Songs From the Heart

Publication Date：04/01/2000
By line：Kelly Her

"All music is folk music," Louis Armstrong once said. "I ain't never heard no horse sing a song." Well, maybe--but in Taiwan, Mandarin's dominance of the local pop scene is coming under fire from songs that are distinctively folk in the sense that they are sung in Taiwanese, Hakka, Puyuma, or any one of the indigenous tribal languages that give Taiwan its unique mix of cultures.

1994 was a boom year for Enigma, which achieved worldwide sales of millions of copies of its album The Cross of Changes. One track, "Return to Innocence," featured a male soloist with an extraordinary voice that moved everyone who heard its almost unworldly combination of quiet pride and indomitable spirit. This song made such an impression, in fact, that it was eventually included in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games' commemorative CD. It later emerged that the haunting voice belonged to Difang Duana, a member of one of Taiwan's indigenous tribes. His contribution was subsequently overshadowed by an unseemly dispute about intellectual property rights, eventually resolved in the singer's favor, but for a glorious moment Taiwan's aboriginal music took center stage at home and internationally.

What lies at the heart of aboriginal music, giving it such extraordinarily universal appeal? "It's the quintessential aes thetic experience," says Cheng Chieh-jen, a music producer with Taiwan Color's Music Co. "It brings out all the harmony, all the nature and completeness of a particular culture, while emphasizing peace of mind. It has a wide vocal range, its rhythms are distinctive. Aborigines sing from their hearts. The result is an outpouring of truth, goodness, and beauty that can touch an audience to the quick."

Cheng has been specializing in the production of aboriginal music for more than a decade now. What keeps him going? "Their stuff makes me feel that producing music is nothing if not a natural process," he explains. "Behind their music you find all these abundant cultural heritages and broad-minded attitudes." He has found that the island's indigenous peoples have a knack of taking inspiration from their environment, which is often dominated by a wealth of natural beauty. Lots of incidents from their daily lives, important or trivial, find their way into their songs. Moreover, their music is extremely versatile, virtually all-embracing: monophonic singing, polyphonic counterpoint, and numerous other styles find expression there.

Which makes it all the more extraordinary that until about eight or nine years ago, there was scarcely a single aboriginal album on the market. When Cheng did finally manage to track one down, he found that it had been produced by a French company. Fortunately, things began to change fairly quickly after that, and now several local record companies are marketing aboriginal albums with healthy sales. "'Returning to innocence' has increasingly become a world trend," Cheng says. "Abo riginal music is bound to become popular, and not only in Taiwan, because it's so natural and authentic." With Difang Duana's stunning performance at the time of the Atlanta Olympics, Taiwan's skeptical, Mandarin-dominated music industry at last began to realize that indigenous music might just be The Next Big Thing.

Sure enough, in recent years, songs in various aboriginal dialects, as well as Taiwanese and Hakka, have all surfaced in Taiwan's pop-music market, where some estimates now put their combined market share as high as 40 percent. How do these songs manage to make headway against the fast-flowing current of apparent popular taste in a competitive market? "In today's liberal society, there's no such thing as 'mainstream,'" asserts Landy Chang, president of Magic Stone Music Co. "Any kind of music, whether produced in Taiwan or overseas, has a chance to make it big, as long as it's done well. If you ask me why local-language songs become so popular, why they've transformed previously unknown Taiwanese singers into household names, my answer's simple--the emotions and messages that lie behind their music can really touch people's hearts."

Chang basically sees the phenomenon in terms of empathy. Many new songwriters and singers are making an effort to translate the ordinary lives of Taiwanese people into music, uncovering long-dormant feelings of anger, happiness, helpless ness, and grief. The audience listens to their songs and resonates to the underlying messages. Perhaps the most successful examples of this are the duo Kin Men-wang and Lee Bin-hui. The two men, both blind, took the island by storm in 1997 with their Drifting Down to Tamsui album, which rose to fourth place on the International Federation of the Phonographic Indus try's (IFPI's) top-ten Taiwan albums chart, and which seemed to many people to come as close as music could come to the soul of what it meant to be Taiwanese at the close of the twentieth century.

Another marked success was chalked up by Wu Bai and China Blue, whose 1998 Lonely Tree, Lonely Bird Taiwanese album clocked sales of more than 700,000, despite minimal media promotion, and came second in IFPI's 1998 rankings. Chang cautions that the market is ever changing, and nobody can say for sure what will be a hit. Nonetheless, he remains confident that music which reflects true-life scenarios and sentimentalizes about "home" will continue to strike that inner chord for some time to come.

There is also an edgy political angle to all this. Mandarin was for long the only "official" language of Taiwan, while the Taiwanese dialect was suppressed--during the period of martial law, quite ruthlessly suppressed. For several decades, most people were unable to write, sing, or even listen to the songs that came closest to expressing their real feelings. With the lifting of martial law in 1987, however, liberalization took a hold on just about every aspect of the island's life--political, economic, and social. After such lengthy repression, it is perhaps not surprising to find a sudden flowering of Taiwanese culture.

