That's not Postmodernism, that's to a large extent American hegemony.

I'm afraid they're not really detachable. Postmodernism is the art of the cultural moment of American hegemony. Its interest in difference and the other doesn't deny that, it confirms it.

I like your point about North Korea, though, and I don't think it's entirely silly. But Kim Jong Il has a pathetic taste for foreign cinema, cars and girls. He probably listens to U2.

What about central asian countries and their blend of Islam, East-asian traditions and socialism? North Korea doesn't even come close!

Ah yes, the so-called Stans!

Stanzism!

"My friend Stan's got a funny old man"

I imagine you're already aware of this Sublime Frequencies release:

You've only posted this because you hate freedom and are against "us"!

no, I posted it for Kuma, because he's a freedom-hater and is against "us"

and not once does he mention the well-documented "fact" that North Korea is a member of the Axis of Evil!

If we talk about the audience, we got aliens... Or perhaps people who feel that they are watching something alien.

But if we talk about the music on stage it sounds a bit like western disco. Or pop music. Watched by alienated aliens.

I've been hearing a lot about Mongolian hip hop lately and have been meaning to check it out for months now..
If we can trust this article from the Ulaan Baator Times via Hip Hop Linguistics,

In what seems to any foreigner a fascinating transposition of an American cultural icon to an ‘exotic’ location.... the shamans drew many parallels between the content and structure of their traditional songs and the urban rhymes that flood the radio stations today.

My 10 mins of clicking around on YouTube didn't yield anything I'm confident in pointing to as something clearly beyond the hub-&-spokes model. I'll report back when I have more to offer, though..

It's not that they tried to beat America at its own game, it's that the Americans laid the groundwork for "the game", put the Japanese on that path, and the Japanese did their thing with it. That's why Japan and America have such a close relationship, but not necessarily say ... Japan and the UK, despite the UK being pretty much like the US 98% of the way (yes, yes, we all hem and haw about how different the on-the-ground customs are b/t the US and UK, but that pales in comparison to the shared Anglo-Saxon value of free market economics and innovation, the Protestant work ethic, and the bizarre love for line/"queue" forming).

Well I mean, the Americans rebuilt Japan like they did Western Europe; but with Japan, the countries also sought to intertwine each other culturally. Why do you think the Japanese play baseball, of all the sports in the world to adopt? (don't say "they like football! that's like england!", people like soccer in the US, too).

To say that the Chinese sphere musicians only produce lumps of
kitsch sounds pretty unfair to me. It's like only using Ayumi Hamasaki to represent the Japanese music industry and say they only make Madonna-wannabe music.

Show Luo(the guy in the video you put on) is a paradigm of being a "tai ke"(台客), a stereotype of contemporary Taiwanese vulgar pop culture, which is a hybrid of Japanese and Western sensibilities with a cringeworthy twist. It's best represented by their TV game show. The stereotype is similar aesthetically to the Japanese term yabo(野暮), something I think you should be more familiar than me.

Many music gems of the Chinese world were underrepresented in the West I believe, mainly due to the lacking of cultural outlet and language barrier. Well-produced music is usually scattered around every corner of the Chinese world and there are not many people willing to curate Chinese music to the world. So I think those loud Chinese music eclipses the cherries.

I went to the China Design Now exhibition last summer as well, and as a student from Hong Kong, I must say it is a rather faint description of what is going on in China. Firstly, it was organised by China Now, a group of foreign corporates which invest in China(like HSBC) and try to please the Chinese government by showing "the advanced side" of China. It is very RPC-centred, not representing Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau/Singapore/part of Malaysia/overseas Chinese(the Chinese speaking world) well.

I read the altermodern manifesto just now and I think it's exciting to see Altermodernism is more willing to understand to what non-Western societies think by actively translating what other people mean, rather than doing what modernism loved the most: to forget people's own culture and live in a concrete box. Although I still see there is a problem on translation. IS it really possible to translate some idea well enough into other language without losing its core meaning, ie Can Westerners really understand Zen scriptures without understanding Japanese?

Are we going to get into an age where being fluent in 5 language is a norm? If so, it will be really exciting!

