Courtesy of DongDong.

Keep a finger on the pulse of East Asia‰’s up-and-coming musicians and you might first hear the heart of K-Pop‰’s color or Japanese eccentricities. Sometimes it takes deep listening to find a nice tune from mainland China. China‰’s careful control of cultural landscapes can stifle some bands, especially those looking to sell albums overseas. But plenty of artists shine through in spite of and even because of the firewall.

For so many musicians China‰’s myriad social dilemmas are just more things to sing about. Many artists look less at the state and more at mixing old and new. The incredibly complex interplay between modernization and preservation stirs up some of China‰’s best performers.

Second Hand Rose (Š¼Î¾ä܍_Ǎԡ) is perhaps the foremost group to fuse traditional and novel musical methods. Psychedelic rock‰’s melting melodies swirl cleanly into traditional Chinese instrumentation in each and every Second Hand Rose song. The strange chirps and bleats of Chinese woodwinds shatter regular guitar riffs as the strings of erhus bust into what sounds like a western rhythm. Liang Long, the band‰’s vocalist and creator, bounces to the beat on the back of Chinese tones that slope each syllable upwards and slam them downward like a rollercoaster of politically subversive verse.

Most Chinese bands shy away from their language‰’s sharp tonality, but Liang Long embraces it by bringing traditional Chinese opera‰’s tonal stresses into the fold. Northwestern China, Liang Long‰’s home province, puts on a special kind of opera called Er Ren Zhuan (Š¼ÎŠ¼¼_Â), involving only two actors. A man and a woman play out a sometimes bawdy love story to a live audience. For a long time Liang Long wore women‰’s clothes on stage, rolling the roles of gender and drama up into his operatic rock singing. Somehow Liang Long spotted a dramatic streak in the distortive strings of electric guitars that matched the Beijing Opera. 

Second Hand Rose is no standalone in terms of innovation, as folk-rock band Xiban (¾ö_ or Troupe) rivals Second Hand Rose with a raw sound all their own. Composed of Han and ethnic minority Chinese citizens, including a Tibetan singer, Xiban puts the fast paced fury of rock and roll into traditional instrumentation. Where Second Hand Rose creates mini-Chinese Rock Operas Xiban fashions a wide array of songs that shatter the regular rock format.

It is almost impossible to mark down Xiban‰’s erratic style in a few words because it switches so much between songs. “Chongcao (ªÇä)” plays out sparsely in terms of actual instrumentation, but the band builds the vocals and percussions into schizophrenic echoes that take up every inch of space between the eardrum and lobe. The band uses the fact that many Chinese words have similar sounds differentiated by tone to create a disorienting rhythm. The song chants the words “Chong,‰” “Cao,‰” and “bian‰” constantly, creating a dicey sound until the very end where the song speeds up and everything becomes a furious mix of the same characters. Toneless and quick “de‰’s‰” punctuate the punchy melody all along the way.

Yet their song “Hao Difang (Œ´_ŒÏ¡¾Ð_)” (roughly meaning “Good Place”) moves slowly and peacefully. The strange, unfamiliar sounds of traditional instruments do not clutter. “Zaoshen (¦´_)” sounds almost close to a hard rock anthem, stylish electric guitar solos and all, with a little bit more of a psychedelic bounce.

Moxi Zishi also blends west and east into each song, but creates a much softer sound. Moxi Zishi is a Yi musician, an ethnic minority group from Yunnan, China, a province far to the southwest. Moxi sings in Yi (also called Nuoso). While sounding only a little away from Chinese at first, his Sino-Tibetan tongue grows increasingly distinct with each listen. Moxi does not assign his work a genre but most of his songs carry a tremendous sweeping sound, with acoustic guitars, mouth harps and more.

Last but not least is Wootacc, a rapper from the far north Jilin province who migrated all the way down to Guangzhou to find a proper producer. Wootacc does not blend together traditional and modern in the same way the other bands do, but he takes hip hop on with no problems. You‰’ll hear the same kind of hooks and rhymes in Wootacc’s songs that you‰’d get in western rap. The hyper-nostalgic beats bring back the ’90s in a really fun way and Wootacc‰’s flow is so easy and smooth that everything comes together.

Still, Wootacc might not be the rapper to give your whole ear over to. His beats can get a bit stale, but more than that his songs are so relaxed that‰’s easier to sit back than lean into them. Wootacc‰’s a lot like a little bit of honey, great music to mix with other things. Barring some odd exceptions, most tracks could work wonders helping you unwind while cleaning or traveling.

Don‰’t get deterred by censors and language barriers. China‰’s budding music scenes are starting to boom and these artists show that the explosion is definitely worth hearing.