When an album called Songs of the Crazed hit Taiwan's airwaves in 1989, it was like a gust of wind storming through the island's music industry. First, the rock-and-roll songs were sung in the Taiwanese dialect rather than Mandarin, the national language. Second, while traditional Taiwanese songs have been popular for generations, the music had consisted mainly of ballads with roots in the folk songs of southern China. Moreover, Taiwanese music had in the past largely been considered a blue collar or rural genre, somewhat like the American blues and country music. ("Taiwanese" refers both to the local dialect and to the Chinese population living on the island before the influx of Chinese from the mainland after 1949.) But Songs of the Crazed had a lively rock beat that appealed to young urban listeners. In short, Taiwanese music was suddenly hip.
In the two years that have passed since Songs of the Crazed debuted, a growing number of singers have joined the movement to create "new wave" Taiwanese music. Their songs mark a radical break from traditional Taiwanese ballads in content and musical composition, and reception from local audiences has been mixed. While the music has gained a strong following among younger listeners, it has drawn sharp criticism from fans used to traditional Taiwanese music.
Taiwanese ballads typically focus on sentimental themes of personal tragedy. For example, "Longing for Spring Wind," one of the oldest Taiwanese ballads, tells of a love-sick young woman:
Alone at night sitting
by the dim light,
Spring breeze gently touches
the maiden's face.
Already seventeen
but still unmarried.
She is waiting for her man.
But the new songs boldly tackle broader social and political issues, such as tangled traffic, worsening pollution, and endless disputes among members of the Legislative Yuan. The title track of Songs of the Crazed, "Democratic Ah-Tsao," which echoes the somewhat sarcastic attitude many people have concerning relations with mainland China, is a good example of this new orientation:
Left home early in the morning
when the sky was still clear and high.
Together we took a walk to Hsimenting.
There we saw the policemen and military guards
all over the streets,
fully armed, their bodies facing forward.
Suddenly I felt icy cold inside.
Suddenly I felt icy cold inside.
Let us ask Mr. Policeman over here:
Are we going to start a war to recover mainland China?
The album was produced by Blacklist Studio in Taipei, which prides itself on being unconstrained by any specific music form or trend. "We are the oddballs of Taiwan's popular music," says one studio representative. "We simply want to use music to boldly say what we feel inside."
Blacklist's goal supports the feelings of a growing number of singers. The resurgence of Taiwanese music is part of a larger trend toward greater appreciation of the island's unique culture. For decades, at least on official levels, the Taiwanese dialect was considered taboo. Parents remember being punished for speaking it in school, and it was rarely used on network radio or television. But with political liberalization, especially during the 1980s, speaking Taiwanese became more accepted, even among the island's Mandarin-educated youth. People of all social and economic backgrounds have become interested in learning about things Taiwanese, and the current wave of new music is an important part of this movement.
New wave Taiwanese songs mix elements of traditional ballads with new music forms. For example, two years ago, singer Chu Yueh-hsin (朱約信) recorded four of the island's most popular Taiwanese ballads—"Longing for Spring Wind," "Patching A Torn Fishing Net," "Flower of the Rainy Night," and "Moonlit Sadness"—as a rock medley called "Looking at the Flower in the Night." The song was popular for many months.
Today, record companies which previously produced only Mandarin recordings have also begun issuing Taiwanese records. EMI Taiwan Ltd., for example, is currently promoting its first Taiwanese album, Big-footed Sister, by veteran songwriter Chen Hsiao-hsia (陳小霞). And the Taiwan branch of PolyGram Records recently released its first production in Taiwanese, A Feast.
Several new wave singers have gained special recognition. Last year, Taiwanese singer Lin Chiang (林強) was named Best New Singer at the government-sponsored Golden Music Awards, Taiwan's equivalent to the Grammies. Then last winter, Golden Songs Billboard, the local survey ranking popular songs, created a separate list for the growing category of Taiwanese music. Academics have also jumped on the trendy topic, churning out a number of articles on new wave music in recent months.
