Today brings you an inter­view with Chair­man Ca, the artist behind many of the iconic gig posters of the Bei­jing music scene. Fea­tured recently on Neocha EDGE and found com­ple­ment­ing Matthew Neiderhauser’s band pho­tog­ra­phy in Sound Kap­tial, he is highly tal­ented and widely rec­og­nized. And because there is woe­fully lit­tle about him in the Eng­lish lan­guage press, I’ve asked him some incred­i­bly basic ques­tions that I hope you find as inter­est­ing as I thought they would be.

Thank you once again to Time
Out’s Web & Music Edi­tor, Jen­nifer Con­rad. She not only put me in con­tact with Chair­man Ca but also pro­vided trans­la­tion for this inter­view to help pro­mote their May Music Issue, which I finally picked up in — of all places — the toi­lets of Dos Kole­gas last week­end. Check out the Time Out web­site for details on how to buy a print of the issue’s cover by Chair­man Ca.

1. There isn’t much infor­ma­tion out there in Eng­lish about you. How did you get started design­ing gig posters?
I started design­ing gig posters at the end of 2006. My first work was for three French guys who were orga­niz­ing shows in Beijing.

2. Your art­work is iconic and, for many, an illus­trated rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Chi­nese music scene. Do you feel the same way about your art­work?
Actu­ally, I didn’t intend to do illus­tra­tions for the Chi­nese rock music scene. Rock music is rock music, and I think my work and I myself have same spirit as rock music. Well, it doesn’t mean rock spirit expressed on paper. Draw­ing is the same as rock music with char­ac­ter­is­tics like burn­ing, hav­ing to show your­self off, step­ping onto the stage, enthu­si­asm, guid­ing other peo­ple, and being a star. It’s true, really — they are the same.

3. What are some of your favorite Chi­nese bands?
I’m inter­ested in some clas­sic bands. Maybe we can’t say clas­sic, because the his­tory of these bands is too short. And in a city with a lot of shows, peo­ple don’t always pay atten­tion to the older bands. Lots of bands are my favorites, includ­ing New Pants, Re-TROS, PK14, The Scoff, Linga, Joy­side, and Top Floor Cir­cus. My favorite band now is AV Okubo — their drum­beats always knock at my heart. Some bands have dis­banded now, but that’s the rock music scene, right? I like other musi­cal styles as well. For folk music, I like Wutiaoren. I like rock­a­billy and surf music too, but there aren’t good bands with these styles in Beijing.

4. What do you do when you’re not cre­at­ing poster art? Do you have a “day job” or does most of your work encom­pass com­mis­sions by peo­ple like Time Out and D-22?
I do lots of dif­fer­ent jobs. I give classes one or two days each week with sta­ble income. I do other work as well, such as draw­ing car­toons, doing illus­tra­tions for adver­tis­ing com­pa­nies, and draw­ing my own works no mat­ter what — I’ll do it on a wall or paint on a wooden plate.

5. Why did you choose to take the com­mis­sion for Time Out? What did you think about choos­ing a Bea­t­les album as the stage for Chi­nese bands?
It’s an honor to illus­trate the cover. I think it’s inter­est­ing and mean­ing­ful. The edi­tors from Time Out picked the idea for the cover — I just put their ideas into action. The cover is like a reunion of folk music, elec­tronic, punk, metal and new wave, putting lots of musi­cians together. The musi­cians are not in the same groups in daily life, but they meet each other at music festivals.

6. What do you think about the increase of inter­est in Bei­jing bands by for­eign media and for­eign­ers liv­ing in Bei­jing?
Rock music is from West­ern coun­tries, but our bands are becom­ing bet­ter and bet­ter with their own rock spirit and atti­tude. The world is flat, so it’s nat­ural that more for­eign­ers and for­eign media focus on Chi­nese bands, and that’s good. It seems that the media pays more atten­tion to minor­ity bands, which isn’t bad. Rock music is rock music — bands don’t mind people’s views of them.

7. Finally, could you please tell us your favorite story from the Bei­jing rock scene.
Lots of things hap­pen every­day — I don’t have the time to recall all my mem­o­ries. I def­i­nitely like the story that will hap­pen tomorrow.

Trans­la­tion by Giss­ing Liu