Chen Ming-chang, 44, is one of the distinctively Taiwanese songwriters now coming to the fore. Like Cheng Chieh-jen, he sees a political element to what is going on. He recalls how he started to write songs when he was about twenty-five years old, but dared not circulate them. He knew that the songs would be banned and that he could well end up in jail for having written them. "I was feeling desperate at that time, because I couldn't publicize work dealing with inner reflection and self -examination," he says. "I often turned to the bottle to relieve my sense of frustration and helplessness. But thanks to a combination of the government's pro-democratization moves and my own persistence in doing what I felt was right, I eventually got to where I am today."

During the hard years, Chen resisted the temptation to write songs in Mandarin, which was not his mother tongue. "In those days, 99 percent of songwriters were writing Mandarin songs," he says. "But I thought that if I didn't keep on writing Taiwanese songs, part of my culture would fade away." Conscious of this responsibility, he devoted nearly all his energies to songs that he knew would probably never see the light of day.

For Chen, it all came right. In the pop world he is esteemed as one of the pioneers of the trend toward so-called "New Taiwanese music." His 1989 rap track, "Madness," is believed by many, including Magic Stone Music's Landy Chang, to have changed the ecology of Taiwanese-dialect music. There was no advertising campaign, but the compilation album featur ing it nevertheless sold more than 160,000 copies.

"Rap versions of Taiwanese songs were new at that time, and listeners probably found them fresh," Chen says. "They dealt with things like the grief you get driving a taxi for a living. They had a strong local cultural flavor because they were essentially storytelling, true-to-life dramas." For him, songs have to take their audience into the minds of everyday charac ters, portraying the vicissitudes of Taiwanese life and history.

Until recently, most locally produced pop was a synthesis of Western musical forms and Mandarin lyrics, whereas Chen's songs and music grow organically, as it were, from his own local culture. He has come up with a modern musical stew, having as its ingredients the melodies of Fujianese nankuan and peikuan opera, the spoken narrative and tones of Taiwanese opera and hand-puppet theater, and the rhythmic and harmonic styles of the island's traditional Taiwanese folk songs. ( Nankuan has a delicate, soothing sound and is thought to have first appeared in Taiwan in the sixteenth century; peikuan is loud and played at a fast tempo, often as an accompaniment to operas and puppet shows.) "Originality is an important factor when you're considering what makes music appear attractive and long-lasting, what its chances are of becoming a classic," he says. "I hope that my music will outlive me, so that whenever people think of me they'll remember some of the songs I produced."

It is now possible to find numerous Taiwanese songs in modern rock 'n' roll versions, recorded by such stars of the local scene as Lim Giong, Wu Bai, and Chen Sheng. Indeed, Taiwanese songs have evolved over time to the point where they span a much wider range of musical categories than before: rock 'n' roll, rap, reggae, and blues all now figure prominently.

It helps that the number of Taiwanese-speakers is on the rise throughout Taiwan and Southeast Asia, while residents of mainland China's Fujian Province (where the Taiwanese dialect originated) have no difficulty understanding it. Chen thinks it probable that more than 80 million people in those areas can listen to Taiwanese songs and either understand them com pletely or at least have a good grasp of what is going on. Aboriginal songs, on the other hand, are rich in their own special enchantment and emotional power, triggering a response from audiences who cannot understand one word of the lyrics. "Many of their albums have or will become classics of their kind," he maintains. "Their unique culture, represented by songs accompanied by passionate music and dancing, are giving them a strong competitive edge."

Chen is also interested in the indigenous music scene. He notes that many tribal peoples enjoy a vivid sense of unity, having lived through crisis after crisis. Several of them have made special efforts to conserve their native language, and one measure of their success is the way that more and more of their singers are gaining widespread recognition in the musical world.

Chi Hsiao-chun, 22, can relate one such success story. She is a member of the Puyuma tribe, mostly based around Taitung on Taiwan's southeastern coast. "People like to ask why I don't sing Mandarin songs, because that way I'd become famous more quickly and sell more albums," she says. "But as a member of my tribe, I feel it's my duty to sing our songs in the mother tongue and keep our culture going."

All of the languages spoken by the island's indigenous peoples have been passed down from one generation to another in oral rather than written form, and that makes it doubly hard to conserve typical aboriginal ballads, which harp on themes such as the beauty of the singer's hometown, the problems of everyday life, or religious rituals. Chi therefore insists on singing the songs she knows in their original language, and earnestly expresses the hope that singers from other tribes will follow suit.

