“对话摇滚乐”, “Conversation on Rock and Roll”, 1992-1994

In her PhD dissertation, Peng Lei provides a copy of all the “Conversation on Rock and Roll” (“对话摇滚乐”) articles that were published between 1992 and 1994 in the magazine 音像世界 (The World of Sounds and Musics). Those articles, written by Wang Xiaofeng (王晓峰) and Zhang Lei (章雷), were among the first to introduce Western rock music to a Chinese audience. They did not only talk about classic rock and roll, but also introduced a lot of different musical styles that were virtually non-existent in China in the early 1990s, right before the apparition of dakou (打口) CDs and tapes. You can thus find articles on Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles and Nirvana, but also on the early English punk bands (Sex Pistols, Siouxie and the Banshees, Buzzcocks in the January 1994 article), heavy metal and even Grindcore.

The two writers Wang Xiaofeng and Zhang Lei eventually published one of the most important and influential Chinese book on Western music in 2000, 欧美流行音乐指南 (A guidebook of Western pop music).

These articles were essential to the development of Chinese music in the 1990s because they laid the theoretical foundation for the revival of rock music, and provided young Chinese with a guide of Wester rock music.

You can find the doctoral dissertation of Peng Lei (in French) here: “Rock en Chine : contestation et consommation depuis les années 1980”.

And here you can find all the “对话摇滚乐” articles (download in pdf):