Is this new music just a fad? Or will its influence on the Taiwan pop music scene grow and carry Taiwan's pop music into a new era?
On the afternoon of March 3rd, the small Yuanshan Club was packed full of major figures in the Taiwan music business, singers, producers and a host of cameras for the 1st Taiwan Music People Exchange Association Top Ten Best Albums and Songs Awards ceremony. Although this ceremony was no grander than other major awards ceremonies in Taiwan or Hong Kong, because the winners were all chosen by music industry professionals, many people in the music business said excitedly that Taiwan finally has its own Grammys.
The winning songs included last year's best sellers like "Sister" by A-Mei, "Faye Wong" by Faye Wong and Wu Bai's "Summer Night Wind" live album. What was exciting to people in the music business was that the diverse music of new alternative artists like Chang Chen-yueh, Faith Yang, Luan Tan, The King of Kinmen and Lee Ping-hui, and David Tao was also recognized, which illustrated the vitality of the pop music scene in Taiwan.
When "new age person" Chang Chen-yueh, who sings "Boring Day" as if he doesn't care about anything, received his award he said, "I haven't received an award since 5th grade." When disabled performers The King of Kinmen and Lee Ping-hui received their awards from the shaking Parkinson's Disease-stricken hands of Taiwan music maestro Lee Tai-hsiang, The King of Kinmen said, "Our producer Chen Ming-chang played this song to many different companies but no-one was interested."
In actual fact, Wu Bai, Chen Ming-chang and Will Lin, these creative artists who started off in bands and have been involved in alternative music for years, and the new generation of non-mainstream artists, like Chang Chen-yueh, Shunza and Luan Tan, all had good results last year. In addition to receiving the Music People Exchange Association awards, they were also named by China Times as being in the top ten albums of 1997 and performed well against mainstream artists in the charts.
"Big artists have seen their influence decline by 50%," and "The old ways of the music business no longer work," are sentiments that have been widely heard in the industry. Many Taiwanese and Hong Kong pop idols have seen their appeal wane. Some artists whose success was built on talent, like "invincible" Stella Chang, were still able to sell over 100,000 copies of their latest album. However, this figure was well down on the several hundred thousand that they could confidently expect before.
Does alternative music really hold sway?
With non-mainstream artists finding success in the market, some people have said that there is a trend towards the dominance of "alternative" music in Taiwan that follows earlier trends in music in the UK and the US! Some people have also said that "Wu Bai has become mainstream," since his success. Faith Yang sings about love and breaking up. Are these songs non-mainstream? Where is the line between mainstream and non-mainstream? How do we judge the difference between convention and rebellion?
Looking back over the development of music in the West perhaps can help clear up some specious arguments. In Western society, "underground" or "alternative" are words which are often used alternately to describe a thing as it changes with the times and becomes difficult to define. US music critic Tom Hibbert explains "underground" as having originated in the 1960s in anti-establishment culture and says it describes the use of music or art to protest against existing culture and commercial values. At the peak of hippie culture in the late 1960s, "underground" was often used to describe the different communication methods of music.
The Punk Rock movement turned existing culture and the commercial value system upside down in the mid-1970s. Punk was against the increasing commercialization, excessive "glam" and perceived loss of vitality of rock music since the late 1960s. It used simple instruments to produce a super fast-paced, but basically simple sound. The Sex Pistols were the most influential group in the movement. Their frenzied stage performances, coarse language and wildly unconventional appearance caused a storm of protest, and no record companies were interested to begin with. But in a UK where the economy was in recession and unemployment was growing, they hit a chord with the young, and punk became a new and unstoppable music force.
Punk turned the UK's mainstream music market on its head. It was followed by the rise of new musical styles which went on to form the New Music of the 1980s and a situation where numerous bands were vying for attention.
Pioneering work tough going
This pop music revolution that affected the US and Japan also came to Taiwan seven or eight years ago.
In 1986, Jen Chiang-ta, two other young people who worked in record companies and a reporter were dissatisfied with the commercially-oriented music environment of the time so they organized the Wax Club, bought Crystal Records and began to distribute "indie" music from overseas. They played UK and US post-punk music on campuses, in pubs and in record shops. They also used meetings and a magazine to focus on topics such as racism, homosexuality and the working class. In contrast to the popular music scene where the norm was sentiment and love, they tried to teach fans that music should be critical of the current situation and care about society.
Activities which were first intended to disseminate information gradually attracted more people with similar tastes. This group, with Crystal Records at the center, were no longer just satisfied with enjoying foreign music, they were determined to create new music for Taiwan.
Concrete actions followed, including organizing the Taipei New Music Festival for four years. Artists were nurtured, new locally-flavored albums were made and the Rocker monthly magazine was published.
From 1987 to 1990, the artists and groups who performed at the Taipei New Music Festival included Blacklist Workshop, Chen Ming-chang, Lim Giung, Jutoupi, Chao Yi-hao and Wu Bai. The founder of Crystal Records, Irene Rotten, has pointed out in an article that these activities received no media attention at the time. In the beginning, they only had a few people watch when they played on college campuses but, after they built up a reputation over several years, by the 4th festival the area in front of the university front gate where they played was packed, even though it was a stormy night. Some students even voluntarily covered Chen Ming-chang with their umbrellas.
Their songs were also put on record. With Crystal's small capital operations, a completely different approach to that used in the mainstream record business was adopted. They used basic recording methods, like recording during live concerts, to bring down production costs. Live albums by Chen Ming-chang and Chu Yue-hsin (Jutoupi) were all recorded at a cost of only a few thousand New Taiwan dollars.
