Rocker Cui Jian to Perform on CCTV Spring Festival Gala

UPDATE: Cui Jian's manager is now saying Cui will not likely be appearing on the Spring Festival Gala.

China's Godfather of Rock, Cui Jian, has been confirmed to perform on this year's China Central Television (CCTV) Spring Festival Gala, the Chinese New Year's Eve extravaganza that is watched by as many people as the World Cup Final and the Super Bowl combined.

Once a musical pariah who performed unofficially in Beijing bars and clubs while selling out stadiums elsewhere in China, Cui's premiere appearance on China's biggest annual television show is a mixed blessing. While longtime fans will see it as redemption for a musician whose songs including "Nothing to My Name" made him unpopular with cultural officials who banned him from radio and television, purists may wonder if Cui is selling out.

Cui's manager You You told the Associated Press that he had been invited to perform, but could not say what he would play due to a confidentiality agreement with CCTV.

"I think China's moved on in terms of what people can do individually and it's not such a big deal anymore," one observer said, explaining why the veteran rocker was finally appearing.

It's been a long way back for CJ. His first official performance in Beijing in more than a decade came in 2004, when he did a five-song opening set for Deep Purple. He then joined his musical heroes, The Rolling Stones, on stage in Shanghai for a rendition of ”Wild Horses" in 2006. He made his comeback solo stadium appearance in 2007, followed by a new year's eve show in 2010 with his former employer, the Beijing Philharmonic Orchestra.

Cui's inclusion can also be seen as an attempt to revive the Spring Festival Gala. Although it remains one of the world's most-watched annual "arts and culture" television broadcast in the world (take that, American Idol!), there remains a measurable trend in which the broadcast becomes less likely to be watched the further down south you travel in China.

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A 2009 study showed that the Spring Gala broadcast was viewed by only 1.3% of households in Hainan as compared to capturing 88.9% of the viewing audience in Liaoning. This unpopularity with southerners may stem from the show's long-running tradition of satirizing regional differences. The appearance of comedian Gong Hanlin was once a common sight on the Spring Festival Gala with skits like "Welcome to Beijing" and "Pack It Like This" that lampoon Cantonese and Shanghainese cultures and anybody else who isn't from the north of China.

With such behavior derided as being "irresponsible", recent legislation that prevents televisions hosts from speaking and mimicking English and faking regional dialects may be aimed at making broadcasts like the Spring Festival Gala more acceptable through "political correctness". But frankly, last year's sucked and it hasn't really been any good for a while; it remains to be seen if any amount of "sanitizing" can save the show.

China's box office king Feng Xiaogang is one of, but not the sole, directors for this year's extravaganza, which reaches 95 percent of Chinese households that have televisions. At least CCTV had the decency to realize that tedious family holidays really need a television program that alleviates the need for all that ridiculous bickering over the dinner table.

Here is Cui Jian as a young man performing "A Piece of Red Cloth."

Photos courtesy Europe1, Saffrona Study