Former teacher wants to localize music

Taipei Times: What prompted you to give up Western music and devote yourself to the study of Taiwanese culture?

Wang Chen-yi (王振義): I believe that culture must be based on ethnicity or nationality. In fact, culture is definitely not a world language. That is to say, every nation or ethnic group has its own set of values and there's no set that is right or wrong.

Unlike science or technology in which 2 plus 2 is always 4, there is no definite answer for art and culture.

It's wrong to think that our art and culture should be Westernized just because we also seek advanced technology. Art and culture belong to us. We should feel comfortable with our own art and culture and should be able to express our emotions and ideals through them.

Taiwan has adopted the principles of Western music for so long that we often look at our own culture with a Western point of view. As a result, we view our local music or culture as holding little value. Actually, if we could try to look at Western culture with our traditional views, we might dislike it as well.

Moreover, every culture has its own roots. Without those roots, the culture could not prosper. It is not possible to develop our own culture with foreign thoughts and values. Only when we are able to transform and localize the outside information can our own culture develop.

I was teaching music in Tainan in the late 1970s when Taiwan left the UN.

At that time, many people, including me, started to re-examine the influence of Western culture and remember our local culture.

With this change of mindset, I realized that what I taught did not match what I believed, so I quit my job and decided to do something for the good of Taiwanese culture.

TT: Traditionally, how has local music -- or Taiwanese music -- been influenced by Taiwanese culture?

Wang: Taiwanese culture is the culture of common people. It blends into people's daily lives and since nobody has extracted its value and spirit from society, it lacks the theoretical structure often developed by intellectuals.

In order to develop our local culture, we should first extract its essence from people's daily lives and build the theories of Taiwanese culture upon it.

As I studied the relationship between language and culture over 20 years, I discovered that songs of all nations or ethnic groups are based on their languages.

In other words, singing is the "musicalization" of language and language in itself has musicality.

Therefore, if a lyric and melody blends well, the beauty of both the language and the music will be manifested.

In the past, the Taiwanese language has also been musicalized into ballads and songs. The songs are about people's daily lives such as slaughtering pigs, street vending or seeking advice at the temples.

The songs tell stories and the melodies match the intonations of the words.

But during recent years, we have widely adopted Western music into our society and filled Western melodies with Taiwanese or Mandarin lyrics, which has damaged the beauty and harmony of both the language and the music.

Such music has already drifted off the proper course of culture development, in which the modern must be rooted in tradition.

TT: Are you saying that Taiwanese opera is the heart of Taiwanese culture because language is one of the most important elements of culture and it has played an important part in Taiwanese traditional songs and ballads?