2004 MIDI Music Festival, which will be held from October 1 to 4, 2004, will be held in the 40,000 square meters open square of Beijing International Sculpture Park. There will be 45 excellent bands of different styles dedicating wonderful modern music to the audience in 4 days. As in the previous 4 festivals, the audience will have **access to the festival grounds (just buy a park ticket for 10 RMB each time).
Under the warm sunshine and clear starry sky of October, music, woods, grass and lake, accompanied by passion, sincerity, romance, and friendship, true emotions will be burned and released freely along with the music.
Time: October 1-4, 2004 14:00-22:00 daily
Place: Beijing International Sculpture Park, Shijingshan District, Beijing (Yuquan Road Subway Station, West Chang'an Street)
Organized by: Beijing Minstrel School of Music
Beijing International Sculpture Park
Co-organized by: Beijing Bena Advertising Agency
The 2003 MIDI Music Festival lasted for three days and three nights, with tens of thousands of spectators each day. Forty-five bands from all over China took part in the biggest open-air rock event in China. She extended her mysterious and enthusiastic arms to all those on the scene ......
Four years after the festival's founding, rock 'n' roll, as an important part of the youth subculture, can finally have its own shelter and space for identity. It is a sign that rock music in China is no longer waiting for the so-called mainstream culture's recognition and charity, but has gradually acquired the elements of development that any cultural industry should have: creation, dissemination, audience, communication, feedback and controversy.
"I hope someday you will join us."
The Lennon lyrics, written in the 2003 festival's souvenir booklet, undoubtedly have a missionary prophetic passion and a gentle flower-child fantasy, an innocent and fiery sentiment that has blossomed countless times through the rock and roll scene in all its splendor. Today, China's minstrel music festival has once again lit up the souls of young people, so don't worry about them! For they have learned the secret of happiness, found the road to salvation, and regained the power to dream in a numb commodity society. They will be ever sincere in this dream, ever young, ever hot with tears. I. Background and Introduction of the Festival
1. Image positioning: an annual large-scale open-air modern music festival of real significance held in China's capital.
2. History:
Modern music covers a wide range of music genres such as blues, jazz, rock, pop, Latin, country, funk, fusion, rock, heavy metal, rap-metal, hard rock, alternative, electronic, gothic, folk and other music genres developed from the beginning of the last century, as well as a variety of styles of music derived from them. From the birth of modern music to the present day, they have drawn on a great deal of excellent European classical music and the traditional music of various ethnic groups around the world, and as a "new" music system, they have long been independent and mature.
When it comes to the development of modern music in China, we have to mention the Beijing MIDI Music School. The school was founded in 1993, and from the very beginning, it has established a distinctive mission: to disseminate artistic and humanistic theories of modern music, and to educate and promote exquisite techniques of modern music interpretation.
The initial motivation for organizing the festival was just to have exchanges and performances between students on campus, and to invite friends from outside the school's modern music community to gather at the school and show them the results of the teaching of the minstrels over the years, so as to allow more talented students to go on stage. However, as the artistic quality of the festival has improved year by year and the scale of its organization has expanded rapidly, today's festival has become one of the loudest brands in the field of modern music. Every year, in addition to dozens of outstanding bands from home and abroad performing at the festival, tens of thousands of avid spectators flock to the festival from all over the country, and more than a hundred well-known media at home and abroad are concerned about her dynamics and compete to report news related to it. The richness of musical styles, the size of the scene, the scene of the spectacular, the country has not yet any music event can be comparable to it.
The biggest feature of the festival is that all the performing bands are obliged to perform, and the audience is free to come and go as they please (the direction of the festival is to industrialize the festival, so that all the participating bands can get a reasonable income and contribute the profits of each festival to the public welfare), and the performances last from the afternoon to the end of the night, and the audience reaches 10,000 times a day. The festival is attended by thousands of young people: original musicians, free artists, punk youth, internet ranger, SOHO family, backpackers, Bubo family, college students from all over the world, fashionable young people pursuing individuality, elites of the modern new economy and society, the leisure class, as well as a large number of media journalists and foreigners concerned about the youth subculture in China, which make all the fans naturally regard the festival as the "Woodstock" of China. Woodstock" in China.
In May 2002, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) broadcast the third edition of the festival to the world, and all were positive about the emergence of such an event in China.
3. Bands that have participated in the Minstrelsy Festival:
The Ziyi, Ray Blue Jazz Trio, Tongue, Secondhand Rose, Thin Man, Iron Kite, Fruity VC, Trojan Horse, Joy Side, The Armory, Penthouse Circus, Hangtian and the Band, Blister (Norway), JUNKYARD, Brahman (Japan), Disover, Wood Push Melon, Ruins, Wonderful Drugstore, Quasimodo, HAPPY ROCK, New Pants, Happy Street, Godot, Xajia Jazz Trio, Vanity Words & Underworld, Mixed Blood, Wild Child, Dolls 7, Tiger & Sick Doctors, Zhang Shallow Submerge, Godot, Wang Cai, Mountain Man, Sun Dawei, Sandy, Princess Wong Leung, Wednesday's Travels, CMCB, Painful Beliefs, Wonderful Drugstore, Voices and Toys, Mixed Capsule, FM3, Perspective-X, Van Ruij and 3, Old Zhang's Countryside, TOOKOO, AK47, Sick Chrysalis, Slap, Reflector, Van Ruij and Water, Mirage, Zero-One, Twisted Machines, Brain Fouling, Daughter's Red, Submarine, Worms in Autumn, Sound Fragmentation, Scholarship Day, Deadly Teasers, Pith, In the Water, What, Xie Tianxiao and Cold-Blooded Animals, Nocturnal Forks, Doll No. 7, Tanks of Liquid Oxygen , Tomahawk, Asphyxiation, Panda Twin.
