Big in Bangalore, Big in Beijing - Episode 2

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. The producer is Tim Mansel, and this is a Bite Yer legs production for BBC Radio 4.