The following is a bunch of Chinese music that are pretty interesting and has it's only character. Hope that you can find some pleasant surprises here!

http://www.myspace.com/kimtak

1, on the subject of contemporary music from China, my personal recommendation goes to Wang Lei (that's 王磊; not to be confused with 王雷)'s soundtrack for Yan-Yan Mak's 2001 film 'GeGe' (Brother). Mak is a HK director who was once an assistant to Wong Kar-wai, and GeGe is her own first feature. Wang Lei is, I think, originally from Sichuan/Szechwan and, last I heard, lives around Guangzhou.



Actually, I liked this film and its soundtrack so much that they're both near the very top of my list of '00s favorites, possible 1sts.

On a less-bright note, I tried for a while to track down more of Wang Lei's recordings, without luck at first, and I just found out that among his easiest-to-find-online later work is (very unfortunately) a cringe-inducing (and, for me, hope-shattering) dance remix of Kravitz, commissioned by Absolut...
And as for Mak, her second work, 'Butterfly', turned out to be an unremarkable lesbian (melo)drama with a passable múm soundtrack.

2,
> IS it really possible to translate some idea well enough into other language without losing its core meaning, ie Can Westerners really understand Zen scriptures without understanding Japanese?

a valid question,
but is it any different than asking
Can the Japanese really understand Ch'an scriptures without understanding Chinese?

(or, for that matter,
Can anyone really understand a 'transmission outside the scriptures' through the reading of scriptures, foreign language or not?)

Torturing Nurse didn't make it into the Top 40?! Lame!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT7WgvzfojQ

Happy to see Pixeltoy on here, though :)

One thing I'm definitely hoping we don't miss in the discussions that unfold over the next few days is the Altermodern Mixtape. I've been lurking on this blog for quite awhile now; am really glad this topic has come to the fore, and am happy to finally feel motivated to join in the conversations, but I'll save my thoughts on the mixtape until definitions begin to be sized-up.

Isaac
- secondnature.posterous.com -

I think ther are about 30% from Hong Kong, 40%, from Mainland China, 30% from Taiwan. So it's a pretty even mix.

I am not sure about the case in mainland China. I think it is easy to find music in Mainland China because almost all major Chinese search engines (like http://mp3.baidu.com/ and http://mp3.sogou.com/)have a mp3 search feature.(even Yahoo China has one!). There are forums for downloading mp3 as well. But these mainland sites are infamous for being a virus hotbed so beware.

I don't usually download mp3 myself, I usually get some recommendation from my friends/reading blogs. I also go to Youtube to watch music videos. Some of my friends only use the internet for downloading songs/movies. Hong Kong Discuss Forum and Hong Kong Golden Forum are two of the most popular forums for almost anything. But, as almost every Chinese sites, the medium is usually Chinese.

I think to start with, you can go to http://www.last.fm/user/littleoslo
it is the playlist of one of my fave Chinese bloggers. (littleoslo.com), he is in fact the person who compile the above music. This chap from Hong Kong knows about many thins about Mainland, Taiwan, Singapore(Mandarin speaking regions) and Hong Kong (Cantonese) mainstream and indie music. He lives in Oslo but keeps very updated information about the Chinese world. He sometimes blogs in Danish and English. But his blog is down atm because he wants to change the layout of his blog completely.

http://3cmusic.com/home/(great inclusive Chinese music blog covering the whole Chinese sphere, very good pick, sadly only in Chinese. But with your knowledge in kanji, you can manage it! Other thing is that the bloggers should be pretty good in English, so feel free to ask them questions.)
http://www.harbourrecords.com/
http://www.timeout.com.hk/music/
(Time Out Magazine Hong Kong: they provide surprisingly ecelectic recommendations: both local and western, indie and mainstream music in HK)
http://www.shift.jp.org/guide/hong-kong/
http://www.881903.com/Page/ZH-TW/Pro903_12.aspx
(the supposedly most popular Chinese(both mandarin and cantonese) music chart in Hong Kong)
http://www.yesasia.com/us/en/
http://moov.hk/
http://www.kubrick.com.hk/

and the other thing is: most of the links I provided may be a little bit Hong Kong-centric, so please bear in mind that there is an even bigger scene in mainland China or elsewhere that even I may not have heard of! So good luck in your journey to hunt down good Chinese music!