4. The development of music festivals:
May 1-2, 2000, the first minstrel festival was held in the auditorium of the Minstrel School, with the participation of 30 bands, a daily audience of nearly 1,000 people and **beer;
July, 2000, the Xidan Minstrel Festival Week was held at the Xidan Cultural Plaza in the form of a plaza A seven-day large-scale open rock music event was carried out, bringing a broader space for original music in Beijing, with more than 10,000 people in the audience every night of the performance;
May 1-3, 2001, the second MIDI Music Festival was held in the auditorium of the MIDI School, with more than 40 bands from all over the country taking part in this summer revelry, with an audience of 3,000 people every day, with **beer;
May 1-3, 2002, the third session of the festival was held on the campus of the Beijing MIDI School of Music, with more than 50 outstanding bands selected from all over the country, and a daily audience of 6,000-8,000, which was hailed by the media as China's first truly open-air rock music festival.
October 1-3, 2003, the fourth festival was postponed due to the SARS outbreak, and was finally held in the bright autumn, with 43 Chinese and foreign bands performing on a voluntary basis, and tens of thousands of enthusiastic spectators on the campus of the festival every day.
The 5th MIDI Music Festival on May 1-3, 2004 was suspended on the morning of April 28 due to security factors.
5. A collection of media reports:
For the future, a particularly good utility of the MIDI Festival is that it sets a precedent for open-air rock festivals in China, letting the government know that rock festivals are not a deluge but a channel of communication with the people, whether indirectly or directly.
-Southern Weekend
The real youth culture started with the minstrels, and a spirit called cultural romanticism is sprouting, against all odds, from a world of materialism, hatred, indifference, and imminent capital takeover.
-China Youth Daily
With dozens of bands and tens of thousands of young people from all over the country attending the biggest show in China's band culture, the festival has become a "Huashan Sword Festival" for young rockers across the country.
-Beijing Evening News
Tens of thousands of young musicians attended this year's event, chanting the theme of this year's festival, "Rock for Animal Protection," and rolling up the POGO heat wave throughout the venue countless times.
- Sina.com
Rock and charity, rock and social responsibility, rock and action, it's time! Say goodbye to indifference and self-isolation, release your repressed spiritual power and welcome the arrival of the hot blooded era!
- Highland Music Network
All bands attending the festival are obligated to perform, and the audience is free to come and go as they please, reaching tens of thousands of people daily. It is undoubtedly the most important festival in China's rock history.
-Phenomenal Impact Magazine
In early May, on a holiday when the middle class and the rich were going out to spend their money, young rockers coincidentally came to the same place, the Beijing MIDI Music School. From south to north, distance didn't seem to be an issue, and those persistent young people always had a way to achieve their goals. So they were willing to let their summer begin with noisy crowds and exciting music, and yes, they longed for it..."
"The three-day Beijing MIDI Music, which began on May 1, 2002, has just come to a close, with 52 bands in attendance that have left people exclaiming, 'This is China's Woodstock! The festival has been held for the third time since 2000. ......"
-Southern Weekend
"The modern music festival, jointly organized by the Beijing MIDI Music School and several media outlets, is now in its third year. Each year, the exponential increase in input, performers, audience, enthusiasm and sweat has made its influence expanding, this year's festival location at the foot of Fragrant Hill in the minstrels modern music school, three days of hot performances, gathered 40 bands selected from all over the country, the audience is from the country's rock enthusiasts ...... plain life needs to release and sublimation, rock music because of its great Sublimation, rock and roll because of its great spiritual power and powerful entertainment function, let these young people who do not know each other get together, cheering together, swinging together, sweating together, tearing up together, dancing together ......"
-"Boutique Shopping Guide"
In the Beijing's early summer, more than fifty rock bands gathered at the foot of Fragrant Hill, creating China's rock and roll essence of the moment ...... It is gratifying to see that happiness is the dominant force in this scene, and even happier that although there were not too many police officers at the scene, the madness did not ten million any violent incidents, and even those who bumped into nosebleeds in the dance, each other even those with bloody noses from dancing, laughed it off. If the festival is to be compared to Woodstock in the United States, the level of joy should be comparable. ......
-Newsweek
Newsweek's Yan Jun, a prominent music critic, writes, "This year's third annual MIDI Festival was the beginning of a subculture for China's youth, with thousands of young people taking part in the festival. subculture's beginning, as thousands of young people from Beijing and beyond, speaking the same slang and with a silent look in their eyes, greeted the 51 bands performing on the grassy lawn of the Minstrels' Music School near Fragrant Hills. ......"
-Fine Shopping Guide, December 31, 2002 -This Undercurrent Has Been So Lively Beijing Rock Year-End Report
"Every May since 2000, the best rock bands from all over China have gathered in Beijing for the annual MIDI Festival, and this year there were a total of ***52 bands taking part in the three days of performances, with about 6,000 spectators coming to the venue each day to enjoy Hip Pop, Hard Core, the music that is so popular in the world today ...... Young musicians are showing their courage to face society head on, and that courage will help drive the development and progress of Chinese society ......"