Though the protest folk-rock sound of Taiwan’s Labor Exchange Band (交工樂隊) is now a relic of the past for former band leader Lin Sheng-xiang (林生祥) and listeners in Taiwan, the music is fresh to Chinese audiences.
“Here [in China], there is no group doing music like this,” said Ning Er (寧二), a journalist and editor at Window of the South (南風窗), a political weekly in Guangzhou. “There is simply nobody ... like them.”
Ning and a group of friends organized a series of concerts in China featuring Lin and Hakka folk singer Lo Si-rong (羅思容). The two-week tour, dubbed Everyday-Planting Trees — named after Lo and Lin’s latest albums — concluded on April 19 after taking in Guangzhou, Nanling National Forest Park in northern Guangdong Province and Beijing. I was on the tour as Lo’s backing guitarist and mandolinist.
PHOTO: DAVID CHEN, TAIPEI TIMES
It was a sensitive time for Taiwanese musicians to be playing in China given the nationalist fervor stoked by protests in Tibet. The organizers in Beijing kept a low-profile as Lin is “a Taiwanese singer” and a past participant in social movements: Labor Exchange Band was well-known in Taiwan in the late 1990s and early 2000s for protesting against the construction of a dam that threatened the existence of Lin’s home village, Meinung (美濃), in Kaohsiung County.
Because his earlier work has an underground following in China, Lin performed a few Labor Exchange songs during each set.
The response was electrifying. At the start of a show at Peking University Hall in Beijing, many of the 240-strong audience cheered wildly and thundered applause as Lin played the first notes of the Labor Exchange’s My Old 125cc Motorcycle, a song about a farmer’s son who struggles to make a living in the city, and longs to return to rural life.
PHOTO: DAVID CHEN, TAIPEI TIMES
Lin taught the crowd how to count in Hakka for the call-and-response section of Night March of the Chrysanthemums, from the 2001 Labor Exchange album of the same name. Japanese guitarist Ken Ohtake (大竹研) and Lin then played songs from their latest album, Planting Trees (種樹).
Lo headlined the shows at Nanling and Guangzhou, and opened for Lin in Beijing.
At a show in a Guangzhou pub, Lo’s pristine voice held the audience in rapt attention throughout her entire set. She forged a connection with them early on with her quiet, bluesy rendition of Days of Rain (落水天), a traditional Hakka song from Guangdong Province. In contrast to Lin, whose singing is closely intertwined with his guitar arrangements, Lo’s voice is the focus of her songs.
PHOTO: DAVID CHEN, TAIPEI TIMES
Like Lin, Lo sings mostly in Hakka, which resonated more with audiences in southern China in contrast to Beijing, where there are fewer Hakka speakers. As well as the obvious linguistic and cultural affinities with southern China (one of our hosts in Guangzhou enthusiastically described himself as a “new Hakka”), the common themes that appear in both Lin and Lo’s music — nature, family, ethnic roots and societal change — have a broad appeal.
“Lin Sheng-xiang’s music tells us why people want to oppose the destruction of nature; Lo Si-rong’s music tells us why people should become closer to nature,” said Qiu Dali (邱大立), who writes on music for the Chinese Web site QQ.com and founded Yinxiang (印像), an alternative music publication in Guangzhou.
“Here in China, the farming culture has not reached such a high level as it has in Taiwan,” audience member Amanda Yu (于施洋) said after Lin recounted a story about organic farmers in Meinung.
The tour ended in Beijing with a public discussion and forum on Lin’s music and activism. Speaking to an audience of 40, mostly composed of music critics, academics and fans, Lin stressed that he did not “represent” the Meinung anti-dam movement, but rather merely played a role as one member of the community. As Lin put it, he was just a musician, there to “cheer everybody up.”
Nevertheless, many forum attendees commented on Lin’s approach towards engendering social change through music. Speaking of Lin’s songwriting, music critic and sound artist Yan Jun (顏峻) said: “I cannot hear any anger in his music, but it’s still very powerful.”
Perhaps one of the deepest impressions that Lin and Lo made on Chinese audiences was the intimate connection between their music and their ethnic roots. A forum attendee who declined to give her name, said: “Listening to these songs, they made me wonder … where I’m from. Perhaps I ought return to my homeland. It [their music] has made me realize that no matter where we come from, whether the countryside or the city, that is our homeland, and we each have our own [local] culture.”
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