In Taiwan’s folk music scene there are few musicians as storied as Kimbo Hu (胡德夫), who performs at Riverside Live House in Taipei tonight.
The 59-year-old singer will oblige the audience with a few of the songs that cemented his reputation as a political activist and earned him the title “the father of folk music.” Expect to hear his classic tune Standing On My Land, a bluesy number full of rousing Aboriginal chants in the chorus.
Hu, a Puyuma Aboriginal from the Taitung area, got his start singing in Taipei coffeehouses during the 1970s, when Western folk music was all the rage on college campuses. He gained nationwide fame for his rendition of Lee Shuang-tze’s (李雙澤) ballad Formosa (美麗島) but was blacklisted from radio and TV by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which at the time was wary of anything remotely anti-government.
A tireless campaigner for Aboriginal rights throughout the 1980s, Hu retired from the spotlight for much of the 1990s because of illness. He made a comeback in the early noughties, and recorded his first full-length album in 2005, In a Flash, which contained many of his signature songs and garnered several Golden Melody Awards.
But tonight’s show will be more than a mere revisiting of the past. Hu, who usually performs solo on piano, is trying something new: playing with a young backing band.
He has called upon Wild Fire Music (野火樂集), a record label and collective of mostly 30-something Aboriginal musicians, to help out. Hu’s band includes guitarist Gelresai (陳世川), bassist Wang Chi-san (王繼三), and keyboardist and producer Cheng Chieh-ren (鄭捷任), who also serves as band director.
Cheng says the band’s set includes several folk classics chosen by Hu and sung in English, as well as a few songs from one of Hu’s past projects, Blacklist Studio (黑名單工作室).
Even though Hu and members of Wild Fire Music are old friends and have performed together before, tonight’s show is intended to mark the start of a more long-term collaboration, Cheng said.
Following Hu’s set will be a performance from another Wild Fire-affiliated group, Beautiful Haiyan (美麗心民謠), which consists of vocalists Leo Chen (陳永龍), Hsiao Mei (小美), Linnga (小鳳), Tipus (小俐) and Wang Yu-hsiu (汪裕修). Their set will cover a range of songs, from traditional Puyuma numbers to contemporary Aboriginal songs sung in Mandarin.
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