Pioneering DJ Youdai on Leading Chinese Youth Astray, and 20 Years in the Scene
The angry parents of China's wayward youth need only direct their ire at one man. “You can blame me,” says Zhang Youdai with a mischievous grin.
The 52-year-old veteran radio host, club owner, and gig promoter is considered a pioneer of China’s underground music scene. Aside from influencing impressionable would-be rockers with the Beijing Music Radio show that he’s hosted for two decades (for which he has interviewed legends like Quincy Jones and Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto), Youdai also owns and operates a freshly opened music venue in Wangjing's Kirin Place called Cloud 9.
Youdai says the current jazzy Cloud 9 is a sequel of sorts to his earlier Sanlitun club of the same name. That now-closed venture was a destination for house music and raves back in the early 2000s, when few other clubs dabbled in those genres. He says it was a smash success at first, but "then came all the nightmare nightclubs that were much more commercial" – a dig at the glitzy Gongti strip, which thrived after older clubs like Cloud 9 were chai’ed. "I turned away from clubs for a while after that, and started organizing concerts.”
Youdai kicked that career phase off with a Beijing show for Britpop band Suede in 2003 (pictured together at top). Suede was one of the first foreign acts to perform in the capital after a decades-long crackdown. Bassist Mat Osman tells the Beijinger "there was an ad hoc feeling to the whole thing. There were handcuffings, hundreds of fans singing outside the hotel, armed soldiers in the venue, an attempt to pay one of our fees with fake Rolexes. But throughout it all Youdai was a picture of calm, making sure the gig was as good as it could be."
READ: Britpop Vet Mat Osman Talks Producing Chinese Bands, New Suede LP, and Dada DJ Set
And while the Suede show was a milestone for Youdai, it wasn’t the first time he had broken ground in China’s fledgling music scene. In the '80s, while studying at The Central Academy of Drama, he befriended would be Chinese rockstars like Dou Wei (窦唯) and future Tang Dynasty bassist Zhangju. Their clique also included a few expat exchange students who gave Youdai The Beatles, Prince, and The Police cassettes that he treasured because Beijing had no bootleg networks then, much less proper record shops.
His graduation coincided with loosening government restrictions on broadcasting, and Youdai's reputation as a collector and curator landed him a hosting job on Beijing Music Radio. His radio shows began attracting a slew of impressionable listeners hungering for something new. “All the young punks would listen to my program and begin to play music and form bands. So it’s all my fault!" Youdai says with a laugh.
While a number of popular Chinese bands like Brain Failure and Hanging on the Box cite Youdai’s radio show as a key influence, not all of the responses were positive. He recalls hearing about “some students who listened to my program and wanted to escape from their boarding schools. Their parents would tell me: ‘You have the responsibility to get them back on track, because they listen to you!’”
Youdai's radio show grew so prominent that he began booking megastars. Among the most memorable: visiting Quincy Jones at his LA home. He remembers Jones "opening a music sheet and beginning to play the piano, but then he turned the page and saw a letter from Michael Jackson’s lawyer stuffed in there, and got upset! He told me: ‘I loved Michael but, his family, oh my god…’”
In tandem with hosting his long-running radio show, Youdai is focused on building a scene at the new Cloud 9. Its entrance is hidden at the back of a cafe facing Kirin Place basement hallway. That café is decorated with steps hanging from the ceiling which Youdai calls "the stairway to heaven." He has equally lofty ambitions for the club's stage – hosting Peking opera singers who perform alongside jazz players, traditional Chinese music shows, not to mention an intimate impromptu performance by his friend Ryuichi Sakamoto, the renowned Japanese composer.
The two had remained close since Youdai interviewed Sakamoto back in 1996. Youdai arranged a special collective of guzheng players, flutists, and other musicians adept with traditional Chinese instruments to perform for Sakamoto during his recent stop in the capital.
Read our 2015 Q&A with Youdai here.
“Sakamoto was so moved by the young musicians playing that he walked onstage and said: ‘I have to pay you back.’” He then played one of his most famous pieces, “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence,” which he penned for the David Bowie starring war film of the same name.
Youdai hopes that is but the first of many milestones at the new Cloud 9. When asked to detail his goals for the venue he simply says: “Sharing. Giving good music to people, because music can change people’s lives.”
Cloud 9
Daily 10pm-2am. 1/F, Kirin Place, 11 Chun'an West Road, Chaoyang District (130 0139 2085)
朝阳区阜安西路11号麒麟社地下一层
READ: Beijing Seasoned Music Insiders Hold Out Hope
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Email: kylemullin@truerun.com
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Photos courtesy of Youdai
