For Aboriginal singer/songwriter Ilid Kaolo (以莉‧高露), bossa nova is not merely a music genre — it’s a lifestyle.
Kaolo, who released her debut album My Carefree Life (輕快的生活) to great acclaim last week, will perform two free concerts in Taipei over the next week: at Eslite Xinyi Music Store (信義誠品音樂館) tonight and at Eslite Dunnan Music Store (誠品敦南音樂館) on Wednesday.
Kaolo’s album contains 10 songs she has written over the past decade, six in Amis and four in Mandarin, that blend folk with jazz and bossa nova.
Photo Courtesy of Wind Music
“There are no big theories with my music,” Kaolo told the Taipei Times in a phone interview last week. “I hope it will calm your heart and help you reflect on what you want from life.”
The title track, My Carefree Life, is a laid-back pop gem celebrating a pastoral lifestyle.
“This song is about my memory of the agricultural life in Hualien,” the Amis songstress said. “Watching the breeze blowing at the rice harvest was a wonderful experience.”
In the second single, Charming Eyes (迷人的眼睛), Kaolo uses her sultry, jazzy vocals to encourage modern women to be brave and hold up their heads when facing romantic disillusionment in the urban jungle.
Born in Hualien, Kaolo moved to Taipei at 7 years old and made the city her home for three decades. She started performing with Formosa Aboriginal Song and Dance Troupe (原舞者) in her early 20s and moved on to join the Aboriginal niche label Wild Fire Music (野火樂集) in recent years under the nickname of Hsiao-mei (小美).
In 2006, she joined Hohak Band’s (好客樂隊) agricultural project in Taitung, farming organic rice by day and writing music by night. She returned to her hometown of Hualien last year to continue farming and work on her debut album.
“My life in Taipei was hectic,” Kaolo said. “I went to gigs to perform and had fun with friends and never thought about releasing an album. The farming life allows me to calm my mind and reflect on life. These songs are letters to friends that I wanted to pass on, but never sent.”
As an Aboriginal performer who has experienced the glamorous night life of Taipei and then reclaimed her connection to the earth through farming, Kaolo wants audiences to find peace of mind in her music.
“You can listen to these songs when you want to chill,” she said. “I would be honored if you feel these songs can relax you and ease your loneliness.”
Nine Taiwanese nervously stand on an observation platform at Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport. It’s 9:20am on March 27, 1968, and they are awaiting the arrival of Liu Wen-ching (柳文卿), who is about to be deported back to Taiwan where he faces possible execution for his independence activities. As he is removed from a minibus, a tenth activist, Dai Tian-chao (戴天昭), jumps out of his hiding place and attacks the immigration officials — the nine other activists in tow — while urging Liu to make a run for it. But he’s pinned to the ground. Amid the commotion, Liu tries to
The slashing of the government’s proposed budget by the two China-aligned parties in the legislature, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), has apparently resulted in blowback from the US. On the recent junket to US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, KMT legislators reported that they were confronted by US officials and congressmen angered at the cuts to the defense budget. The United Daily News (UDN), the longtime KMT party paper, now KMT-aligned media, responded to US anger by blaming the foreign media. Its regular column, the Cold Eye Collection (冷眼集), attacked the international media last month in
Feb. 10 to Feb. 16 More than three decades after penning the iconic High Green Mountains (高山青), a frail Teng Yu-ping (鄧禹平) finally visited the verdant peaks and blue streams of Alishan described in the lyrics. Often mistaken as an indigenous folk song, it was actually created in 1949 by Chinese filmmakers while shooting a scene for the movie Happenings in Alishan (阿里山風雲) in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投), recounts director Chang Ying (張英) in the 1999 book, Chang Ying’s Contributions to Taiwanese Cinema and Theater (打鑼三響包得行: 張英對台灣影劇的貢獻). The team was meant to return to China after filming, but
On a misty evening in August 1990, two men hiking on the moors surrounding Calvine, a pretty hamlet in Perth and Kinross, claimed to have seen a giant diamond-shaped aircraft flying above them. It apparently had no clear means of propulsion and left no smoke plume; it was silent and static, as if frozen in time. Terrified, they hit the ground and scrambled for cover behind a tree. Then a Harrier fighter jet roared into view, circling the diamond as if sizing it up for a scuffle. One of the men snapped a series of photographs just before the bizarre
RSS