Dylan’s past as a counterculture hero may have worried the Chinese authorities.
By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai
Bob Dylan has cancelled parts of his Asian tour after the Chinese government denied the singer a permit to perform.
The 68-year-old folk singer was due to tour Beijing, Shanghai, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong this month after finishing a string of dates in Japan.
However, his promoter, Brokers Brothers Herald, said Dylan had been blocked by the Chinese government.
“China’s Ministry of Culture did not give us permission to stage concerts in Beijing and Shanghai, so we had no alternative to scrap plans for a South East Asian tour,” said Jeffrey Wu, the promoter’s head of operations, to the South China Morning Post.
Mr Wu added that the “chance to play in China was the main attraction for him [Dylan]. When that fell through, everything else was called off.”
Permits for musicians to play on the mainland have been tightly controlled since Bjork, the Icelandic singer, enraged the authorities in Shanghai two years ago by shouting out “Tibet! Tibet!” at the end of her song: Declare Independence.
The Culture ministry said Bjork’s performance had “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people”.
Since then, it was rumoured that the collapse of a planned Oasis concert in Shanghai last year was because the band had played at a Free Tibet concert in New York in 1997. The Chinese government, however, blamed the financial worries of the promoter for the cancellation.
“What Bjork did definitely made life very difficult for other performers. They are very wary of what will be said by performers on stage now,” said Mr Wu. He added that Dylan’s past as a counterculture hero may have worried the Chinese authorities.
New depths of contempt for human rights and paranoid fear of criticism. Jailing torturing thousands of falung dong was crazy but understandable in that the regime is scared of alternative organisations. But the words of a68 year old rock and roller that’s just paranoid. How long till politicians stand up and say enough or do they leave honesty to musicians and poets?