Chi's first album featuring Puyuma ballads was released in December last year, and so far has sold more than 25,000 copies. Her recording company, Magic Stone Music, regards this as satisfactory, given that in the case of a newly released Mandarin song, sales of 30,000 would be considered healthy. "I've been singing Puyuma ballads ever since I was a child," Chi says. "Singing is a vital part of our lives. I want people to enjoy our music, get to know our culture, and be friends with us. That's what I'm trying to do as a singer."

Magic Stone Music's Landy Chang, an enthusiastic admirer of all things indigenous, had been deeply moved by many of the songs he heard--one reason why his company is so keen on the promotion of aboriginal music. He describes it as a gift from God, the best gift God has ever sent to Taiwan. "Their instrumental music can transcend language barriers to blend seamlessly in with world music," he says. "Their pure simplicity leads you back into a golden age when the world was first created, to a time when people were very much in touch with the natural elements of earth, wind, and sky."

Chang's hope is that aboriginal music will lead people out of this chaotic age, filled with so many hectic pressures and anxieties, back into a world of traditional innocence. Music that is so pleasing to the senses deserves to be widely promoted not only in Taiwan but the world over, and his company will do everything it can to help. "If there's good music, we'll produce and promote it," he says. "If there are talented singers, we'll cultivate them and introduce them to the public. That's the way we do things. Language is irrelevant."

A special area of interest and concern for both Landy Chang and Chen Ming-chang is the present situation of Hakka songs, where success stories are much more patchy. "At present, Taiwan's Hakka community is still virtually an underprivi leged group," Chang says. "The conservation of their traditional culture is low down on the list of priorities, and fewer and fewer of them, particularly young people, can speak the Hakka dialect. As to Hakka songs, the talent is pretty limited. Hakka songs are facing a real crisis."

Huang Lien-yu is one of the few Hakkas to have established himself as a songwriter and singer in Taiwan's pop circles. His first album, which was released in 1992 in conjunction with Taiwanese singer Chen Sheng, featured both Taiwanese and Hakka tracks. It sold more than 70,000 copies. "I was just thrilled," he confesses. "I was a nobody, I didn't even dare think we might succeed well enough to be given a second album. But the better-than-expected sales gave me and the recording company [Rock Records & Tapes Co.] confidence. As long as Hakka songs have good melodies and lyrics, they'll generate popular appeal."

Huang and Chen have now released five albums in all, each with liner notes written in Chinese, giving Hakka songs a much stronger presence on the pop-music map. What is their secret? "Our songs address the commonplace things that happen around us all the time--family things, earning a living," Huang explains. "Then you have the combination of different local languages, Taiwanese and Hakka, and people find that innovative and interesting. And our music is easy to relate to: it makes people feel relaxed and happy." But a lot of hard work went into the albums' success. Every time Huang and Chen released a new one they toured the island to give school performances, visiting more than 100 educational institutions a year. This face-to-face contact with audiences did much to promote their popularity.

"As a Hakka, I see myself as having some sort of mission to help preserve and promote Hakka culture, as well as correct certain misconceptions about my people, and I do that by writing and singing songs," Huang says. "I want to let others know that I'm a Hakka, and I want people to understand and accept us more than they do now." He adds that sometimes he feels angry when he sees that certain Hakkas are unwilling to acknowledge their origins. He also wants to correct the common misconception that his people are stingy and overly concerned with their own interests.

In an effort to make his songs more acceptable, Huang has been trying to simplify the lyrics, combining them with lively melodies so that people who are unfamiliar with the language will nevertheless find them attractive. It is not an easy road, however. One problem currently confronting him is that burgeoning output puts a strain on his vocabulary. There are only so many ways of expressing ideas and feelings, and because Huang lacks opportunities to use his own mother tongue on a regular basis, he has difficulty keeping his language up to date.

Another set of problems comes with fame. Huang increasingly finds that his fans have high expectations of him, al though the upside is that their support helps provide the momentum that keeps him going. Despite the obstacles, Huang is confident that Hakka songs will become increasingly popular in Taiwan's pluralistic society. Meanwhile, he is pleased to see that more and more young talents are starting to write songs representative of Hakka viewpoints and culture.

Huang notes that the island has become a veritable melting pot of ethnic groups, including increasing numbers of foreign nationals who settle here for career or personal reasons. In tune with this trend, he plans to incorporate several different languages--Taiwanese, English, Japanese--into his future works. "Music should be universal, not subject to fixed formulas of expression," he says. "As a songwriter, I don't just write for Hakkas, I write for people in general, both here at home and abroad."

A generation of Americans that thrilled to the voice of Edith Piaf, or of British lovers of Verdi's operas, would readily agree that where fine music is concerned, language becomes of little consequence. Much music does successfully transcend all boundaries of culture, language, and patterns of thought, and it seems that Taiwan has begun to tap into a rich lode. "What's so beautiful about Taiwan is that it has all these languages and different environments," says songwriter Chen Ming -chang. "In such a diversified social context, local-language songs are poised to grab a big chunk of the market, as more and more people learn to search for their roots through music."