: Do you have any old festival posters (scans / jpg) or schedules of the festivals? Photos?

Hai Liang: Yes we have some. But schedules can not be found yet.