Despite all this attention, the debut of new wave Taiwanese music has not been free of controversy. Some listeners consider the music nearly blasphemous in its departure from tradition. They charge that the new songs do not properly showcase the rich Taiwanese language and that their musical composition lacks polish. In fact, the criticisms have merit. The challenge facing Taiwan's new wave musicians is to continue experimenting without losing the nuances of Taiwanese language and without sacrificing musical composition. In the end, they hope to create works with both unique style and staying power.
In the words of producer Wang Ming-hui, owner of Blacklist Studio, "The real good stuff is something that can be sung from generation to generation." Singer and songwriter Lo Ta-yu (羅大佑) agrees. Pointing to the longstanding Taiwanese ballads "Longing for Spring Wind" and "Patching A Torn Fishing Net," he asks, "Why are these songs still so well liked after forty years? They have substance; songs that don't won't last."
Creating songs with substance is the main goal for many of the new wave singers. Chu Yueh-hsin is a good example. In 1990, while still a graduate student at National Taiwan University, he released his first album, Chu Yueh-hsin's Music. Calling himself a "protest singer," Chu sang passionately of his objections to current government policies. Nearly every song in the album was composed and written by the singer himself and dealt with issues close to his own life:
Oh! Honorable university patrol officer:
Who do you think you are
to teach me how
to be a good citizen?
Why on earth do schools hire these guardians?
Do you understand the meaning of free thought?
Who do you think you are?
Such heartfelt messages also made singer Lin Chiang famous overnight after the 1990 release of his first album, Marching Forward. The message of the title song—Nothing to be afraid of. Just march forward—struck a chord with Taiwan's youth. Raised in a small town in central Taiwan, Lin used the album to vent his concerns about local politics and social problems. He is currently at work on a second album, to be released later this year.
Lin's jeans-and-tee-shirt attire, and his longish, mod hairdo is also something new. Traditional Taiwanese singers tend toward fussier dress: frills for women and suits for men. In addition, the twenty-six-year-old was one of the first local performers to combine the latest MTV-style dance moves with Taiwanese song. Admiring the choreography is half the fun of his live performances. Blacklist Studio's Wang Ming-hui thinks Lin Chiang's music speaks for many modern young people. Says Wang, "He represents the new Taiwan. His look is upbeat and urban, but his language is Taiwanese."
Songwriter Chen Hsiao-hsia also made a name for herself by addressing the concerns of the younger generation. After getting her musical start composing old style Taiwanese ballads, Chen spent eight years producing her popular 1991 new wave album, Big-footed Sister. Her creative inspiration arises from life itself, and her songs address the emptiness and materialism of modern society in Taiwan:
Nowadays, people's friendliness is as thin as paper.
If you drive a Mercedes, people will call you "big brother."
If the price of your stock is climbing, you will be so happy.
If its price is dropping, your feet and hands will tremble.
"Chen Hsiao-hsia voices the feelings of Taiwan's educated youth," says Lin Ku-fang, professor at National Taiwan Normal University and secretary-general of the Chinese Folk Music Association.
Chen also focuses on themes common to women in Taiwan. Her female heroines are vastly different from the plaintive women of traditional songs. In her title song from Big Footed Sister, Chen sings of a woman who is ugly but strong: Big Footed Sister has a big stomach./ The wind can't knock her down. Says producer Wang Ming-hui, "Chen opens up a new forum for women to express themselves."
While the new singers have been heralded for successfully addressing the concerns of the current generation in Taiwan, the musical merit of the songs, especially with respect to the nuances of the Taiwanese language, has met with heated controversy. Some critics charge that the experimental new songs are either not good music or not good Taiwanese.
Critics point to the works of Chen Ming-chang (陳明章) as an example. Now at work on his upcoming album, Live Performance II, Chen is expected to continue focusing on the political and social issues addressed in his earlier music. Jen Chiang-ta, owner of Index Sound Publishing Company in Taipei, praises the content of Chen's songs but criticizes the musical composition, saying, "The problem with Chen's music is that it is not serious enough musically."
