Here we are 20 years later. In June 2015 Li Chien-fu brought together 68 singers including Jonathan Lee, Michelle Pan, and Chyi Yu for shows at both the Taipei and Kaohsiung arenas. “Sing Another Verse—The Campus Folk Music Movement at 40” attracted a total audience of 30,000, reviving nostalgia for 1970s campus folk songs.
Like Taiwan Panorama, the campus folk song movement has a history of four decades. Tao Hsiao-ching, the movement’s Mother Hen, explains that this wave of creativity arose in reaction to the vapidity of Mandarin songs back then. With consciousness raised about “having your own voice,” it unleashed new creative powers.
“Cloud Gate Dance Theatre was founded a year earlier than us, and the Lanlin Theatre Troupe came a year later. At that point, economic and social development was really moving fast, and the arts showed great creative ferment, with young people writing songs that truly belonged to them. I was overjoyed.”
From the beginning, Tao encouraged creativity on her radio show, receiving musical submissions from amateurs in locales across the island. After making her selections, she’d broadcast her regularly scheduled show and then would get enthusiastic feedback from listeners.
Some people could write music, others could sing, and with her radio show serving as a platform for dissemination, Tao pulled strings in the middle, helping music lovers to build cooperative channels. She provided a means for creative people in the field to inspire one another.
She also passed along listeners’ feedback to the artists, helping them to further hone their skills. Thus the campus folk song movement in Taiwan was launched.
The movement hit Taiwan’s recording industry like a whirlwind, providing an energy that it used to achieve dominance in Chinese-language pop. Considering how popular those campus folk songs remain today, the genre is sure to have a bright future in decades to come.
I’ve seen the latest issue and I like it a lot.
In this era when information flies around
helter-skelter on the Internet,
I rejoice that refined and cultured media outlets
such as Taiwan Panorama still remain!
—Tao Hsiao-ching
Important figures from the campus folksong movement would gather at Tao’s home to discuss musical creation. Many went on to become important recording industry figures.
The campus folksong movement reflected the creative ferment in Taiwan society of the era. That energy helped push the island’s recording industry to ever greater heights in the years to come. The photo shows a record store at Guanghua Market, Taipei.
