Reptile and Retard performing at Vox bar in Wuhan April 24th
Photo: Yen Ahaha
How Reptile and Retard made it in the Chinese music underground -An introduction to networking by Esben Valløe
Every year a team of Kaospilots go abroad to make projects in a different cultural context while exploring a certain topic. This spring the Danish school for creative entrepreneurship, sent 35 students to Shanghai to explore the creative industriy. Mads Damsgaard Kristiansen and Esben Valløe were two of them and on top of the school projects, they brought a sports bag full of equipment for performing live with their electronic music project: Reptile and Retard.
“I am sitting here, looking out at the rice fields racing by. Even though the train is driving at high speed, the landscape is so flat that you can easily monitor the activities taking place on the irrigated spaces. I am thinking about the show we played last night and even though the seat here is so hard that my butt is almost asleep, I feel good. It was a tiny, dusty club with wooden floors and a mediocre sound system. Despite the fact that the speakers there interpreted my beloved deep bass-frequencies as a mere rattle, I had felt their energy. Their black hair waving at me, some dressed in ripped punk t-shirts, others with open shirts. The smoke on the floor was reflecting the flashing lights and all I could see from the stage was Chinese people dancing.” Esben’s diary, April 24th 2009 Somewhere between Changsha and Wuhan
Goal: playing ten shows in China
Introduction to Guanxi
One month before writing that piece in my diary, the plane had landed us in cloudy Shanghai and Reptile and Retard was a brand new project with only one past show in our luggage. We had been spending one year developing material for a concert with just one ambition: to play ten gigs in China. To show our work to as many Chinese as possible and to give people an experience they hadn’t had before. That weekend it happened in front of the entire youth of Changsha. And the following weeks it kept on happening. So how did it happen? These are the post reflections from three months of being a foreign artist in China.
C3 consulting teaches Danish businesses how to enter China and before leaving Denmark they gave us a school lecture about Chinese culture.
Successful music management
cultural industry of Shanghai should be different: “Shanghai is more dynamic. Things just go faster there. Of course good relationships are important everywhere in business. But Shanghai has so many western people, that you don’t need to work three years for free to earn your status in the cultural scene.”
When arriving to China we were on our own. The recent trend of freelancing designers, D.I.Y. projects and independent artists has shown that a lot of people in the creative industry are working by themselves. Some designers get affiliated with bureaus and bands hire managers to take care of the business part. Yet from architects and artists to drummers and designers, a lot of industrious creative entrepreneurs choose to save money and maintain independence by managing themselves. We had our songs to play but no confirmed gigs and we knew that we had to manage ourselves, at least in the first place. Johannes Dybkjær Andersson has been in the music underground for years, playing and managing for Lampshade and Asinrebekkamaria: "Music is governed by taste and preferences. It is impossible to convert the product into value and economical potential by using traditional methods. Twenty years ago, the music industry had very few gatekeepers. If one had the luck to get attention from an A&R agent, one had a chance for success. But today there is thousands of gatekeepers. Success is not just about artistic talent but about using one's network." Today he works at Sony Music where he makes the marketing strategy for big international bands like MGMT. He continues: "The development the recent years has turned the industry upside down. You are less dependent on agents coming around to discover your artistic talent. Instead you're dependent on the word of mouth. Apart from your artistic talent you also need to be a good networker. Making it in the music industry is just as much about your social competencies as your ability to sing and play. And everyone who isn't a hermit uses networking today. The more conscious you are about it, the better you will be at seizing your opportunities.” Reptile and Retard was a band with a vision but no network in the music industry to make it happen. We felt like having just opened a very nice shop that had no customers because no one knew of it. So how would we create a network and get customers for our business? What is good networking in Shanghai? Back home we had had some lectures about the Chinese business culture in school. The most intriguing part for me was the notion of Guanxi: “This year I’m taking 14 people from the Chinese music industry to Roskilde festival” says Martin Røen. He is one of the owners and founders of DMC, Danish Music Export to China. DMC works with managing and promoting Danish bands in China and Martin has spent several years reaching a smooth platform for collaboration with the biggest festivals in China by building up a reliable network in: “It seems strange to us, but in China it is normal. The only reason I am able to get Danish punk bands to play at the MIDI festival is, that I have spent years working on my relationships. For example I spent my last summer vacation behind the wheel of my Transporter, giving our business partners a good treat in Denmark” he tells me. Although the
Guanxi is related to your reliability and status in connection with your network. Your Guanxi-network is the network of business affiliates that you trust and who know they can count on you. As accountability can’t be shown from one day to the other, a guanxi network takes years to build. In China, long term relationships are regarded more important than your CV and recommendations. My notes from the C3 lecture
Initiating good relationships The introduction to Guanxi had given us with some food for thought. Whether or not the cultural industry of Shanghai was governed by the idea of Guanxi, we had to initiate one or more good relationships on our way for sure. We wanted to meet one or more of the influential locals and convince them to take part in our success. But we were the newcomers without credibility and we needed to earn that in order to succeed. Before leaving Denmark, we had met up with a Kaospilot and friend of ours who went to Shanghai the year before us. He told us about his impression of the cultural life in Shanghai and provided us with the contact information for three different promoters. That’s all we had in order to get started with our networking. Showcase Before leaving Denmark, we had sent each of the promoters an e-mail with a link to our Myspace profile, but to our frustration no one replied. Although being abroad studying with a whole team of like-minded, we didn’t feel all that alone. A couple of weeks after the arrival, we had a small opening reception for our school premises and our teammates suggested us to play there and all the promoters I have met, prefer booking artists they have seen acting live. So even though the sound system didn’t quite live up to our standards for bass frequency aesthetics, we saw a great opportunity in making a physical show case for the sake of entertaining our teammates and possibly getting some real life promoters to see us play live. The days before the show, we contacted the promoters again. This time one of them responded and Michael Ohlsson confirmed that he would attend our school reception. He showed up and left again after a couple of tracks. Not because he was disappointed but because he was convinced that he wanted to work with us.
