Cui Jian

Cui Jian (born 2 August 1961) is a Beijing-based Chinese singer-songwriter, trumpeter and guitarist.

Affectionately called "Old Cui", he is credited with pioneering Chinese rock music.

For this distinction he is often labeled the "Father of Chinese Rock".

Cui Jian grew up in a musical family in Beijing.

His father was ethnic Korean and a professional trumpet player, and his mother was a member of a Korean dance troupe.

Cui Jian followed his father to start playing the trumpet at the age of fourteen.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Cui created a hybrid and experimental music mix that cut across divisions between pop, reggae, funk, hard rock and punk music genres.

Cui's songs drew on folk and traditional music types, such as the Northwest Wind (Xibeifeng) peasant songs of the Loess Plateau of Shaanxi.

At times they knowingly parodied old Communist Party sayings and proverbs.

He joined the Beijing Symphony Orchestra in 1981, at the age of twenty.

He was first introduced to rock during this period when friends smuggled in illicit recordings from Hong Kong.

Inspired by the likes of Simon and Garfunkel and John Denver, Cui began learning to play the guitar.

In 1984 he formed his first band, Qi He Ban (七合板, literally "Seven-Ply Board," a double entendre reference to the seven-member band) with six other classically trained musicians, including the saxophonist/suona player Liu Yuan.

The seminal band was heavily influenced by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Talking Heads.

They performed their own works—mostly soft rock and love songs—in local hotels and bars.

With his band, Cui released his first cassette Return of the Prodigal that same year.

The album contained mellow, pop-oriented love songs but also showcased songs with progressive and folk-rock influences, which were fresh and innovative in China at the time.

In 1985, the band released another album titled "Cui Jian with Seven-Player Band".

This album featured a combination of Western pop rock as well as new original songs.

It also featured more prominent use of the electric guitar, which was seldom used in Chinese popular music.

Cui's departure from the band and subsequent solo career led him to become the most successful and influential musician in Chinese rock history.

Cui Jian first shot to stardom in 1986, when he performed his song "Nothing to My Name" on the 100-Singer Concert of Year of International Peace at Beijing's Workers' Stadium.

The following year, he left his permanent job with the orchestra.

His band, now renamed ADO, included two foreign embassy employees: Hungarian bassist Kassai Balazs and Madagascan/French guitarist Eddie Randriamampionona.

In 1988 he performed at a concert broadcast worldwide in conjunction with the Seoul Summer Olympic Games.

His first real album, Rock and Roll on the New Long March, was released in 1989.

Cui Jian reached the apex of his popularity during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, when "Nothing to My Name" became an anthem to student protestors.

Before the protests were violently broken up on 4–5 June, Cui frequently appeared with the students and was affirmed by Wu'er Kaixi, one of the prominent leaders of the movement, as highly influential among young Chinese of the time.

The following government crackdown forced many rock musicians, Cui Jian included, into hiding in the other provinces.

Sanctions proved relatively temporary, and Cui was able to return to Beijing shortly afterward.

In early 1990, the Chinese government would permit him to embark his first rock tour entitled the "New Long March", to raise money for the 1990 Asian Games.

Ten concerts were scheduled in Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Xi'an, Chengdu and others.

Midway through the tour, Cui Jian gained notoriety for appearing on stage wearing a red blindfold across his eyes before performing his well-known political anthem, "A Piece of Red Cloth", prompting the government to terminate the performance and cancel the remainder of the tour.

The tour was still able to raise 1 million yuan for the 1990 Asian Games.

Through the 1990s Cui Jian was banned from playing major venues in Beijing, although he was able to stage a number of one-set, word-of-mouth concerts at newly flourishing venues like The Sunflower Club.

Elsewhere in China he was permitted to play to sell-out crowds in both large and small venues, only on occasion facing government interference.

In 1991, for example, he set the old revolutionary song "Nanniwan" to rock music.

Cui Jian was the first-ever winner of the MTV International Viewer's Choice Award for his song/music video "Wild in the Snow" in 1991.

His earliest works had influence from Western popular music styles, such as punk, dance and jazz; these songs also became his best-known works.

With tensions rising among the students of China and the government, Cui's work was very influential among the youth.