'Big John' Zhang Ling plays bass at CD Blues Cafe in Beijing. Provided to China Daily

A Beijing bar is hosting a three-day blues festival starting on Friday, featuring a dozen bands and soloists from around the world.

Cafe CD Blues, on the Third Ring Road near the Agricultural Exhibition Center, and its previous location a few blocks further south, has been home to the city's alternative music scene since the 1980s.

It has been owned for nearly two years by veteran R&B singer and bass player "Big John" Zhang Ling.

Playing on Friday from 7 pm are Chinese band Little Inn, the US' Peter Muchinson Band, Bobo Stump from Japan, Matt Cooper (featuring Swiss Werner Fischer on guitar) and Defy, a Chinese rockabilly group. The night finishes at 1 am.

On Saturday, Joseph J. Johanna from New Zealand will perform folk blues from 3:30 pm, followed by Chinese band Out of Control, then Fernando Fidanza, the Peter Muchinson band again, Zhang Di and Lucy in an East meets West performance, and then the Big John Blues Band led by the bar's owner. The evening will finish with a blues jamming session from about 11:15 pm.

Fernando Fidanza will kick things off from 2:30 pm on Sunday with his Italian Blues. He'll be followed with a harp clinic and harmonica competition until 5 pm. Starting at 4:30 pm outside will be another set by Joseph J. Johanna, then Hong Kong's Chit Chat band, Hoochie Coochie Gentlemen, Bobo Stump and finally, The Chinese Hell Cats from 10:30 pm.

The cost of admission is 150 yuan ($23), including a free drink, for each day, or 400 yuan, including a free drink every day, for all three days.

"Beijing will have seen nothing like it," says one of the event's promoters, Beijing-based US businessman Craig Quick.

"This is a brilliant line-up of extremely talented musicians who know and love the blues inside out. It's going to be a tremendous occasion."

In the early 1980s, as bassist for Chinese rock legend Cui Jian, Zhang Lin developed a deep understanding of the development of modern music in China when Western music was considered "capitalist". He used to listen to The Beatles tracks smuggled in from the US.

Zhang studied bass in Australia and returned to China to collaborate with some of the top blues and jazz artists in the country, creating in 1995 China's first jazz fusion band, Tien Square. In 1996, he joined his old band mate, Cui, and International Monetary Fund vice-president John Anderson to form the first blues band in China, The Rhythm Dogs. He released his first solo album, Nu Ren De Ge (A Woman's Song), in 2008, and also runs a musician booking agency.

Many of the world's jazz greats have visited or performed at the CD Blues Cafe and Bar, including Wynton Marsalis, Kenny Garrett and Herbie Hancock's band.

Blues evolved from the unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions imported from West Africa and rural tunes into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, with regional variations across the US.

Further details of this weekend's event can be found at

http://www.cdbluescafe.cn/event_bluesfest.html

China Daily