NYC's Pianos Opens Chinese Mountain Men (Shanren) North American Tour
Beijing-based indie folk band Shanren (literally "Mountain Men") will open their debut North American tour at New York's Pianos on March 6th. Shanren's North American tour will bring the band across the East coast, including Connecticut, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and ending at Toronto's Slacker Canadian Music Week as part of the 30th Canadian Music Week 2012.
To help finance the tour, Shanren is lauhcning a crowd-funding campaign through RocketHub, a launch pad and community for independent artists and entrepreneurs. Through the crowd-funding campaign, the band hopes to introduce new audiences to the rich culture of China's southwestern Yunnan and Guizhou provinces by offering unique opportunities for fans to experience southwestern China's culture and music through Fuel options such as private music lessons and handmade instruments.
Emerging from southwestern China, Shanren (山人, literally "mountain men"), a group of four musicians with members representing the Wa and Buyi ethnic minorities. Employing instruments like the xiangzi and qinqin (four-stringed plucked instruments) and xianggu (a type of drum), they play both original compositions and reworkings of traditional folk songs, adding touches of rock, reggae, and ska. While the band members preserve their cultural heritage and update it for a 21st-century audience, the result is a global dance party along the lines of Gogol Bordello, Manu Chao, or their countrymen Hanggai.
Since forming in 2000, Shanren has energized Beijing's small folk venues and performed at Barcelona Festival Asia in 2010, MIDEM in Cannes in 2011, and Liverpool Sound City in the UK. They're staple headliners at China's major music festivals and have been featured twice on Hunan Television, reaching an audience in the tens of millions.
New York City
NYC's Pianos Opens Chinese Mountain Men (Shanren) North American Tour