Taiwan Today

Hakka musicians are getting creative in a bid to shake off the folk singer stereotype and go mainstream.

Hakka singer Caleb Hsiao (蕭迦勒), a handsome, soft-spoken 27-year-old with wavy brown hair and fair skin, shares more in common with a South Korean pop star than a traditional performer from his ethnic group. In looks and musical style, the up-and-coming artist is embracing a modern feel while using the language of his ancestors.

Hsiao, and other Hakka singers and songwriters like him, are invigorating and reinventing the genre by injecting their generation’s trends and blending it with imported music and words. Today, it is the language of the lyrics only that defines music as Hakka, freeing up artists to cross all kinds of borders in finding new audiences. The Hakka are an ethnic group who originally hail from China. They make up about one-fifth of Taiwan’s population.

In his album “Hakka Girl 2017,” Hsiao, whose mother is Hakka, uses elements of hip-hop and snatches of Korean and English lyrics in the track “Hip Hop Farmer,” a song about city residents dreaming of uprooting to the countryside. “Highway of Love,” more rhythm and blues in mood, has Hsiao singing about a road trip in four languages—Holo, also called Taiwanese and the language of Taiwan’s largest ethnic group; Saisiyat, an indigenous tongue; and Indonesian as well as Hakka.

Binga Chen (陳秉嘉), who co-produced the album, said Hsiao is riding a wider trend. “Hakka pop is quite diverse today in musical style as well as subject matter,” he said. “It’s also exciting to see how it’s become more flexible by including other languages.”

Cultural Revival

The emergence of Hakka music into the mainstream in Taiwan is often credited to pop-rock singer Wu Sheng-zhi (吳盛智‬) and the release of his album “Fated to Part” in the 1980s.

“Before Wu, Hakka music was all about folk melodies and confined to Hakka communities,” said Hsieh Yu-wei (謝宇威), arguably one of Taiwan’s best-known Hakka singers and an authority on the genre’s history. Hsieh, who started recording in the 1990s, has six albums under his belt. To a great extent the rise of Hakka pop music is a response to this ethnic group’s awareness of lost pride in their identity, he explained.

In the past, Hakka people might hide their background due to the dominance of the two main languages in Taiwan: Mandarin and Holo. “I always felt strongly that I should dedicate myself to reviving Hakka culture by creating something new and popular as a songwriter,” Hsieh said.

By writing and singing in their own language, Hakka artists are getting back in touch with their roots as well as promoting their culture to a wider audience. “I started to know more about my Hakka heritage, including the language, once I began making Hakka music,” Hsiao said.

Hakka musician Tommy Yen (顏志文) wrote songs in Mandarin for some of Taiwan’s major record labels for years. It was not until he was commissioned to compose the score for a movie with Hakka elements—“Good Men, Good Women” (1995)—that he was inspired to explore his Hakka identity through his music.

“It gave me a deeper appreciation of Hakka culture,” he explained. Now in his sixties, Yen said writing in Hakka has given him a real sense of fulfillment. Initially, money had motivated him to choose Mandarin songs, “but I was able to get in touch with my own culture when I wrote Hakka music.”

Yen went on to found his own Hakka group, the San-Geu-Tai Band in 1997, which is still going strong today in its second incarnation, the San-Geu-Tai Youth Band. Combining jazz, blues and rock with Hakka folk tunes, the group is clearly proud of its Hakka identity.

Lead singer, 33-year-old Rita Lin (林鈺婷), whose mother tongue is Hakka, is driven by a desire to bring her music to a wider audience. “I’m committed to making and singing beautiful Hakka tunes so that more people will feel close to this music and the language.”

State Support

While dedicated and talented Hakka artists have been key to elevating the genre, it was not until the government lent a hand in the early 2000s that it really took off, according to Hsieh. The turning point came in 2001 when the Cabinet-level Hakka Affairs Council (HAC) was established. The HAC began offering funding to Hakka performers and organizing events to bring more visibility to Hakka music, such as the annual Hakka Tung Blossom Festival, which includes Hakka pop concerts every April and May around the country.

There is also the annual Golden Melody Awards, Taiwan’s answer to the Grammys organized by the Ministry of Culture. It has categories for best album in Hakka and best vocalist in Hakka. This year, Hsiao was nominated in both.

Sun Yu-ching (孫于卿), director of the HAC’s Department of Culture and Education, said these kinds of competitions are driving Hakka musicians to become more creative. “They’re the best way to discover talented acts and individuals.”

With Hakka communities concentrated in northwestern and southern areas of Taiwan, it is not only nationally driven initiatives that are important in encouraging new talent, local governments can also play a role. Northern Taiwan’s Taoyuan City, for example, has hosted the International Hakka Pop Music Festival since 2015. The event, which takes place every year in March and April, features Hakka singers from home and abroad.

“With Taiwan’s biggest Hakka population, Taoyuan has every reason to take the responsibility to promote and develop Hakka pop music,” said Chiang Chieh-an (蔣絜安), former director of the municipal government’s Department of Hakka Affairs (DHA), the festival’s organizer. Chiang added the municipality is home to about 850,000 Hakka people, or 40 percent of the city’s total population.

The DHA is encouraging more diverse forms of Hakka music too. In 2016, it launched an a cappella competition that is held every April, where artists have to perform at least one song in Hakka. This year 120 teams took part, double last year’s number.

Beyond Bias

There is no question that creative artists and government support have helped propel Hakka music out of the shadows, but some say that it is still far from being mainstream, and one reason for that is the perpetuation of ethnic and cultural stereotypes.

After performing in bars for years, Yen of the San-Geu-Tai Youth Band said he thinks local people have the wrong idea about Hakka music. “People have learned to show respect to each other today, irrespective of their ethnic identity, but many still don’t understand Hakka culture,” he said. “They just think that Hakka music is nothing but folk songs for old people. I often feel that foreigners appreciate it more.”

One example of the ground Hakka music still has to cover can be seen from the language categories in the music charts run by KKBOX, a popular Taiwan music streaming service. They have Mandarin, Holo, English, Japanese, Cantonese and Korean, but no Hakka.

The DHA’s Chiang said that Taiwan’s pop music world has still not completely accepted Hakka artists. Mandarin pop stars, who have a much higher profile, are often invited to Hakka pop music events to attract a younger audience, she explained. “Hakka people have been marginalized for a long time, and so we should work even harder to promote Hakka culture, including Hakka pop music.”

The answer may well be more Hakka artists like Hsiao, willing to borrow elements from other cultures, styles and languages to raise the profile of his ethnic group’s music. This May, he performed his Hakka compositions to a live audience for the first time. The venue in Taoyuan where he played was packed out as he wowed fans with his own version of Hakka hip-hop.

Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw