Communist regime's attitude shift is music to China festival-goers' ears

Performers took potshots at the country's leaders, tattooed college students sold anti-government T-shirts and an unruly crowd of heavy metal fans torched a Japanese flag emblazoned with expletives.

Curious, because the event, a four-day free-for-all of beer, crowd-surfing and camping, was sponsored by the local Communist Party, which spent $2.1 million (765,1600) to turn cornfields into festival grounds, pay the growling punk bands and clean up the detritus left by 80,000 attendees.

The city cadres also provided an army of police officers, earplugs in place, who courteously endured bands with names like Miserable Faith and AK47 while fans threw mud at one another.

The incongruity of security agents facilitating the sale of cannabis-themed merchandise was not lost on the festival's organizer, Zhang Fan.

"The government used to see rock fans as something akin to a devastating flood or an invasion of savage beasts," said Mr Zhang, a handful of whose events have been cancelled by bureaucrats since he pioneered the Chinese music festival in 2000.

"Now we're all part of the nation's quest for a harmonious society."

The shift in official sentiment - and among state-backed companies paying to have their logos splashed across the stage - has led to an explosion of festivals across China. In 2008, there were five, nearly all in Beijing.

This year there have already been more than 60, from the northern grasslands of Inner Mongolia to the southern highlands of Yunnan Province.

The festivals have been staged with the help of local governments that have come to realise that pierced rockers flailing around a mosh pit are not necessarily interested in upending single-party rule.

More importantly, the governments have decided, for now at least, that music festivals can deliver something even the most seasoned propagandists cannot spin out of thin air: coolness.

"All these local ministries want their cities to be thought of as fun, young and hip so they can draw more tourists and claim a public relations trophy," said Scarlett Li, a music promoter whose company, Zebra Media, stages festivals, including one in Chengdu that draws more than 150,000 people.

The more permissive atmosphere for indie music is a contrast to heightened internet censorship and crackdown on vocal advocates of political change.Sceptics say the government is simply trying to co-opt youth culture, but others view the spread of festivals as an encouraging sign that rock, punk and heavy metal might finally have a stage free from the financial and political shackles that have constrained them.

Even if the authorities still insist on approving line-ups in advance, rejections are infrequent, organisers say, partly because more musicians perform in English, which can challenge all but the most learned censors.

"The government is happy for young bands to sing in English because that way the fans won't know what they're saying," said Yang Haisong, lead singer of a post-punk band called P.K.14 and a producer.

However, the sudden proliferation of festivals has led to sparse crowds as events compete for the limited pool of fans able to afford the 150 yuan-a-day (12.70) admission.

Then there are the slapdash affairs that lack working toilets, edible food or decent sound systems. Nearly every seasoned musician, it seems, has been shocked by an improperly grounded microphone or fleeced by a promoter.

Yang Haisong of P.K.14 could not help but feel cynical as he looked around at the Modern Sky Music Festival in Beijing. To his right was a Jgermeister tent; to his left, an enormous line of well-dressed people waiting for free Converse bags.

Asked if he thought Chinese youth culture might be on the brink of a tectonic breakthrough, Mr Yang smiled and shook his head.

"The government used to see us as dangerous," he said. "Now they see us as a market."