Jazz put down roots in Shanghai as early as the 1920s, the city’s cosmopolitan character and booming nightlife an ideal setting for a new American music that was starting to sweep the world.
Though the music has had its twists and turns there during the last century, recent years have seen a resurgence. Three major venues champion the art form (JZ Club, Jazz at Lincoln Center Shanghai and Blue Note China), and young musicians and listeners increasingly are drawn to it.
But just as everywhere else, the coronavirus has injured music and life in China. An email dialogue with Shanghai jazz writer Jiaowei Hu illuminated just how much. She contributes to the allaboutjazz.com website and other publications, serving as an eyewitness to events in a Chinese jazz nexus.
“COVID-19 totally caught us unprepared! Just like other places on this planet,” she said to me on April 11 by email.
“I heard about what had been going on in Wuhan around the middle of January,” she added, referring to where the disease emerged. “I remember several days before January 23 when Wuhan was sealed off, many people in Shanghai had already been wearing masks. We were all getting increasingly concerned about the situation there and also worried about ourselves. In my whole 28-year lifetime, I have never heard of (such) measures by the Chinese government, such as closing down the whole city. We immediately realized this time was really serious. …
“Looking back, the end of January and the whole (of) February was very tough for all Chinese, including the local jazz industry. … JZ Club was one of the first jazz venues in Shanghai to announce an event cancellation. It happened on January 23, the same day that Wuhan was sealed off. … According to their later cancellation announcement, they even hoped to reopen as originally planned on January 28. … But the announcement had been removed later, as they gradually realized that a short recovery was impossible.”
Jazz at Lincoln Center Shanghai and Blue Note China also shuttered as the situation’s gravity became apparent.
How have Shanghai’s jazz musicians survived?
“The impact of COVID-19 on (the) jazz scene in Shanghai and China is very direct,” said Hu. “Musicians lost their gigs. … So many of them have regular students, and some are on the faculty of conservatories. So economically, most of our jazz musicians – which were active on the scene before the pandemic – don’t have to ‘starve.’ But it definitely curbs their income.
“And Chinese jazz musicians are mostly young. Many of them were born in (the) late ’80s and ’90s and (are) currently based in Beijing or Shanghai, away from the (Wuhan) epicenter. I haven’t heard any jazz musician had been infected or had to suffer more.”
The Shanghai jazz institutions wasted no time in turning to streaming, said Hu. It’s a pale alternative to the real thing, of course, but apparently the primary alternative for musicians around the world.
For just as in the U.S., life in China has been dramatically reordered.
“I’ve found that different provinces actually dealt with this issue differently, even back in the peak period,” said Hu.
“Some provinces like Henan even used excavators to cut down the road in their villages … to prevent people from going out. A friend of mine living in Anhui Province said that people were not allowed to go out from the apartment buildings after 8 p.m. There are just different rules issued by the local governments – much like your state governments.
“But Shanghai actually was at least one of the province-level administrations that had the most loose policy. We were not banned from going out, but the government repeatedly advocated us to (stay inside). But if you go out any time during the day, there wouldn’t be any punishment actually. But everyone self-consciously wears a mask, even till today. And it’s also true that the city was almost emptied, for there literally was almost no one on the street.”
The quarantine in China has been lifted, said Hu, with Wuhan having reopened on April 8. Most other provinces ended their quarantines in February and March, she added.
A new kind of life is emerging, its gradual nature perhaps foreshadowing how the U.S. might gingerly rebuild after the pandemic.
“Recently we are slowly getting back to normal,” she said. “The subway is getting crowded again – still less than before the pandemic.
“Resumptions are taking place in the restaurant industry too. The authorities have issued resumption guidelines for different sectors. For example, certain limit of people sitting (at) one table, the mask rules, temperature checks at the entrances, etc.
“According to my observation, there are still staff standing at the doors of many shopping malls and buildings and holding digital thermometers to test everyone that goes through the doors or gates.
“In Shanghai, we are basically able to do a lot actually, especially since the resumption in February. Everything is ‘almost’ getting back to normalcy. For me, the absence of concerts, and actually the whole entertainment activities, is the only thing that I don’t feel like getting back to normal.”
Hu said she became interested in jazz about a decade ago when she heard “Jasmine,” a 2010 ECM album by Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden. That drew her into the music, a bit of a leap from the classical piano training she had since childhood.
But jazz spoke to her in a way that no other music did.
“It’s not just the freedom that I’ve been so much attracted to,” she said. “The diversity it has to offer is even enlightening to me.
“Back then, jazz was definitely not a mainstream music type in China – it still isn’t. You had to learn about the music by yourself, because there was very little possibility that someone was going to promote the genre to you, unlike our increasing jazz venues today.”
Yet Hu persevered, building her knowledge of the music and later deciding to write about it as “a way to express the listener’s feelings and understanding of music. I love jazz almost as an aficionado, so this fondness for writing – almost exclusively on jazz – just naturally happens.”
That she does so in both English and Chinese attests to her potential as a bridge between two cultures.
And what of the future of jazz in Shanghai?
“Most of us are still uncertain of what ‘future’ means at this moment,” said Hu. “How far is this ‘future’ away from us now? Sure, the day will come when everything is back into their original positions in the show business. Many of us thought it was February, and then March, and then April. Now we are even unsure about June. Many jazz practitioners might have never thought about how connected China really is with the whole world, especially the U.S.
“Now we are aware of that.”
As are we.
Howard Reich is a Tribune critic.
