Are the Golden Melody Awards just a night of backslapping and self-aggrandizement for the music industry or do they encourage innovation and Taiwanese creativity? Four musicians, music critics and industry insiders give their verdicts.Yeh Yun-ping (葉雲平), is a music critic and past Golden Melody Awards jury member.
Taipei Times: What do you think of the Awards' language-based categories?
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Yeh Yun-ping: They're backward. The language categories are unique among the world's music awards. I can understand why the system was adopted a long time ago, because back then there weren't many different genres. But I believe now it's time to make a change as there's greater diversity in music. Some would argue that music nowadays is all hybrid, which makes it nearly impossible to tell which style an album belongs to. If that's the case, we could have more awards for singles rather than albums.
TT: What could be done to improve the Golden Melody Awards?
PHOTO COURTESY OF INTERVIEWEES
YY: The Golden Melody Awards lack a clear direction and guidelines for what the event wants to encourage. Each year [the emphasis] differs depending on the jury members' tastes. That's why it's impossible to make predictions and why the media are always surprised at the results. This is one of the problems with the event being funded by the government. The Best Composer and Best Lyricist categories should be scraped. No other music awards in the industry use this classification. We already have the Best Song award, so why keep the other two gongs?Elaine Hsiung (熊儒賢), is the founder and director of Wild Fire Music (野火樂集). She has worked in the music industry for more than 20 years.
Taipei Times: Why are the Golden Melody Awards important?
PHOTO COURTESY OF INTERVIEWEES
Elaine Hsiung: The event's biggest value is to encourage local musicians and professionals as well as industry-related workers. But the Golden Melody Awards are restricted by a bureaucratic mindset that is devoid of creativity. The award categories make it seem like there are only producers, composers and lyricists working in the industry. What about art designers, photographers and album planners? There are too many unsung heroes and heroines, and too many important aspects of the industry are overlooked.
TT: Are the Golden Melody Awards keeping up with developments in the music industry?
EH: That's the Golden Melody Awards' biggest problem. In the Internet age, you should encourage and support new forms of music content and delivery. If you continue limiting yourself to the shrinking offline market, you'll end up backslapping those who don't embrace innovation.Jeannie Chen (陳冠伶) has 15 years of experience playing alternative music in bands such as Braces (牙套) and Peppermint (薄荷葉). Now she's part of the pop manufacturing industry by day and bassist of 88 Balaz (88顆芭樂籽) by night.
Taipei Times: Who's your money on?
Jeannie Chen: Chalaw Passiwali is great [nominated for Best Aboriginal Album and best Aboriginal singer]. For the mainstream, Jay Chou's music is nice.
TT: Who do you think should win the Best Female/Male Singer awards?
JC: Hsiao Huang-chi (蕭煌奇) in Best Hakka Singer Award. The reason: though he can't see, he sings the most beautiful notes in the dark.
TT: What's wrong with the Golden Melody Awards?
JC: The awards are populated by too many foreign pop idols. Also, it's bizarre to use language categorization for the awards. Say if the same thing applied to China, then you'd get something like the best Beijing singer and best Sichuan singer, and so on.
TT: If you were in charge of the awards, what changes would you make?
JC: I would set a rule that the competition would only be open to musicians and singers who had sold more than 20,000 copies of their albums ... Then there should be a singing contest. Each nominee would go head-to-head.
TT: What categories would you like to see added to the awards?
JC: Theater music. We have the Golden Horse Awards that cover movie soundtracks and the Golden Melody Awards covers music in general. Musicians who work in theater should have their own awards so that they are motivated to make more original work.Chang Jui-chuan (張睿銓), is a lecturer in the English department of National Chengchi University (國立政治大學) and a hip-hop artist who raps about political issues.
Taipei Times: What's the point of the Golden Melody Awards?
Chang Jui-chuan: To be honest, I have no expectations for Golden Melody Awards and today's pop music in Taiwan. The general public doesn't believe that pop music can be serious and address important social issues. It's just entertainment. Secondly, people who make pop music in Taiwan don't believe they have a responsibility to make a difference or change society through their work. Music is entertainment or, worse, just a way to make money. You may think I'm being idealistic, but looking back to the US in 1960s you can see how pop music was an essential part of a cultural movement that turned society upside down. Forty years later, and tens of thousand of kilometers away, that legacy endures. Such is the power of pop music. Golden Melody Awards is just a backslapping fest. Of course, occasionally we have great work by people like Chthonic (閃靈), Joy Topper (豬頭皮), Pur-dur (陳建年) and Kou Chou Ching (拷秋勤). But the are few and far between.
TT: Are Golden Melody Awards more than just a product of a commercial process?
CJ: It doesn't matter if Golden Melody Awards are just a product of a commercial process or not. Music needs markets to survive. Even I want a record label to promote my music and ideas. The difference is whether or not you are aware that the production of music or cultural artifacts carries social responsibilities. Mainstream music and film awards in the US pay tribute to people with social convictions like Bob Dylan, Rage Against the Machine and Michael Moore. That doesn't happen in Taiwan.
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