In the early 1990s, China began importing tons of cassettes and CDs from the record industries in the United States and Canada. It was surpluses that would end up in recycling plants. To prevent them from being consumed as what they were — music — they had previously passed through an electric saw.
Dakou (打 口) in Chinese means "to make breaks or openings" and was the name given to these ribbons cut or sometimes completely destroyed. Against this background, an underground channel for the commercialization of repaired tapes emerged, outside the arid debate of illegality.
Repairing and listening to these tapes was decisive for the people who made up the dakou generation and for the vitalization of a music scene linked to rock: new music was listened to without criteria or baggage and without legitimating means, and many young dakou, over time, formed bands, created publications, became music critics or experimental musicians, like Yan Jun.
With a style that ranges from the poetic to the analytical and from cultural criticism to the anecdotal, "Generación dakou: recycling sound" brings together a series of texts written by Yan Jun that speak of his artistic practice; of sound, listening, space and field recording; of sound art and the history of experimental music in China; of the art, the access, the consumption and the circulation of information; of language, the state and noise ...
Includes: interview with Yan Jun and selected discography.
WE ARE THE DAKOU GENERATION, WE GROW UP CHEWING GARBAGE AND WE STRENGTHEN BY SWALLOWING THE WORLD'S WASTE