Scottish Folk Musician Ally Kerr on Surviving Beijing Sandstorms and China's Chaotic Music Biz

Breaking into the Asian music market is becoming easier and easier these days – just another algorithm to crack by a technically-savvy team ready to exploit your very being. Heck, there are now hundreds of businesses out there whose sole purpose is to ease Western artists into the Asian market. But in the early noughties, despite digital music already beginning to pave over traditional means of music distribution, unless you were already a glorified singer, you certainly needed a bit of luck.

Lucky for him, Scottish singer-songwriter Ally Kerr had it. Good fortune came early when his 2004 debut Calling Out To You was chosen as one of the “Top 20 Albums Ever to Come Out of Scotland” by one of the country's biggest music magazines. The fever-pitch abroad came to a climax when, while touring across Japan, one of the singles from that album – "The Sore Feet Song" – was picked as the opening song for the anime show Mushi-shi. For anyone familiar with the rabid world of anime fans, that’s quite the pull (and one that keeps on giving 15 years on, as the series just found its way onto Netflix). As Kerr puts it: "It was all very surreal having this interest from such a big project... a little confusing but I knew it would allow my music to be heard more widely.”

Since then, the Glaswegian artist, known for his wry, tender, and wistful folk-pop, has been making his presence known across Asia, including in China where he’ll be returning this weekend for special acoustic sets at Valley Children Music Space in Tongzhou on Saturday, May 18 and at Omni Space on Sunday, May 19 to promote Upgrade Me, his latest slice of melody-filled tunes.

While Kerr is looking forward to returning to Beijing for those shows, his first China stint in 2004 wasn't quite the smooth introduction one might have hoped for: the festival he was booked to perform at (alongside some big names like Li Zhi and Wan Qing) was hit by a severe sandstorm that forced authorities to cut the event short.

Yet Kerr looks back fondly on the visit because it “left me curious to find out more.” Over a decade later, he returned for a ten-show tour that he calls "a whirlwind of an experience" because it thoroughly opened his eyes "to the culture, the music industry here and how different it is to the UK." He was also blown away by "the people, the food, the life in these huge cities that have expanded so quickly in recent times. It felt amazing to connect with people very far from my home. That is one of the joys of making music – finding these connections in places far away.”

Kerr formed an especially strong bond with a friend he simply refers to as Jason, who managed his 2015 tour and who has since become one of Omni Space's founding partners as well as the man behind Vibes, the management company that put together Kerr's most recent tour. As Kerr puts it: "I think in China the music business is quite different to the UK. It feels like things can happen quickly here, and that a lot of people are showing initiative and getting ahead to make their plans. So I like the energy and the slightly chaotic nature of the business.” 

Living in the moment is crucial to Kerr’s lyrics, whose songs on his latest album Upgrade Me, depict a world that’s becoming more and more enamored by technology – "everyone is rushing around, communicating constantly, overwhelmed by images, by media, by information... Now I try to breathe everything in, to appreciate all the small details. The beauty of traveling is that you can just observe and you can really live in the moment.”

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Ally Kerr will perform at Valley Children Music Space in Tongzhou on Saturday, May 18 and at Omni Space on Sunday, May 19.

Photos: allykerr.com, courtesy of the promoter