My Chinese Wedding

Due to some serious desire to gain face, wealthy Chinese will hire you pretty much for the color of your skin.  It's nothing like slavery ... except for the racism.  You're supposed to have some sort of talent - in our case, musical ability. That's right, I just got home from two piano gigs - one at a wedding, another at an Audi Car Show.  Those of you who know me fairly well might say, "But Jake, you don't play the piano." And you would be correct.  That's pretty much the extent of that conversation.  No "however," no "but."  The last time I played piano was around the age of 8 or 9.

I can't remember my piano teacher's name, much less how to play both a chord and melodic line simultaneously.  My nine years of saxophone did pull through for me.  I could keep a rhythm and play the tonic of any given chord, maybe the 5th and occasionally a 3rd.  (For the musically illiterate among us, this about the skill of a beginner pianist after 2 or 3 months.)  So my performance was to subsist of 50% skill and 50% dramatic presentation.  That's right, they want White Musicians, and they want them to act like Jack Black in School of Rock.

The Judgmental Orchestra next to my keyboard

Gig number 1 was the wedding and while I set up my keyboard, the Chinese girls in the orchestra next to us laughed at the stickers I had put on the keyboard, indicating each note.  The band leader had told me to hide it from the boss who had hired us - it had to do with something about losing credibility as an apparently aspiring pianist.  However my masking-tape-sticker, cheat-sheet couldn't save me from the total absence of power going to the keyboard.  My performance plummeted to 0% skill and 100% dramatic presentation.

Random enthusiastic vocalist.

So I sat there waiting for some groomsman to finish a speech and thought WWJBD - What would Jack Black do?  I looked to my band mates who were aware of my precarious situation.  And in the words of Jack Black, we proceeded to "rock their face off."  I've never known someone to play piano as intensely as I did today, but there's a good chance you might if you turn the power off.

The second gig was a little more eccentric.  There was a professional foreign artist, drawing cartoon characters of children that were patient enough to sit for him, until a hilarious man from Israel, dressed as a clown, would scare everything right with them, right out of them, until they fled to the young model who had missed one meal too many but was happy to have pictures taken of her with whatever Audi on display.

From Left: Me, Pete on Bass, Chris on Guitar.

For our part, we were to play 5 songs, with a "piano-focus."  We chose:

John Denver's "Take Me Home Country Roads"
The Beatles' "Hard Day's Night"
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"
Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower"
Bob Marley's "I Shot The Sheriff"

This experience was a little smoother however the soundboard staff managed to change any volume we had settled on.  Chinese people like their music White, and they like it Loud.  1400 Kuai ($200 USD) and some delicious, delicious Eggplant later and we were back home.  We each made half a month's wages in about 9 hours, primarily off the color of our skin.  If that isn't reverse discrimination, I don't know what is.