James Brown makes China debut

The city: Shanghai. The venue: A People’s Liberation Army acrobatics theatre.

The event: James Brown.

The Godfather of Soul made his mainland China debut tonight, belting out classics such as Get Up Offa That Thing before a capacity crowd.

“We are going to funk you up before we finish,” the 72-year-old soul legend said three songs into his set, which kicked off with Make it Funky.

Dressed in a cherry red satin suit, Brown shimmied, slunk, shook and leaped - although not quite as high as he once did.

Behind him, the nine-piece Soul General, complete with gold epaulets on their suits, put on a virtuoso display of rhythm and horns.

Brown’s quartet of back-up singers, the General Sweet, egged on the cheering, clapping crowd who filled the Yunfeng Theatre in the heart of Shanghai’s once-thriving nightclub district.

Brown is little known in China and tonight’s audience was overwhelmingly European, American, and Japanese – evidence of Shanghai’s increasingly international, cosmopolitan complexion.

Brown has shown no signs of slowing down, with the Shanghai concert coming in the middle of an Asian tour that also included a swing through Australia.

In an interview with The Associated Press last year in Indonesia, Brown shrugged off talk of retirement and said his work is the root of much of today’s music.

“Retire for what? What would I do? I made my name as a person that is helping. I’m like Moses in the music business,” Brown said.