Long Kuan is another one of those female singer songwriters who has been making the world more beautiful with her voice and her music, and in this case more literally. After three years of absence from the music scene she is releasing an single promoting environmental protection, called “Queen of Lohas”. LOHAS (Lifestyle Of Health And Sustainability) is a demographic that refers to the market of those who support sustainable living, “green” ecological initiatives, a growing demographic in China.
Since the breakup of the duo “Long Kuan Jiu Duan” (names of the two members put together) three years ago, Long Kuan signed with Mai Tian Music (an indie music label under Hua Yi Entertainment) last year and has been planning a high-profile comeback. This comes now in the form of her new song “Lohas Queen” which recently topped the charts for mainland singers, according to prominent Chinese music program, “Yin Yue Feng Yun Bang”, beating out the likes of Pu Bajia, Xue Zhiqian, and others with huge fanbases showing that Chinese indie is indeed being more and more prominent in Chinese mainstream.
Indeed, Long Kuan has an endorsement deal with LOHAS magazine, whose annual special issue will come with her single “Lohas Queen”, and promote the idea that everyone is a “Lohas Queen”. For this concept Chinese women have been photographing themselves doing ordinary daily things like bike riding, baking, and watering plants showing that even in the little details one can be the Queen of Lohas, and that such a lifestyle is not a burden; it simply means living a healthy and happy lifestyle. It seems like quite the perfect combination of a meshing of commercialism, music and strong ideals for the vegetarian singer, who supports environmentally-friendly actions.
Xu Jinglei...just your run of the mill Chinese woman obviously enjoying her Lohas lifestyle
Long Kuan says, “I hope everyone can listen to this music, and help me, and help the earth. Help those all those children to still have the opportunity to realize their dreams. Help all those cute and animals. Help yourself, and those you love in this time of global warming, in a time of crisis. Thank you.”
Soon she will take part in the huge concert in the “Birds Nest” Olympic stadium organized by Chinese music producing giant, Zhang Yadong, for which she’s already started rehearsals. Quite the honor, although nothing unbefitting a Queen.
Bonus MV of the now defunt Long Kuan Jiu Duan: LJ community My SuperCloud, which first introduced me to Long Kuan Jiu Duan and Long Kuan, has the above song for download and will shortly have the Lohas song, so join!
Also thanks to pho50 @ My Supercloud for the heads up on what the cover of the magazine looks like, with Xu Jinglei.
And you can listen to another new song from her wild days in London, “One Chinky Chick” here. Don’t ask me what kind of message to mankind that’s supposed to be.
opps btw my email is dublin.ohio@yahoo.com
i have a question about wordpress…
how do you make just the sumary appear? (and when you click the name of the arcticle, it shows the whole blog?)
mine just shows the whole blog and its so annoying
Actually I didn’t include that article in my first post on Long Kuan Jiu Duan because it pissed me off the first time I read it. I like how you put it – the “double standard that is perhaps unconscious”.
Well, I definitely took liberty in my translation here, because I wanted to combine the two translations smoothly…her monologue on her love of the planet and the article you pointed out to me, and I didn’t like the wording of the article so I didn’t go for a word for word translation, and I added some stuff. But I think it’s a more enjoyable read now.
I posted that very fast, so I wasn’t paying attention very much to the Chinky Chick song, lol it’s still weird.
I think Long Kuan is interesting…I feel like her background has influenced her music. She seems to me like a blend of jpop and Enya in this particular song.
I actually read that article and I didn’t really like it. I’ve read BBC for a while, and it’s is pretty good, and a lot more unbiased than say, Times UK as a newspaper, but it still has a double standard that is perhaps unconscious. For example, back when the railway to Tibet was built, they spun a story saying it was damaging Tibetan culture, but for a rail in Australia that cut across Aborigine land, they called it bringing cultures closer together.
So I’m wary of an article that talks about differences between Europe and China when the readership of BBC is most likely European and not Chinese especially when the part of Europe specially mentioned is London or Britain.
Still it was interesting. I can definitely imagine that most funds for indie bands coming from shows not CD sales and it’s pretty cool that indie artists in China can thrive like that when they may not in Europe due to less income. As for Long Kuan…she seems interesting. I wonder if she is doing it for the money…this particular collab seems rather commercialized, but I don’t mind. As long as she produces music I guess. I like her voice.
It’s so nice to read a real translation, not my usual Babel Fish-erized ones. Haha, didn’t mean to make you come out of hiatus. But now you’re making me get on the ball and post LOHAS Queen tonight too! BTW, the One Chinky Chick is a London recording. I know Long Kuan lived in London when she was with Mika Bomb but it’s not a Mika Bomb song so don’t really know… I was able to track that audio only “video” down to a 2007 post on a Chinese language blog… so probably not new either. It’s a mystery!
Here’s a BBC article where Long Kuan (aka Agi) comments about some differences in working in Europe vs. China.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7251211.stm
Now back to your hiatus! haha
I think she’s from Beijing though…but the sound on that MV really wasn’t very great, so I changed it to just an audio version.
And yeah…um, still on hiatus. Lost all credibility with that haven’t I? ^_^’ I was going to do a quick post with this, just putting up the MV, but then pho50 gave me an article to go with it so it snowballed. And idarklight’s gone for today so I thought I’d just post it.
haha. i thought you were on your “hiatus”
anyways. long kuan is pretty good. its just i dont like listening southern accent mandarin. (taiwan, hongkong accent etc). im more comfortable listening to northern accent. but thats one reason why i like china. its diverse.