Golden oldies never go out of fashion.
A CD featuring digitalized remastered original recordings of popular songs from the 1930s released by the Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs has proven to be a hit since its release on Saturday.
The CD was released in homage to late Taiwanese lyricist Lee Lin-chiu (李臨秋) on the 100th anniversary of his birth, which falls on Wednesday.
The 23 tracks of digitalized 1930s recordings — including nine written by Lee — come with a book recounting the history of the Taiwanese music industry in the 1930s and the stories behind the songs.
Born in 1909 in Taipei while Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule, Lee, along with many other Taiwanese musicians, such as composer Teng Yu-hsien (鄧雨賢) and lyricists Chen Chun-yu (陳君玉) and Chen Ta-ju (陳達儒), was worried that Taiwanese culture and the originality of Taiwanese music could disappear as most people were listening to popular Japanese music at the time. They therefore decided to make “Taiwan’s own popular music.”
Their attempt was successful — many people today consider the 1930s as the first golden age of Taiwanese popular music. Unfortunately, only about 200 of the more than 500 songs produced during that time survive today.
“It was a challenging task,” Taipei City Cultural Affairs Commissioner Lee Yong-ping (李永萍) said about the project to find the original recordings and to digitalize the music for release on CD.
“Many record collectors did not want to loan us the more than half-a-century old records that still have very good sound quality,” Lee Yong-ping said. “It was also quite a task to get the copyright issues straightened out, since most of the musicians have passed away.”
On the technical side, it was also the first attempt to digitalize music from decades-old records in Taiwan, she said.
But the efforts were not in vain — the CD proved to be a hit only a day after its release.
“A total of 2,000 copies were released yesterday [Saturday] and we’ve sold more than 800 of them so far,” Lin Li-wen (林麗雯), a staff member at the 228 Memorial Museum said yesterday.
“People who bought the CD are of different age groups — a lot of young people bought it for their elderly relatives or said they wanted to get the feeling of olden times,” Lin said.
The 228 Memorial Museum in Taipei is the only place where the CD is available at the moment.
As Lin spoke to the Taipei Times in her office, phone calls inquiring about the CD continued to flood in.
A concert will be held to honor Lee Lin-chiu at the 228 Peace Park in Taipei on Saturday at 7pm.
For information about the CD, contact Yu (余) at (02)2389-7228 ext. 26.
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) today issued a "tsunami watch" alert after a magnitude 8.7 earthquake struck off the Kamchatka Peninsula in northeastern Russia earlier in the morning. The quake struck off the east coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula at 7:25am (Taiwan time) at a depth of about 19km, the CWA said, citing figures from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The CWA's Seismological Center said preliminary assessments indicate that a tsunami could reach Taiwan's coastal areas by 1:18pm today. The CWA urged residents along the coast to stay alert and take necessary precautions as waves as high as 1m could hit the southeastern
FINAL COUNTDOWN: About 50,000 attended a pro-recall rally yesterday, while the KMT and the TPP plan to rally against the recall votes today Democracy activists, together with arts and education representatives, yesterday organized a motorcade, while thousands gathered on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei in the evening in support of tomorrow’s recall votes. Recall votes for 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and suspended Hsinchu City mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) are to be held tomorrow, while recall votes for seven other KMT lawmakers are scheduled for Aug. 23. The afternoon motorcade was led by the Spring Breeze Culture and Arts Foundation, the Tyzen Hsiao Foundation and the Friends of Lee Teng-hui Association, and was joined by delegates from the Taiwan Statebuilding Party and the Taiwan Solidarity
Instead of threatening tariffs on Taiwan-made chips, the US should try to reinforce cooperation with Taiwan on semiconductor development to take on challenges from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), a Taiwanese think tank said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose across-the-board import duties of 32 percent on Taiwan-made goods and levy a separate tariff on semiconductors, which Taiwan is hoping to avoid. The Research Institute for Democracy, Society, and Emerging Technology (DSET), a National Science and Technology Council think tank, said that US efforts should focus on containing China’s semiconductor rise rather than impairing Taiwan. “Without
The National Museum of Taiwan Literature is next month to hold an exhibition in Osaka, Japan, showcasing the rich and unique history of Taiwanese folklore and literature. The exhibition, which is to run from Aug. 10 to Aug. 20 at the city’s Central Public Hall, is part of the “We Taiwan” at Expo 2025 series, highlighting Taiwan’s cultural ties with the international community, National Museum of Taiwan Literature director Chen Ying-fang (陳瑩芳) said. Folklore and literature, among Taiwan’s richest cultural heritages, naturally deserve a central place in the global dialogue, Chen said. Taiwan’s folklore would be immediately apparent at the entrance of the
RSS