Shanghai Jazz: Musical Seductions from China's Age of Decadence torrent

The Story of Shanghai Jazz:
In the colourful cabarets and sepia-lit dance halls of Old Shanghai, Jazz music set the background score to a fleshy world of mobsters, adventurers, and sing-song girls. Old Shanghai was the uncontested Jazz capital of Asia, where musicians from the World over tested their musical mettle nightly to the delight of enthusiastic audiences.

In 1935, Du Yu Sheng, the notorious overlord of Shanghai's ominous "Green Gang" ordered into creation the first all-Chinese jazz group, called "The Clear Wind Dance Band", to perform at the Yangtze River Hotel Dance Hall. Critics called this music ‘pornographic,’ but the band played on just the same.

The wheels of time brought Shanghai's heady heyday to an end as the once-bustling nightclubs were boarded up or converted into Communist factory buildings, and Jazz music was outlawed as an 'indecent' form of entertainment...Until Now.

The Album:
"Shanghai Jazz: Musical Seductions from China's Age of Decadence" features classics like “De Bu Dao De Ai Qing” (The Love you Can’t Get), delivered through the titillating gravel-voice of ‘Ginger’ Zheng ZhiXiao. Things get jumping with tunes like the riotous “Wo Yao Ni De Ai” (I Want Your Love)—charged with life and humor by the confidently flamboyant ‘Coco’ Zhao Ke, and closes with a bittersweet version of “Qing Ren de Yan Lei” (Lovers Tears) sung with heart-wrenching compassion by ‘Carrie’ Zhang Le.

In total “Shanghai Jazz” contains contributions from a cast of more than twenty talented young Chinese musicians, the leaders of an exciting jazz revival amidst the dramatic social and economic reform of the New Shanghai.