Cultivating our network Guanxi is usually cultivated around a dinner table or in a karaoke bar. We arranged our first meeting with Michael and sat down to talk about our collaboration at his favorite restaurant in the old French Concession. It was raining outside and we all ordered something hot before he gave us the offer we couldn’t refuse: a concert at the club we regarded the most influential venue for electronic music in Shanghai. He wanted to set up a gig with us at The Shelter and furthermore he saw a lot of possibilities for doing gigs in other cities. In the friendly atmosphere of the restaurant we
talked over our expectations and the technicalities of our collaboration. We sorted out timeplans, equipment and finances and in the spirit of tradition we always had our meals to return to if the conversation got stuck. It didn’t. In fact Michaels order triggered my curiosity. It was a starchy looking brown soup in a small cup and I asked him what was in it. “It’s turtle” he said. “It’s good for your health when the weather is like this.” Making friends and business partners with Michael was our lucky shot and a chance we’d rather not miss. He was a party promoter for a club-event travelling between different venues from Beijing and Tianjin to Changsha and Shanghai and he had been in business for years. Having him as a partner gave us not only a link to the venues but also some professional insights for our work in the music industry. Seeing potentials everywhere Les Vogt is an independent producer and promoter and blogs about people skills in the music industry: “I was running for an elevator once and the person inside clearly saw me but jumped for the “door close” button anyway, calling out “I’m late for an interview” as the doors slammed in my face. He needn’t have worried about being late… the interview was with me. You just never know who people are and where they might wind up, so it just makes sense to make friends with all people at all stages of their careers.” Les Vogt emphasizes the importance of meeting people from a curious perspective. So every time people came to talk to us after our shows, I tried to keep in mind my curiosity towards Michael’s turtle soup. Often we would ask people their frank opinions about our sound and whenever we had the energy, we picked their brains in regards to other venues we could hit in our coming crusade around the world.
Maintaining and following up Sometimes the people we encountered ended up being collaboration partners and great supports for what we were doing. A girl we met would take pictures of our shows and spread the word to her friends on Facebook and another would recommend us to her friends at a big Polish festival. A guy we helped with the sound while he was playing before us, turned out to be affiliated with a big online culture site and put us on the front page. From time to time people offered us a job in London or Lebanon, but we missed their contact information and couldn’t do a follow up. The time following we put an effort into following up on our drunken conversations and thus we initiated further collaborations with random people. Ryan Trix would remix us, Edo De Bastiani accepted to play the drums at a club on an old boat and Jakob Blaabjerg booked us a job at a festival in Beijing. The results of good networking added up. Feedback or arrogance? While doing shows with Michael, he took care of the practicalities with venues, flights and hotels and we concentrated on the music. Throughout our tour we learned and improved all the time. Mads and I evaluated our leverage for collaborating and meeting the needs of our partners. Virtually all aspects of our work flow were up for revision. On the flights I had a lot of conversations with Michael. He had been working with Oasis on their very first tour in the US. “When we did their first tour, hardly anyone knew of them.” Michael says and continues: ”The band was playing at a small club in San Francisco run by a friend of mine. We were packing up after the show, when I heard my friend yelling: Hey dude that’s not your Microphone. He was getting into an argument with Liam Gallagher and apparently the aspiring rock star had tried to take some of the club’s equipment with him. I remember how I got
Six guidelines for great relationships Be able to introduce your project in an engaging manner that makes others want to be a part of it. Make friends with all people at all stages of their careers. Get beyond trivial niceties, clarify expectations. Ask for feedback and advice. Maintain contact. Don't be the person that turns up only when you need something. Know when to call it a day, not every relationship is destined to last. Abbreviated version of a blog post by Les Vogt, independent promoter between immediately and told the singer, the next venues would have microphones as well. That’s when Liam Gallagher turned to me and punched me in the face.” Although Oasis claimed to be the best band since The Beatles, they sucked at collaborating and we had chosen a more convenient style of collaboration than theirs. It had worked well for us throughout our tour in China. And we will continue sticking to that for as long as we choose to manage our own business. Arrogance turns down opportinites I have had the pleasure of meeting a lot of successful artists with great talent, ideas and passion. I have also met some who have been so passionate about themselves and their aesthetics that they seemed even self-obsessed and arrogant to others. And I have seen some bad management of opportunities on that account, because arrogance is when we forget to see the potential in people and become blind towards the opportunities they might bring us. When managing our small art businesses ourselves, we need to keep our minds open because even someone who appears different from ourselves could potentially bring opportunities to be capitalized on. Talent in music Some people posses the natural gift of being nice and easy going. The rest of us music geeks need to practice that skill in addition to our musical talent, if we want to successfully manage our own creative business. I believe that talent in music is about being able to reach people and move them. And I believe that in order to do so, artists need to have a passion for expressing themselves and an aesthetic integrity for doing that. But to get out there on the stages, another talent is equally important: the people skills. Thus talent in the music industry is two fold – it is about the expression and the people. This article was about the people. Esben Valløe, 24 is a Kaospilot and musician in Århus, DK
Links Guanxi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi Les Vogt: http://www.isound.com/artist_blog/ people_skills_plus_networking_lead_to_great_relati Shanghais biggest culture blog: http://www.smartshanghai.com/blog/1235/ MP3_Monday_Totally_Keytarded.html Further reading on good networking: http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/hanetwork1.htm Further reading on people skills: http://www.danielgoleman.info/social_intelligence/