It was a legendary moment for Taiwan’s musical history as Chen Ming-chang (陳明章), Ara Kimbo and Chen Yung-tao (陳永淘) took the stage together, nearly three hours into last Friday’s “Three Greats of Taiwanese Folk Music” concert.
Now in their 60s and 70s, the “wandering bards” (吟遊詩人) not only made their first joint performance, they also co-composed a brand new song for the occasion, sung in their respective mother tongues of Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), Puyuma and Hakka.
As a music, history and language enthusiast, this show hit all the right notes for me. The seasoned artists had each delivered an entertaining and emotionally powerful set interspersed with intimate footage of them discussing their life and work, but it was still hard to imagine what would come next.
Photo courtesy of Peng Ting-ling
Despite falling under the nativist folk genre and drawing passionately from the land and traditional culture, the three embody quite distinct musical styles and characters, and their banter is heartfelt yet hilarious.
Always smiling and downing kaoliang liquor throughout the show, Chen Ming-chang is free-spirited and unrestrained, singing energetically about drinking, love and the daily lives of ordinary folk. Ara Kimbo’s husky, resonant voice is intense and hits like a brick. It’s controlled yet wild at the same time, often breaking into traditional indigenous melodies. As a long-time activist, many of his songs touch upon the environment and the rights of his people. Sporting a graying mohawk, Chen Yung-tao’s timbre is cleaner but deep and far-reaching. He brings an innocence, playfulness and longing for a simpler past and nature into his songs. He’s also drawn to indigenous culture and plays a mouth harp on some songs.
Their first number was a new rendition of Thinking Back (思想起), a classic Hengchun (恆春) folk tune most famously recorded in the 1970s by Taiwan’s prototypical wandering bard Chen Ta (陳達), who died in 1981.
Photo courtesy of Peng Ting-ling
Chen Ming-chang opens the song strumming on his “ming” lute (明琴), a self-invented three-stringed version of the moon lute, while Ara Kimbo freely harmonizes in his iconic voice, while his fingers dance across the grand piano. Chen Yung-tao joins in later with his acoustic guitar, crooning in Hakka about his childhood in his hometown of Guansi (關西) in Hsinchu County.
“It’s different from what we rehearsed,” one of them quips afterward. “Every time we play it, it’s different,” another laughs. They make similar comments after the next song, Paktow (A Grain of Rice, 一粒米), written last August when the three met up for the first time at Chen Ming-chang’s home in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投).
Ara Kimbo wrote the first part about Chen Ming-chang, commenting on how the mountains in the north resemble the ones in his native Taitung County, and how Chen behaves even more indigenous than he is, especially after he drinks. They each present their impressions of Beitou, and their distinct voices and languages meld together. Not only is the resulting sound moving, I also think of how these languages were once suppressed by the government, and how we have the fortune today to hear them in unison on one of Taiwan’s biggest stages.
Chen Yung-tao’s A Tung’s Song (阿東的歌) follows, with the playful chorus consisting of basic kinship terms in the Paiwan language. He wrote it about a half-Chinese, half-Paiwan friend who only knew two words in the language, and later they studied it together when the Council of Indigenous People released its first teaching material.
The show closes with another Hengchun folk song where they discuss its possible indigenous origins, and Bulai Naniyam Kalalumayan, a Puyuma tune praying for the young men conscripted to fight in the 1958 Second Taiwan Strait Crisis to come home safely. Chen Ming-chang and Chen Yung-tao add in their pleas, as all ethnic groups in Taiwan were affected by this skirmish.
It was already a great show with just their individual performances, but I was really hoping that they would create something new, and not just sing each other’s songs as they were written. And they did not disappoint. Before heading off stage, Chen Yung-tao says, “Let’s do this again next year, shall we?”
I sure hope they do.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,