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Big in Bangalore, Big in Beijing

Tim Mansel

Big in Bangalore, Big in Beijing: Episode 2

Episode 2

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Big in Bangalore, Big in Beijing, Episode 2

Rajan Datar heads to Beijing to see if developing economies offer riches for western music

Rajan Datar heads to China, to investigate how Western music artists are getting on in emerging economies. From 2010.

Rajan Datar follows Iron Maiden to India to seek out opportunities for Western music.

Are the new economies of India and China ripe for Western music acts to exploit? Rajan heads to Beijing to find out why China is another market western bands are targeting. With a growing, affluent middle class bands ranging from Mumford and Sons to Shakira are heading to the Far East in the hope of breaking this huge country.

However, touring China is not an easy proposition for bands.

On his travels Rajan discovers a litany of problems for bands trying to become popular in China. Tickets can often be expensive, especially if a band is not popular enough to play stadium venues. Then there is Government censorship - one festival had to drop all the foreign artists on the bill after it was discovered one of the bands, The Buzzcocks, once had some songs banned in the UK back in the 1970s.

Then there is the local police who can cancel gigs on a whim and an audience who have few cultural links to the West and are still relatively isolated from Western culture.

Rajan also discovers why the Icelandic singer Bjork has made touring China even harder for Western bands, and hears from the strange French band trying to tour this huge country, complete with all their instruments and equipment, using the rail network. 

Producer: Tim Mansel

A Bite Yer Legs production first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2010.

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Rajan Datar follows the exodus of western bands to India and China

Broadcaster and journalist Rajan Datar follows the exodus of western bands to India and China, the emerging markets in pop and rock, to see whether the rewards outweigh the pitfall

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