A new TV series was launched Monday to showcase the original music of Taiwanese artists and bands or those active in the nation’s music scene.
The 60-episode series, titled The Next Big Thing (見證大團), will feature 45 singer-songwriters and bands performing a total of 180 of their songs, according to StreetVoice.com, the nation’s largest online music publishing platform, which produced the program.
Among the artists and bands to be featured are singer-songwriter William Wei (韋禮安), rap artist MC HotDog, reggae-rock band Matzka, rock bands Tizzy Bac and The Chairman, and Singaporean singer-songwriter Tanya Chua (蔡健雅), the producers said.
Photo: Sung Chih-hsiung, Taipei Times
The series, which had a budget of NT$26 million (US$869,300), was filmed over a period of a year and used seven high-definition cameras and 14 different stage sets, the producers said.
StreetVoice.com was set up in 2006 and currently has 450,000 users and a collection of more than 120,000 original songs.
Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) called the singer-songwriters and bands the “nation’s treasures” and said the ministry hoped that the TV series could bring the music of independent artists and bands into the mainstream.
Lung, whose ministry provided a NT$12 million grant to help produce the series, said Taiwan must pay attention to three things to project its cultural and national power.
“The first is original work. The second is original work. The third is original work,” she said.
Meanwhile, “King of Rock” Wu Bai (伍佰) called Taiwan “the Hollywood of the Chinese-language music world” and said he was very excited to learn about the TV program, because there are about 4,000 bands in Taiwan, but no platforms for them to get exposure.
The series of half-hour shows started broadcast on Monday on Azio TV, where they will be aired at 12:30am every Monday to Friday, and will be broadcast on NextTV at 12am every Saturday and Sunday, starting this Saturday.
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