Bjork effect hits Harry Connick Jr in China
p2pnet news | Music:- Icelandic singer Bjork’s ‘Tibet, Tibet’ outburst in Shanghai has echoed down the line.
China said its feelings were hurt when she several times shouted Tibet! Tibet! during a concert in Shanghai.
In response, China promised to impose stricter rules on foreign stars and the first to feel the impact of the Bjork effect seems to be singer-pianist Harry Connick Jr.
“We fell asleep at the beginning of the show, with all the solo piano and mellow vocals happening,” says Shanghai musician J.Q. Whitcomb in the Shanghaiist, going on >>>
Then it was the same 2 or 3 players taking horn solos all night, and there was only one trumpet solo in the entire show! It makes you wonder what the heck was going on for this to happen, after all the hype about this great big band.
But then it dawned on us what the Ministry of Culture said in response to Bjork’s political outburst at her concert the week before, right at the end of the press release: “From now on, stricter controls will be placed on performances by foreign artists in China to prevent similar incidents from happening.” Bingo! Sure enough, players in Connick’s band told us that the government people showed up an hour before they were to play and went to town on their set list, crossing off a number of tunes they disapproved of (what was Harry thinking, trying to play all that counter-revolutionary garbage anyway?) and replacing them with “safer” tunes.
Tunes, of course, which the band did not happen to have charts on hand for. Thus explains the extraordinary number of solo piano-with-vocals tunes heard throughout the show.
But, “It’s actually really easygoing here,” Canadian Press has Whitcomb saying of the local performance environment.
However, “when something happens, (Chinese authorities) are like, ‘Oh, we have to be strict about this,’ and then suddenly everything gets strangled in red tape for some amount of time.
“Then it will pass.”
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Also See:
‘Tibet, Tibet’ outburst – Bjork ‘Tibet’ outburst angers China, March 8, 2008
Shanghaiist – Harry Connick Jr. concert last Sunday disappointing; Ministry of Culture to blame?, March 12, 2008
Canadian Press – Song list mix up leaves Harry Connick Jr.’s China concert flat, March 13, 2008
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