Faces of JUE: Ilchi Talks Music

In our March issue, we talked to seven personalities of the JUE Festival to tell us more about each of the seven elements of JUE. Ilchi from Hanggai, who represents JUE Music, gives his thoughts on hip-hop in China and more.

When I first learned about JUE Festival, I thought, “Here are two foreigners who are doing this music and art festival in China – why isn’t anyone local doing this?” Also, because JUE covers both Beijing and Shanghai, it has a greater impact as it can tie together the culture of those two cities. I hope there will be more of these larger music and arts events in the future. We’re still lacking this kind of event in China.

Usually events are difficult to put on in China and festivals like this need a massive amount of sponsorship, so JUE is an interesting case because it gets people together to collaborate. It gets venues, and pulls them in.

We’re using this chance to play some songs from the new album. Also, we’re playing as part of the screening of Mongolian Bling, which has a Mongolian theme that we’re very interested in supporting. Hip-hop is big in Outer Mongolia. It is developing quite well. It might have to do with the Mongolian language itself – it sounds very good in hip-hop terms.

See Ilchi and the rest of Hanggai perform live at the China premiere of Mongolian Bling at Yugong Yishan on Mar 14.