It should be no surprise that when a musician encounters a new language, they hear something akin to music.
At least that’s how it is for jazz musician Martijn Vanbuel, who has recently been composing songs inspired by the sounds of Mandarin and written Chinese.
For several years, the Taipei-based Belgian expat has served as bassist of the jazz ensemble Sizhukong (絲竹空), and for the group’s latest project, he is assuming a role as musical director for a set of concerts that are being held tonight and tomorrow at the Red House Theater (西門紅樓).
Photo courtesy of Sizhukong
The concert program, entitled Tongue Twisters, features Vanbuel’s new compositions, as well as several pieces by bandleader and pianist Peng Yu-wen (彭郁雯).
Sizhukong, a Golden Melody Award winner, is best known for using jazz to interpret traditional Chinese music. This time around, though, the group will be taking a different angle by exploring how the Chinese language translates into jazz.
Vanbuel says as a foreigner who learned Mandarin after arriving in Taiwan in 2006, he saw a musicality in the language that a native speaker might not necessarily see. He says several of his compositions are inspired by the melodic qualities of spoken Mandarin and its tones.
But it’s not just melody that inspired him. “Chinese sounds, to me, they might resemble instruments, like the way you hit a cymbal or a drum,” Vanbuel said in an interview with Taipei Times earlier this week.
Running with that idea, he came up with the song Ting Bu Dong (聽不懂, or “I don’t understand”). When Vanbuel hears this phrase, he says he hears the sound of different instruments. “Ting” reminds him of the sound of a triangle; “bu” sounds like a high-pitched tom-tom you find in a drum kit; and “dong” rings like the boomier-sounding floor-tom drum. This number is likely to be one of the more unusual-sounding compositions, as the members of Sizhukong won’t be playing their instruments. Instead, they will be beat-boxing.
Vanbuel practiced writing Chinese characters to flesh out another composition, You Wen Xi Zi (遊文戲字), the title of which is a play on the Mandarin words for “game” (遊戲) and “written word” (文字), which is also the Chinese title of the concert program this weekend.
“I wrote the words, and I listened to the rhythm of the strokes, and I made melodies out of those rhythms,” he said.
Sizhukong dubbed the concert program Tongue Twisters in reference to one composition in which Vanbuel created a melody out of a tongue twister often heard in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese). He described the piece as “humorous and abstract at the same time.”
In addition to the wordplay, concertgoers will also get a taste of Mandarin’s poetic side. Vocalist Tsai Wen-hui (蔡雯慧) will sing a new arrangement of The Missing Link (失落的環節), a composition that Vanbuel wrote in collaboration with lyricist Wu Ching (吳青). The song is part of the album of the same name by Vanbuel’s own group Orbit Folks (世界軌跡), which earned a Golden Melody Award earlier this year for best crossover music album.
Sizhukong’s standard lineup of musicians plays a mix of Western and Chinese instruments. This weekend’s concerts will be different as they emphasize the latter, with the erhu (二胡), the dulcimer-like yangqin (揚琴) and the guzheng (古箏, Chinese zither) among the sounds in the mix.
The concerts will also have a strong visual element, with animations and lighting created by multimedia artist Blaire Ko (柯智豪).
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In the aftermath of the 2020 general elections the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had crushed them in a second landslide in a row, with their presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) winning more votes than any in Taiwan’s history. The KMT did pick up three legislative seats, but the DPP retained an outright majority. To take responsibility for that catastrophic loss, as is customary, party chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) resigned. This would mark the end of an era of how the party operated and the beginning of a new effort at reform, first under