It has been 20 years since the cafe that doubles as a club for folk music, Witch House (女巫店), opened in a small alley across the street from National Taiwan University, but the talents that have incubated there include major stars that now perform in stadiums as well as slews of prize winners at the Golden Melody Awards, Taiwan’s version of the Grammys. Though the cozy wooden interior fits less than 100 people, Witch House has been an early proving ground for singers like Sandee Chan (陳珊妮),Cheer Chen (陳綺貞) and Deserts Chang (張懸, now known as An Pu, 安溥) as well as the band Sodagreen (蘇打綠), who have all gone on to major stardom.
The small live house, which has a lesbian bookstore on the second floor, has also become more or less synonymous with Taiwan’s scenes for the folk music of Taiwan’s aborigines, Hakka people and other ethnic minorities as well as independent singer-songwriters, especially female singers. For the last two decades, it would be no exaggeration to say that Witch House has been the single epicenter of Taipei’s indie folk movements. In supporting this quilt of musical genres, no other venue has even come close.
To celebrate this 20 year milestone, Witch House will hold a music festival next weekend, bringing back the musicians that have shared in its history. The festival will be held outdoors in some high mountain grassy lawns near New Taipei City’s Wulai District (烏來), about 40 minutes south of Taipei, with around 90 acts performing on four stages over three days. Genres range from folk to pop to rock, and performers will include all the stars mentioned at the top (Sodagreen lead singer Qing-feng (青峰) will play a special solo set) as well as top aboriginal talents Panai, Suming, Totem (圖騰), Takanow and many others.
Photo courtesy of witch house
“We’re doing this event completely independently, without any government support,” says Witch House’s Gu Meng-ju (顧孟儒). “We want to go back to what it was like 20 years ago, when everything was much more free. If you knew some singers, you could just ask them to come play, and everything was very easy.”
When Witch House opened its doors in 1996, Taiwan’s music industry was in ascendance, creating pop stars through singing competitions and television variety shows. Pop singer Chang Hui-mei (張惠妹), also known as A-mei (阿妹), had just put out her first album and was preparing to dominate the Mando-pop world.
It was also eight years since the end of martial law, and bands and singers who didn’t fit into the commercial framework were just starting to form the early institutions of Taiwan’s independent music scene.
The first Spring Scream music festival had just been held in 1995, and a college rock ‘n’ roll club started the first Formoz Festival (野台開唱) in Taipei later the same year. A newspaper called POTS (破報) for reporting on arts, music and left-wing political movements had just begun publication, and bands were looking for places to play outside of pubs where they’d be expected to cover Taiwanese pop or Western classic rock.
At that time, Witch House was not the only humble establishment to put some microphones in a corner and make room for the new breed of “independent musicians,” but it has survived the longest. Supporting folk music, indigenous music and feminist issues, it has also had the clearest focus.
Looking back, Gu finds “the land” of Taiwan to be an important thread tying these musicians together. “People have such a deep relationship to the land here, and this applies to singers too, whether they are aboriginal or Hokkien or Hakka. This is something that they deeply express in music.”
Gu recalls a number of landmark events, including the first ever gig by Cheer Chen in 1997, who now plays to thousands when she tours Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and China. Sandee Chan, another budding star who was a couple years older, “was already singing regularly at Witch House. But one night she had to cancel, so we let Cheer have the show,” says Gu.
“Even now, [Cheer] still comes back and performs sometime, and when she comes in, it’s like she goes back to being the girl who walked in with her guitar and just started playing some songs she wrote. All of those other things fall away.”
Then there are groups like the Hohak Band (好客樂隊), who won a Golden Melody Award for best Hakka album of 2006 by taking traditional instruments and infusing hundred year old mountain songs with contemporary, almost rock’n’roll sensibility.
“Later on, they went back to farming,” says Gu. “Being up in the mountains with the land was something that was always on their mind, and eventually they went back to plow the fields.”
But if one thing is clear, the trajectories of the musicians and movements that have come out of Witch House are still developing.
After 20 years, Gu says, “We just think it’s a good time to get everyone back together and see if we can rediscover that indie spirit we started out with.”
■ The 20th Anniversary Witch Festival will be held Dec. 18 to Dec. 20, from 11am to 9pm daily at the Xindian Wenshan Farm (新店文山農場), 100 Huzinei Rd, Xindian District, New Taipei City ( 新北市新店區湖子內路100號). Tickets are NT$1,400 per day or NT$4,200 for three days. For more info, check: festival.witchhouse.org
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