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China Appeals To International Community For Decent Music Recommendations

 

A long and intense meeting between Barack Obama and Hu Jintao last Friday became bogged down in misunderstanding and confusion with neither side able to make themselves fully undertood. When it eventually became clear that Hu Jintao had confused Ray Charles with Stevie Wonder, the Chinese president was forced to acknowledge China's low level of musical sophistication.

International development expert Arnoud Steeman commented. "People are looking at the wrong statistics. Its huge leaps in technological and economic development mask the fact that in many Chinese homes, Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On is still played on a daily basis. For many young Chinese, Hey Jude is the only Beatles song which they are able to name. It's virtually medieval."

Domestic music is a parade of interchangable dolly girls and effeminate boys whose musical stylings are still frozen in the 80s. Some foreign music is heard, but the stylistic range is extremely limited. A tour by Westlife faltered after Chinese found their music "confusing and alienating".

At a special emergency conference of heads of state, Hu Jintao and the central members of China's politburo invited other world leaders to help address this embarrassing state of affairs by recommending some decent music.

There were several tense moments such as Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to walk out if Angela Merkel played a single note of blasmusik and when Libya's Muammar Al-Gaddafi asked Naoto Kan why Japanese rock musicians all looked "gay". Proceedings were also not helped by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad loudly insisting for much of the evening that hip-hop was not even proper music.

The Chinese panel were told that many of the records being played were "growers" and not to be too concerned if the appeal was not immediately obvious. Despite the warning, some of them were visibly near tears by the halfway mark of John Coltrane's Ascension.

Among the more successful selections played were Tito Puente and Fela Kuti, who brought a new exotic sound to the table, but with warm, accessible arrangements and catchy rhythyms. The Chinese maintained their skepticism about Scandanavian death metal.

Some analysts have predicted that Julia Gillard's decision to play I've Never Been To Me will cost her the next election.

The only other incident of note was the arrival of an uninvited Tony Blair, who brought his own guitar and spent twenty minutes failing to correctly remember the chords for Wonderwall before being forcibly ejected.