After experimenting for more than 20 years, A Moving Sound (聲動樂團) continues to find their way across the soundscape.
Their latest album, Starshine (微星之光), is markedly less “Taiwanese,” much of it featuring soaring, playful vocals, subtle tribal beats, Western instrumentation and the hypnotic Uyghur sataer, a bowed, long-necked lute. The East Asian influences are still there, especially coming to life in songs like Dynasty and Toh De Gong, sung in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) and inspired by Taiwan’s ubiquitous Earth God.
“We are facing a turning point in our creative work,” co-founder and singer/dancer Mia Hsieh (謝韻雅) says. “Before, we established a very clear identity with Taiwanese traditional instruments. We’ve always wanted to move forward but we felt scared to change … but at the same time we felt like we were ready to move on and give the unknown a try.”
Photo courtesy of A Moving Sound
The album hit the shelves last week as the group’s third international release for the London-based world music label, ARC records.
“It is challenging to identify the musical category for this one,” Hsieh says. “There’s more of an experimental quality, it’s bolder, showing the inside, vulnerable parts ... We are willing to surrender ourselves musically, let it go.”
Like the band’s previous release, A Little Universe, this one is also cosmically titled.
Photo courtesy of Hua-hui Zeng
“They’re all pointing up, pointing beyond,” co-founder Scott Prairie says. “For me, it’s celebrating or embracing the creative process in itself as a force. For me, it’s the creative energy in making music, in the way you approach life … it can also be spiritual.”
The album dives deeper and into darker territory, and despite the diversity in the songs, it’s a snapshot of where they were at that time, Prairie says.
“The first album has that brand new energy, the second one has a certain eastern, far eastern focus, but this one is free of any kind of idea,” he says. “These are the songs that came. For me, it’s like, I’m not going to care, whatever is coming, I’ll just let it channel out.”
Photo courtesy of Magdalena Frackowiak
EXPLORING TAIWANESE-NESS
Hsieh says the new development in the creative process stems from her decades-long exploration of being Taiwanese.
When Hsieh and Prairie started the band 20 years ago, the nation was just beginning to embrace and develop a distinct Taiwanese identity, and she says that at first she felt compelled to include Taiwanese elements in most of the music.
Photo courtesy of Hua-hui Zeng
“The first time we went abroad, I sang traditional Taiwanese opera. It’s not even something I’m very connected to, but I felt that I needed to use it to show my Taiwanese identity,” she says.
But over the years, she’s learned to embrace her inner identity rather than let the external cultural forces dictate her work. In A Little Universe, there’s a song about traditional markets, because her mother worked in one and she grew up around them.
The Earth God song came naturally in this album, because “in my daily life I see the Earth God a lot,” she says. “These are connections between me and Taiwan from my own experience.”
Photo courtesy of Hua-hui Zeng
Her background as the daughter of immigrants from China, her extensive Western education and her Zen practice are also integral parts of her identity.
The song Dynasty, for example, represents how political power rises and falls, and how it creates a lot of suffering; that’s what her parents went through.
“That’s the only way you can make art, it comes from your real interpretation, you’re not just grabbing something and sticking a Taiwanese flag on it,” Prairie says. “Both of us feel very deeply connected and rooted here, so there’s a certain feeling of love for Taiwan, but we don’t force it. When it comes out, it comes out very naturally.”
SONG STORIES
All the songs tell distinct stories. Following the cheerful opening track Harvest, featuring a six-beat Xinjiang rhythm called tez, the title track is inspired by the spiritual concept of reincarnation and the soul’s journey to eventually transcend the cycle of birth and death.
In the beginning of the song, an indigenous Tao woman expresses how the “stars are watching down on us with compassion.” In the Tao language, the word for star, Mata no Angit, literally means “eyes in the sky.”
Meeting in Emptiness was written while the pair were hiking, with the lyrics drawing from an ancient poem from Guangxi Province, China.
“The music has a very medieval, ancient energy to it,” Hsieh says. “This song delivers a message about how people’s connections can rise above all boundaries. I found that when we perform it, people connect with it a lot because of COVID, there’s a lot of separation nowadays. How can we still believe and trust these connections without seeing each other and being in a different time, space and location?”
Prairie mentions in particular The Master Sighs, which goes from calm and contemplative to a frenzied jam-out. “Commitment is necessary [during spiritual practice] but perhaps equally important is knowing when to take a break from the effort … and have a party!” the notes state.
“The title is kind of a joke — it’s the spiritual teacher saying, okay, what the hell, just do what you want,” Prairie says.
“I still remember when we recorded it, I felt a little uncomfortable and was rejecting it,” Hsieh says. “But it’s interesting, spiritual practice is not just about, like a lot of people say, ‘pure and new age.’ It’s alive.”
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