The Inscrutable Occidental–Bob Dylan In China
From the LA Times, a story that cracked me up not because of the politics but because of trying to imagine the puzzlement of the Chinese audience over why they had paid all this money for tickets to see this guy.
At a time when many other American performers have been banned from China, Bob Dylan was allowed to play Wednesday night in Beijing, but with a program that omitted Dylan`s most famous ballads of dissent. Conspicuously absent from the program at the Workers` Gymnasium were “The Times They Are A-Changin`” and “Blowin` in the Wind.” Dylan`s set list had to be sanctioned beforehand by the Ministry of Culture, which in its formal invitation decreed that he would have to “conduct the performance strictly according to the approved program.”
Still, the 69-year-old musician, clad in a white panama hat and drainpipe trousers, sung and strummed before a welcoming crowd of 6,000. He worked his way through a repertoire that included “Tangled up in Blue” and “Simple Twist of Fate.” The only time Dylan paused in the workmanlike performance to address the audience was when he introduced the members of his band. …
Dylan is so unknown in China that one newspaper, the Shanghai-based Xinmin Evening News, ran a story about his upcoming concerts alongside a big photograph of country music star Willie Nelson.
During the height of Dylan`s popularity in the 1960s, China was entirely closed off to the West. Only in the 1980s did social and economic liberalization allow Chinese to hear rock music. But none of Dylan`s albums have ever been officially released in China.
At the Beijing concert Wednesday, many Chinese attendees admitted they knew little of Dylan`s music or legacy. “His music is OK. But I don`t speak English, so I can`t understand what he`s singing,” Gao Mingwen said outside the stadium. “I hear he`s very famous though.”
I saw Dylan 25 years ago when he toured with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as his band. The pairing sounded good in theory, but Petty`s good-natured showmanship just made Dylan look bad. Petty is no giant of American culture, but he works hard to entertain his audience, which Dylan didn`t. He just stood there and whined. And I can`t imagine that Dylan has become a more dynamic performer as he`s aged. “Tangled Up in Blue” from 1974 is a great, great song, but to appreciate Dylan as fully as his American acolytes do, you kinda had to be there in 1965, which the Chinese most definitely weren`t.
Bob Dylan posts web message about China shows
Singer claims authorities did not censor setlist for China concerts
Bob Dylan performing in China in April 2011. Photograph: AP
Confounding seasoned Bob Dylan fans, the 69-year old song and dance man has posted a message on his official website addressing the controversy surrounding his concerts in China in April. Dylan has never previously communicated with his followers in this way, but he has now refuted the suggestion that he allowed the Chinese government to censor his setlist.
Several critics – if not all – questioned his motivation, including New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who wrote that Dylan "sang his censored set, took his pile of Communist cash and left."
In response to such accusations, Dylan wrote on bobdylan.com that the Chinese authorities had not refused him permission to play there, and while "according to Mojo magazine the concerts were attended mostly by ex-pats", there were not many empty seats and this was not true. "If anybody wants to check with any of the concert-goers they will see that it was mostly Chinese young people that came," he continued.
Dylan added: "The Chinese press did tout me as a 60s icon, however, and posted my picture all over the place with Joan Baez, Che Guevara, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The concert attendees probably wouldn't have known about any of those people. Regardless, they responded enthusiastically to the songs on my last four or five records. Ask anyone who was there. They were young and my feeling was that they wouldn't have known my early songs anyway."
In respect to the idea that the Chinese government vetted the setlist, Dylan wrote: "We played all the songs that we intended to play".
The singer turns 70 on 24 May, and with an oblique reference to the happy occasion, the sometime author and radio show host concluded this novel missive: "Everybody knows by now that there's a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I'm encouraging anybody who's ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them."
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