Who says music in Taiwan is all love songs and schmaltz? Nicole Darcy, the
American expat often referred to in her adopted hometown of Tainan as the
"girl with no shoes," has been making music for the past decade that is
anything but lighthearted. Oppression of women, racism, environmental
degradation, patriarchal social structures, basically the whole gamut of
global ills gets a mention in Nicole's earthy folk rock.
Her music would have to be described as activist folk, if it weren't for the
fact that she's not really an activist at all. Her songs are too personal to
apply to global activist strategies. She's a "think globally, act locally"
type and, for her, locally means Taiwan. She has been in Tainan for the past
10 years, sings in heavily accented Mandarin and in English and looks at her
direct surroundings, or sometimes out her window, for inspiration.
In one of her songs, titled Maybe More Conservative (或許比較保守), she
makes a broadside at what she sees as the unfortunate carelessness of
Taiwanese waste disposal and the hypocrisy it exposes. "We people here are
conservative/ and throw garbage anywhere/ we care about child education/
casually drop waste." Her lyrics tend to go straight for the jugular, and
usually at men's jugulars more specifically. Take her song To the Men on the
Beach, for instance, in which she says, "women are already used to this/
it's how modern society is/ of all the hasslers/ not a one has been female."
But it's not all doom and gloom and bra burning. Nicole cools down with the
occasional ditty about relationships or friends, or the healing powers of
the sun and meditation in Tibet.
With her tree-hugger sensibility and bare-bones guitar-based songs, she's
certainly one of the unique acts in Taiwan without even considering the fact
she's a Nordic-stock Minnesotan belting it out in Mandarin. Nicole will make
one of her rare forays into Taipei tonight for a show at the Witch House
beginning at 10pm. Tickets cost NT$250 including a drink. The Witch House is
located at 7, Lane 56, Hsinsheng S. Rd., Sec. 3, Taipei
(北市新生南路三段56巷7號).
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