Nina Kraviz was not the first foreign artist to perform on the Great Wall of China, however. Irish band The Chieftans claimed that honor when they were invited by the Chinese government in 1983, five years after China began its official process of opening its economy to the outside world.

As deals flooded in, canny entrepreneurs sensed an opportunity in the cultural space – in 1985, Wham! took a now-famous photo on the Great Wall when they became the first Western pop band to perform in China.

The first music festival on the Wall came later, when Michael Vonplon, a Swiss expat credited with launching the ancient-China-meets-contemporary-dance-music format, organized the inaugural Great Wall Festival in 1998.

Since then, music on the Wall has been subject to the vicissitudes of government attitudes towards the influx of Western culture, and the less-than-respectful behavior that can sometimes accompany it. In 2002, the “first wave” of Great Wall festivals came to an end after photos of foreigners urinating off the side of the monument circulated online, according to Miao Wong, a central figure of the Beijing dance music scene.

The festivals were banned for a few years, but have come back in different forms and with different organizers since 2011, when Fatboy Slim headlined a festival at (but not on) Badaling, one of the Wall’s most touristic spots.