Not every musician dubbed the ‘godfather’ of his genre deserves the title. On the contrary, most of the time it is just an easy shorthand for critics and fans too lazy to come up with an original name. However, there are a few, a very few, that merit such paternal praise. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, comes to mind, although many others fall short of the term.

Cui Jian has been so influential as to have no need of divine help, a source rather than a surrogate. As the undisputed Father of Chinese Rock, he single-handedly led China into an entirely new era of music, providing the country’s youth with something they had never seen before. His impact has been so powerful that twenty-one years later he is still shaping the landscape for China’s youth, even if they are not aware of it.

Unsurprisingly to Sinophiles, while growing up in the 1970s, Cui Jian had no plans to be a rock musician. He was, however, on track to becoming an orchestra trumpet player. As a young man he actually made the ranks of the Beijing Orchestra, before his life took an unexpected turn. As the country opened up, China’s youth began looking for a new, more authentic musical identity than Chinese opera and Revolutionary songs could offer.

So while economic reform was helping millions of Chinese find more prosperous lives, Cui Jian was finding his voice. It was powerful, and distinctly counter-culture. Chinese youth had never heard a musician quite like him, and gave him his first big hit in 1986, when he was twenty-five.

While most Chinese in the early 1980s only knew about Western musicians like John Denver, if any at all, Cui Jian was focused on more rebellious groups like the Rolling Stones and The Beatles. Like the Fab Four, his greatest strength was an ability to incorporate many different styles into his music. In addition to British rock, he also drew on Chinese folk music, jazz, even rap. It has been this knack for splicing different sounds together, and his impeccable vision of where the Chinese scene ought to go, that has made him one of the most dominant forces in the country’s pop culture scene.

Every rebel is bound to ruffle a few feathers, and Cui Jian was no exception. As tensions rose in 1989, he became a symbol of the student movement. In the aftermath, he lost regular access to his children. When banned from playing inside Beijing, he continued to sell out venues around the country, before finally reconquering the city with a show at the Workers’ Stadium in 2000.As influential as his own music has been, Cui Jian continues the equally important quest of broadening Chinese audiences’ horizons. In the last ten years, he has been an active organizer of music events throughout the country, most notably The Beijing Pop Festival and Snow Mountain Music festival in Lijiang. In 2003, he was also slated to perform with the Rolling Stones, during one of their many derailed tours to the Mainland.

This year’s Beijing Pop Festival, the third of its kind, featured a number of musicians whom most Chinese had never heard of. Oddly enough, the concert featured almost exclusively foreign bands from the mid-80s and early 90s, including Marky Ramone, the New York Dolls, Public Enemy, and Nine Inch Nails. All of the acts were unquestionably influential, and excellent finds, but one has to wonder why an innovator like Cui Jian passed on more current groups like The Killers. Nevertheless, it was yet another example of the unparalleled influence of the Father of Chinese Rock.

Much as most fans of 50 Cent have never heard Run DMC or Public Enemy, many young music fans in China only have a vague notion of who Cui Jian is. Although he remains the prize jewel in China’s rock garden, his impact shines more brightly than his music.