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).
Climate change, political headwinds and diverging market dynamics around the world have pushed coffee prices to fresh records, jacking up the cost of your everyday brew or a barista’s signature macchiato. While the current hot streak may calm down in the coming months, experts and industry insiders expect volatility will remain the watchword, giving little visibility for producers — two-thirds of whom farm parcels of less than one hectare. METEORIC RISE The price of arabica beans listed in New York surged by 90 percent last year, smashing on Dec. 10 a record dating from 1977 — US$3.48 per pound. Robusta prices have
A dozen excited 10-year-olds are bouncing in their chairs. The small classroom’s walls are lined with racks of wetsuits and water equipment, and decorated with posters of turtles. But the students’ eyes are trained on their teacher, Tseng Ching-ming, describing the currents and sea conditions at nearby Banana Bay, where they’ll soon be going. “Today you have one mission: to take off your equipment and float in the water,” he says. Some of the kids grin, nervously. They don’t know it, but the students from Kenting-Eluan elementary school on Taiwan’s southernmost point, are rare among their peers and predecessors. Despite most of
The resignation of Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) co-founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) as party chair on Jan. 1 has led to an interesting battle between two leading party figures, Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) and Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如). For years the party has been a one-man show, but with Ko being held incommunicado while on trial for corruption, the new chair’s leadership could be make or break for the young party. Not only are the two very different in style, their backgrounds are very different. Tsai is a co-founder of the TPP and has been with Ko from the very beginning. Huang has
Nine Taiwanese nervously stand on an observation platform at Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport. It’s 9:20am on March 27, 1968, and they are awaiting the arrival of Liu Wen-ching (柳文卿), who is about to be deported back to Taiwan where he faces possible execution for his independence activities. As he is removed from a minibus, a tenth activist, Dai Tian-chao (戴天昭), jumps out of his hiding place and attacks the immigration officials — the nine other activists in tow — while urging Liu to make a run for it. But he’s pinned to the ground. Amid the commotion, Liu tries to
RSS