Musical Multitaskers: Tour De Green: Cycling, Activism, and Rocking Out
Most rock stars take cross-country tours on jets, or at the very least buses, smogging up the skies in the name of glitz and excess. But a few local musicians with an ecological message didn’t just talk the talk – they pedaled their bikes, all the way from Beijing to Shanghai.
"One thing we learned on this tour was that people living in small towns and villages are willing to talk about the environment, and they know what presumably urban terms like 'green' and 'eco-friendly' mean," says Liu Yusi. He headed up the Tour De Green troupe of biking amateur musicians this past summer, playing in villages plagued by flooding and pollution from the construction of massive hydroelectric dams.
This Friday, the indie rock bikers will perform at Nanluogu Xiang’s 69 Cafe and release a live album of songs they wrote and performed for villagers in the evenings between those extended stretches of cycling. Below, Liu tells us how bikers, activists and guitarists can all be spokes on the same wheel.
In a press release about the trip, you wrote: “What we saw along the way has rarely been portrayed in media.” What has the mainstream been missing?
Compared to more abstract ideas like global warming, I think these villagers' concerns are more about the development processes that are interfering with their daily lives. For example, we saw that a section of the main road in Qufu, the hometown of Confucius, was cracked open into a trench, with some sort of construction going on in there. The locals told us it was part of the South-North Water Transfer Project, and has been like that for a couple of years. No cars could pass through, and there was dust and noise all around. So we saw things like this, which you might miss while traveling by train or by car.
During the trip, we also met Wang Yongchen, the founder of Green Earth Volunteers and an influential environmental journalist in China. She told me about the situation in Yunnan, and showed me the books she wrote about dam construction. She’s very passionate and persistent in what she's doing, so we decided to donate some proceeds from our shows to her "Libraries Along The River" project, which provides educational materials to children in the Nu River region in Yunnan, where the local ecology and economy suffer after the construction of these hydroelectric dams.
How did this trip help you evolve as a musician?
This is the first extensive tour I undertook as a performer, so I think I learned a lot about playing live. I haven't finished any songwriting since the completion of the tour, so we will soon see how it has influenced me.
How do social activism and music go hand in hand?
I think musicians, like other types of artists, can help shape the general perception of the world through their works. So when the art combines with the action, both will be more readily understood by the public.
Let's talk about the pitfalls of all that. As an artist, how do you avoid being preachy in the music? As an activist, how do you keep the music from drawing attention away from your socially conscious message?
On the artistic side, I would avoid being too direct, because things are never as simplistic as they seem. So instead of focusing on the event, or the topic, I tend to look at the story and emotions of the parties involved, and then start working from there.
Tour De Green’s "Bicycle Diaries" album promo show will be held at Zajia Lab on Friday, December 28 at 8.30 pm. Tickets are RMB 30, or RMB 50 with a CD (70 percent of the proceeds will be donated to the local NGO Greening the Beige). For more info, contact Liu Yusi at seeyusime@gmail.com.
