Serendipity of Sound-- 78 Collector Davide Lin

Taipei and Shanghai in the 1930s-one was the model colonial city of the Japanese empire, the other a treaty port occupied by numerous foreign powers. Yet, despite being under these very different regimes, the two cities remained closely tied in terms of popular music, with melodies flowing in both directions. What was going on?

Taipei's Dadaocheng area, once the center of trade, commerce, and entertainment for all of Taiwan, was extraordinarily vibrant and upbeat in terms of popular music back then. Who says old Taiwanese songs are all tragedy and sorrow?

As antique-record collector Davide Lin, himself merely 30 years of age, speaks to the packed house of curious listeners, an image of the music of those days-clearly belonging to Taiwan yet somehow very distant and unknown-gradually fades into view. Amidst the background instruments, the quick and light voice of Chun Chun, a famous performer in the Japanese occupation era, rings out: "Civilized society, a new era / Freedom of love should go without saying / Class barriers are so unjust / The marriage system must be transformed...." Though the song is tragically titled "Story of a Blood-Weeping Peach Blossom" (after a film of the same name), the plain-spoken and idealistic lyrics bring smiles to the faces of seasoned modern listeners.

Lin points out that among the popular songs of the Japanese era, a lot of numbers with romantic themes were very "progressive," incorporating unwed motherhood, freedom of choice in marriage, flirting, and urban night life. Rhythms were mainly waltz, foxtrot, or tango, making the songs very danceable, while the instruments used were a fascinating mix of Western and Chinese. These songs were expressions of the organic development of Taiwan's popular culture and of new feminist aspirations for personal autonomy in that era.

"78s turn at 78 revolutions per minute, and last only three-and-a-half minutes per side. Every time you listen you have to turn the crank 20 or 25 times, and you have to use a new needle or you will damage the record. It was a rare thing for people in those days to get a new record, so they would listen to the same one over and over a thousand times, yet never tire of hearing it. Do people today have that kind of patience?" For Lin, the complicated, virtually ritualistic listening process was a critical factor in making people focus on and throw themselves into the music.

The speaker on a box-mode gramophone was in the lower part, and you could adjust the sound volume by opening or closing the door.

Lin's first encounter with gramophones and old records was entirely "a beautiful mistake."

One day six years ago, while Lin was studying in the Department of Arts and Crafts at the Tung Fang Institute of Technology, a classmate brought in a record player and a vinyl record of the Beatles, which he played for the class. Lin was captivated, and, unable to tell the difference between vinyl disks and early 78s, went online to buy a record player but instead ended up with a reproduction gramophone costing NT$7000. The sound quality was poor, but he figured that this was just the way things were with antiques.

Fortunately, "Ku Zai," the owner of a record shop frequented by Lin on Zhongzheng Road in Tainan, had a genuine gramophone, allowing Lin to experience the flawless beauty of the voices and instruments-as immediate as a live performance-that a real gramophone can put out. Only then did he learn that the grade of the machine, the speed at which it is turned, and the needle can all affect the quality of the sound.

The first Japanese-era Taiwanese-language record that Lin ever bought was "Taipei March," a song sung by Chun Chun that describes the booming life of Dadaocheng. He admits that his first reaction was "bizarre singing, weird tune, bad sound quality." Later, after the grooves of the record had been cleaned of accumulated muck by a record collector friend, "you could feel the timbre of the vocals, and the rich depth of the orchestration really came through." He quickly fell in love with the "natural, unaffected" way of singing of old pop music, where "even if the voice breaks on a high note, it still has real character."

A record-lover friend, who specializes in preserving those girlishly plaintive songs from old Shanghai, loves to rib Lin for "becoming addicted," and "falling for the voice of an old granny." Lin confesses that "my ears have returned to 1930s Taiwan," as that is the only way to truly appreciate the beauty of the melodies of that time.

