A boriginal musician Leo Chen (陳永龍) grew up singing about joy and the beauty of the mountains of his home, Nanwang Village in Taitung County. At that time, he saw the traditional songs of his native Puyuma tribe as nothing special - they were just an ordinary part of life.
It took leaving home to realize that he was wrong. Chen moved to Taipei to attend university and found himself helping his cousin Pur-dur (陳建年) record an album that earned widespread critical acclaim. The experience opened Chen's eyes to fresh, creative possibilities for Puyuma music, and hearing the music in a different setting - the recording studio - gave him a new perspective.
"I started to see that [this music] was something beautiful - something truly awesome," said Chen. He began to re-learn songs from his youth with the help of his family. "Then I decided maybe I should try to sing these songs in my own way," he said.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF WILD FIRE MUSIC
Since then, Chen has been forging a modern path for traditional Puyuma and Taiwanese folk music as a singer and percussionist with Wild Fire Music (野火樂集), a group of like-minded Aboriginal musicians that holds ensemble and solo performances across Taiwan. As a collective, Wild Fire Music aims to bring a new sound to Taiwanese folk music. Tonight Chen shares the stage with fellow Wild Fire vocalist Hsiao Mei (小美), starting at 9:30pm at Witch House in Taipei.
The audience can expect a more intimate, reflective performance. "We're not setting out to create the huge festive feeling [of ensemble Wild Fire concerts]," said Chen. "We'll be doing songs that suit us better individually - it will be something like a conversation between our own voices."
Hsiao Mei starts the evening with a solo set, followed by Chen, who will be backed by guitarist Gelresai (陳世川) and keyboardist Cheng Chieh-ren (鄭捷任). Both Hsiao Mei and Chen's sets will likely include songs that feature on two Wild Fire albums, Beautiful Haiyan and Back to the Open Country.
The albums offer listeners a sonic sketch of the two singers. With Swing Naluwan, Chen adapts a standard performed by many indigenous musicians across the island. Chen's version stands out for its latin-jazz groove, and he sings confidently at a higher range, backed by vocal harmonies, acoustic guitar and the djembe, a hand drum originating from West Africa. His wistful rendition of the traditional Puyuma Mountain has a pop sensibility with its slow, soulful piano accompaniment.
Like Chen, Hsiao Mei came to appreciate the songs of her Amis heritage in a new setting, when she joined Wild Fire Music in 2004. She sings traditional tunes drawn mainly from her Amis heritage, as well as Japanese and Taiwanese folk songs. Hsiao Mei's signature song, Periwinkles, is a ballad that was written by the Tsou songwriter Uyongu Yatauyungana (高一生) in 1949. Hsiao Mei sings this piece with a palpable richness that gives emotional weight to the song.
But she also yearns to go beyond the standard Aboriginal and folk repertoire. "When you sing someone else's songs for a long time, you start to think, what about me? What are my own views?" she said. Hsiao Mei will perform some of her own songs at tonight's show, including a few in the Amis language.
Hsiao Mei, who is not fully fluent in the Amis language, often consults with Amis elders and family members when writing songs, working to translate her ideas from Mandarin Chinese. She likens the process to "doing homework." "So it's best when the songs are short," she said, laughing.
Chen hints at getting into songwriting in the future and suggests a solo album could be in the works. But for now he is focusing on fresh material, including new arrangements of traditional songs and a few Mandarin songs.
While Chen continues to nudge the boundaries of traditional music, he keeps his roots in view. "I am able to do this because I grew up in an environment where music was a part of my life. I understand this now more than ever," he said.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and