Another example is the 1991 album Really Want to Fly, produced by female singer Hsu Ching-chun (許景淳). Hsu sings of her youth in rural Taiwan and current life in Taipei. But while Hsu's message of personal struggle was familiar to audiences, her music was not. In the album, Hsu sang Taiwanese lyrics accompanied by Western-style orchestral music. The mix of the earthy Taiwanese tongue with elements of Western classical music was so jarring to listeners that some critics called the album "a game." But fellow musicians such as Lo Ta-yu supported Hsu's experimentation. "Hsu meant well," Lo says. "She has helped expand the field of Taiwanese songs by using a classical style of music which had not been done before."
The biggest controversy stirred up so far by the new wave Taiwanese songs concerns the treatment, or mistreatment, of Taiwanese language. In the latest album by Lo Ta-yu, for example, many of the songs were originally written in Cantonese. Lo argues that the songs can be sung in Taiwanese or Cantonese and still express the central message: people questioning their relationship to their birthplace. "We [Chinese] live in many places—Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China—and we use various languages in those places," Lo says. "I want to use music to communicate with other Chinese. The bottom line is: So long as the music is good, it doesn't matter what language I use to sing my songs."
Such an attitude is near blasphemy to some listeners. Traditional Taiwanese ballads carefully play up the richness of the dialect, by painstakingly respecting the language's eight linguistic tones (Mandarin has only four) and by making clever use of idioms, word play, and rhyme. Although Lo's album, My Motherland was well received in the market—more than 200,000 copies sold during its first week of release—it raised criticisms of Lo's command of Taiwanese. Singer Chu Yueh-hsin believes that the work does not respect the dialect, claiming that the beauty of the language is often lost in the songs. Others have faulted Lo for not specifically writing lyrics to be sung in Taiwanese.
In fact, many new wave songs have left audiences wondering, "Did that sound like Taiwanese?" Listeners have complained that the new songs sound like rap, and that they all sound alike. This is partly due to the complexity of the Taiwanese tongue; because it is a difficult language to work in, many singers end up stressing content over melody.
Musicians who successfully use Taiwanese without losing its unique attributes are winning the biggest following. Many new wave singers are striving for perfect Taiwanese even as they experiment. In the 1991 album A Feast, singers Chen Ming-chang, Chu Yueh-hsin, and Lin Liang-che mixed characteristics of old-style ballads with elements of modern and Western music. Chu took the opportunity to try new combinations of instruments. "However I insisted that the album must maintain the beauty of the Taiwanese language," he says. Chu admires new singers that successfully play up the dialect in modern song. Singer Lin Chiang is most successful at this, he says. "You can tell that his songs come from a Taiwanese boy who uses Taiwanese in his everyday living."
Critics also point to the work of Chen Ming-chang as an example of new wave Taiwanese songs that successfully maintain the poetic quality of old-style Taiwanese ballads. Nicknamed "Taiwan's Last Legend in Folk Song," Chen has become something of a local hero. Tales of his rugged, colorful life and sentimental personality have earned him a loyal following. Fans even know his favorite brands of beer and beetle nut (the local equivalent to chewing tobacco).
Taiwan's new wave singers face a difficult task. Their music attempts to bridge gaps between older and younger generations, between Mandarin and Taiwanese speakers, and between fans of traditional and modern music. In addition, the music addresses the difficult question of defining what is and isn't "Taiwanese." Much has changed during the four decades that Taiwanese music was relegated to a second-class status. The new Taiwanese music must reflect a new society.
Will the new wave movement continue to play a role in Taiwan's music scene? The many record companies that have jumped to produce and promote the new music is a sign that the genre will be around for a while. In addition, such heavy-weight entertainers as traditional Taiwanese singer Yeh Chi-tien, Mandarin and Taiwanese singer Pan Yueh-yun, and Hong Kong movie star-turned-singer Cheng Lung have recently expressed interest in working with this new generation of musicians.
Perhaps the reason for the popularity of the movement, despite the controversy it has raised, is that Taiwan is eager for a fresh look at its own unique culture. In the end, as both musicians and listeners create new definitions of Taiwanese music, more people may come to feel as songwriter Chen Ming-yu does: "There are many kinds of Taiwanese songs... I don't think there is one single style that represents Taiwanese music. As long as it truthfully illustrates one's own life, it is Taiwanese song."
This article is based on "Taiwan's New Music," which appeared in The Journalist (Taipei: October 28, 1991).