In Davide Lin's phone book is a "top secret" category of vendors he has run across while scouring flea markets from Taipei to Tainan to Kaohsiung. From time to time he calls these vendors to see what is going on. The secret to his personal network is: "Take the initiative to offer a price higher than the normal market price, because that's the only way the vendors will have a reason to spend time searching for stuff and will always contact you first when they find something good."

So far, Lin has collected more than 100 Taiwanese-language records. Documentary evidence shows that about 510 original Taiwanese records were released in the Japanese colonial period, many of which have completely disappeared, so his collection is obviously extremely precious and rare.

Lin analyzes the situation for collectors of old platters: When vinyl records arrived on the scene in the late 1950s, old records fell out of favor, and as people moved or renovated their houses, a lot of 78s were thrown out and ended up in the hands of second-hand dealers. Oddly enough, in the past many antiques shops or flea-market vendors didn't even want to handle old records, because they were fragile and had few takers, so they were often sold dirt cheap. In has only been in the last two or three years that the price of 78s has risen with the tide of nostalgia and retro fashion, and pre-war Taiwanese-language records, being so very rare, have jumped up to as much as NT$10,000 each.

Lin's collecting career has not only been a case of "winning by getting a head start," it has also been filled with "miraculous encounters." For example, a couple of years ago he got a damaged old record from a friend with the label giving its title as "Street Wanderer." After some meticulous restoration work, he played the record and discovered it to be a Taiwanese song released in 1934, and more than that, was (according to documentary records) the first ever banned song in Taiwanese history. (The reason given for banning it was that the lyrics-"Born in misfortune / How unfair is Fate! / Yet the rich are rich to the skies / While the poor have nothing to their name / Aiyo! Aiyo! / Out-of-work brothers...."-were too "complaining.") For a long time researchers, who had never seen an actual copy of the platter, had misrepresented the song's name as "Out-of-Work Brothers." Now that a genuine copy has been unearthed, the correct title has been restored.

In early 2008, Lin happened to buy a 1932 recording of the Taiwanese-language pop tune "Moonlight Stroll" recorded as a duet by vocalist Ke Mingzhu and musician Zhang Fuxing. Because of the absence of other documentary evidence, Lin had to peruse the newspapers of the time to find out more, and found an article entitled "Female Vocalist with a Bright Future: Ke Mingzhu." After reading it, he was struck by the sudden inspiration to visit the singer in person, and through contacts among Ke's old fellow churchgoers, he finally contacted her children, who now live in the US.

After several months, five daughters of the Ke family, all over 50 themselves, had gathered before the gramophone to hear their mother's voice. They were deeply moved and their eyes filled with tears-who would have thought that a year after their mother had passed away, they would have such an opportunity to be reminded of the past?

Having been touched by the voices of a generation long past, Lin himself cannot help but dip into the river of nostalgia. "I would really love to get in a time machine and go back and play these records for my grandmother to hear." Sadly, his grandmother passed away when he was only in junior high school, and he can only hope that the public performance of his collection will bring back fond memories for many other people.

Lin, who almost never buys or listens to modern CDs, spends a lot of his days poring over Japanese-era newspapers and magazines looking for first-hand information, and stays in regular contact with other collectors. Two years ago he set up his own blog in order to rescue "the symphony of history" from obscurity.

Like a radio DJ, he has assigned himself the task of "putting out one more old song [on the site] late every Friday night." Although his use of simple MP3 recording is somewhat less than cutting-edge, he has given many people a whole new listening experience. Over the last two years, thanks to the power of Internet broadcasting, hundreds of people a day have visited his site, with over 340,000 total hits from listeners not only in Taiwan but overseas as well.

"Old records are my teachers, and through them I can see the interactions of music, literature, arts, and theater in history, so that the culture of the time, which was really alive and flourishing, comes to life again." For Davide Lin, research and publishing are things he can take or leave; the only thing he really wants to get across for sure is that old 78s are like kaleidoscopes, sure to bring delight and surprise with each turn.