Founded in 2007, the Modern Sky Festival is China's largest music and arts festival. The festival features over 120 bands and DJ's on three stages over a five-day period. The Modern Sky Festival 2011 will again take place in Haidian Park in the heart of Beijing in October. We recently caught up with the band BrainStorm, who won a slot at Modern Sky last year, to give us the lowdown on this unique festival.
Q: Why did you submit to Modern Sky Festival 2010?
Because it is so exciting to go to the places you never have been before. Also, just as any other band, we are eager to try to explore new markets and to see if our music can reach the hearts of other nations. And if it does it means we have new places to go and play and for the band it is an important possibility to play live.
Q: What did you do to prepare for the festival?
We rehearsed a lot! I know that our management was sending our songs and lyrics for the censorship that we passed successfully. Management also spent some few good months trying to research the market and from their stories we got the idea it wasn’t an easy task as Google didn’t help much, but through their networks they managed to get through key players in China. For example, our albums were on major indie digital store www.wa3.cn available prior to the performance at the festival.
Q: Tell us a bit about your festival and overall trip experience.
AMAZING! The most important thing is the reaction of the audience. And as we had not played China before prior to the performance we had no clue whatsoever how the Chinese people would react. From the very first song they were clapping and it didn’t matter what language we chose to sing as we thought it would be fun to play few songs in Latvian. Straight after we left the stage our management came to us and asked us to go out of the backstage area as people were standing there and waiting to take photos with us! As we were traveling quite far we took a chance and stayed a few more days in Beijing. Interestingly, it was the same time the China Open tennis took place and the Latvian leading tennis female player Anastasia Sevastova was playing – we were cheering for her. Of course we visited the many historic parts of Beijing and let our hair down at a Chinese dance club!
Q: Did you meet any influential people there? How has the Modern Sky Festival influenced your career?
We did shake hands with some people. As far as we remember there was a guy from the record label Outdustry, the guy running the WA3 digital retail store, and one of the promoters of Split Works. Of course this trip was more of the research trip but we do have some plans for the future. It is still too early to reveal them, but we’re definitely working on coming back to China. And we should say Michael from Modern Sky Festival is great guy - he had to deal with all international acts and we were not the headliners, but we never felt that he was not there for us.
Q: Can you give other artists submitting to Modern Sky Festival some advice?
Take it easy! It is obvious that in the developing countries the technical side of live events is still in works, so be patient if the rented instruments don’t work straight ahead - the solution will be found anyways (thanks Michael again!) and there will be enough time for sound check. The applause from the audience is worth it! Also, make sure to communicate with your Embassy – they will help to get Visas, etc. The Embassy of Latvia in China helped us on that matter and also organized our transportation for sightseeing and a nice dinner to taste Beijing duck! Definitely try to stay longer to experience the city and try to get some friend or embassy person who knows Mandarin - it will make your time in China easier. And just ENJOY!
Modern Sky Festival is open for submissions. Submit here.
