Nov 4: Jean Michel Jarre in China

A double album that I had when it first came out was recorded in conjunction with him being one of the first 'western' musicians to be allowed to perform in China (followed by Wham in 1985) in the autumn of 1981.

I had this LP on double vinyl. 

It was a good mixture of music and field recordings and other audio from the trip giving a flavour of China.

This was an example of this fusion.

Jarre performed at a number of cities. After seeing that they were mostly audiences which had been invited by the authorities, they went and handed out lots of free tickets to people in the street to change the nature of their interaction with Chinese people.

One of the album's original tracks – "Arpégiateur" – was used in the soundtrack of the film 9½ Weeks as well as in several mid-1980s episodes of the American soap opera Santa Barbara.

It's also my favourite track on the alhum: 

Jarre's own website says of the tour:

In 1981 Jarre was invited by the Chinese government to perform five concerts in what was then a very closed country. The five indoor stadium concerts took place respectively in Beijing (two concerts) and Shanghai (three concerts), and the French musician had composed no fewer than seven new pieces especially for them which, stylistically, moved from electro over ambient to Chinese traditional music.

Organising the concerts was a major project in itself, not least due to the cultural differences connected with the official concert tradition in China. The audience at the first show was exclusively comprised of military personnel and for this reason Jarre handed-out tickets to the citizens in the street to enable them also to share the other shows. It has been said that 500 million Chinese listened to the concerts live on the radio when Jarre, as the first Western musician invited officially, performed in early post-Mao China.

“To this day The Concerts in China experience remains to be probably the most surreal and poetic of all my experiences. It was an honor to be the first Western musician to play live in the country at that time and it was like visiting another planet for me; and also for the Chinese audience too it seemed to be the same curious awe.”

Jean-Michel Jarre.