Only having limited stock, they didn't use the same approach as the conventional record companies, who sought to get their records on as many shelves as possible and judged success or failure in just three months. They used a long term, selected-outlet strategy. They also used communication with small groups, for example through music festivals and campus concerts and promotion through Rocker, to carve an alternative path in a market where big spending was the existing rule of the game to survive.
They struggled to keep artists free from commercial control and offer an autonomous environment in which they could be creative. Great results were achieved in this respect. The Blacklist Workshop's "Crazy Song" was a bold political satire. Chen Ming-chang began to focus attention on Taiwan's working- class culture, and Chao Yi-hao sang about sex and suicide in songs like "Getting Myself Out." These subjects were very "subversive" and the music was very different compared to music popular at the time. For example, "Fool and Lies" was punk rock. "Opera of the Ants" combined Taiwanese Opera with rock. Nan bei guan (a traditional style of Chinese music) was combined with synthesizer music in "A Film in the Afternoon." These are only a few examples of the experimental styles that were around at the time which changed the face of pop music creativity.
Critically acclaimed, but not bought
Looking back, these songs still appeal. At the time, however, while they won the praise of a few figures in the art community and in the intelligentsia, the response from the public was very limited. The rock/Taiwanese opera "Opera of the Ants" went on a tour of night markets around Taiwan, with Chien Yuan-hsin and Will Lin competing against the noise of the market traders selling their wares. Some people even thought they were part of a funeral. Once they even were threatened with a helping of pig manure by the market caretaker if they didn't "move on."
Chen's songs, which deliberately portrayed low-life characters like prostitutes, traveling players and fishmongers, were rich in terms of folk character, but they only won popularity in the ranks of people interested in local culture, and anti-establishment intellectuals. They failed to spark off a following in the ranks of the lower-class people featured in the songs. They came nowhere near the success of his recent song "Wandering Down to Tanshui."
In 1991, the Taipei New Music Festival and Rocker died after struggling on for several years. It seemed as if this was the end for new music in Taiwan, but actually there was still enough life to form a new wave.
In the early 1990s, the members of Double X who had cut their teeth in the Taipei New Music Festival opened up a venue for live shows-Woodentop. Following this, Man Dog and Ant and Rock HQ also opened, offering a place where a new generation of young groups that stressed creativity like Assassin, Skin, Meat and Bones and Intuition, could perform regularly. In addition to attracting the friends of the performers, they created a following in the ranks of high school and university students.
Chang Yu-chang said that although these groups were not as committed to "Taiwan Totem" and "Subversion Consciousness" as the Blacklist Workshop and Chen Ming-chang, they had very direct stage relations with audiences, which showed that pop music dissemination did not need to rely on the mass media and that an alternative culture to that which existed could be developed.
Wu Bai cyclone
Looking back at Wu Bai in 1995, perhaps this reflects the growth and vitality of pub culture at the time. Wu Bai, whose real name is Wu Chun-lin, first started performing with his group China Blue in Sleeping Earth, a pub popular with journalists and members of the artistic community. The mainstay of his earlier shows was songs from his first album that was issued by Crystal-"Loving Someone is a Happy Thing" and songs from the film "Dust of Angels."
His powerful guitar playing and rough voice were enjoyed by the audiences in the pub. Music critic Weng Chia-ming, who regularly went to see the show at the time, said that it seemed as if Wu Bai's Taiwanese songs were best received. He remembered that every time he sang "Su Lan's Getting Married" he would put on a show of flashy guitar playing with a beer bottle or glass which would be greeted with enthusiastic screams and clapping from the audience. Bobby Chen and Huang Lien-yu's group was one of those that also played there.
These two groups, the performances of which were reminiscent of performing troupes with their energetic dancing and singing, would receive towels thrown from the crowd to wipe away the sweat, while other members of the audience danced to their hearts' content below the stage. They would often spontaneously perform rock versions of traditional Taiwanese songs, both for their own pleasure and to please the audience.
Later Sleeping Earth closed and Wu Bai moved onto Live A-Go-Go, a more formal venue. After a few years of reputation building, his fan base expanded to include university students, and "Friday with Wu Bai" became an unmissable weekly event for a large group of people. Then, Wu Bai was signed up by Magic Stone records, which had originally focused on nurturing mainland Chinese bands. They issued his second album "Wanderer's Love Song." This used a commercial record marketing strategy, with the record appearing in record stores large and small, and convenience stores. However, sales were not too impressive.
After issuing the album, China Blue didn't make TV appearances but played live all over Taiwan in pubs, colleges and even on river banks and outside temples. His shows usually had no special guests and no interruptions. They were just all-out, sweaty, one-song-after-another shows for two hours which would whip up the swaying crowds below to a frenzy.
"Wu Bai wins people's hearts when he performs because he gives of himself for all the time he is on stage" said the president of Magic Stone, Landy Chang. Even if an audience only numbered a few hundred, nothing compared to the millions that could be reached by TV cabaret show appearances, they would be moved by his music and become loyal fans.
This stage presence finally received its rewards with the release of the "Wasting Youth -Wu Bai Live" album in 1997, which sold 300,000 copies and marked a new milestone in his career.
"After developing for many years and accumulating sufficient resources and fans, underground music formed a musical path between that of minority and mainstream music and then moved into the commercial market to become one of the mainstream types of music," wrote Lin Yi-ling in an article on the development path of Western underground music-"The Reality and Confusion of Mainstream and Non-Mainstream Music." Wu Bai's success also shows that the same type of evolution has occurred in Taiwan.
Multiple music styles
"By the mid-1990s, the post-martial-law generation had become the main consumers of pop music," says Landy Chang. These young people, who belong to the so-called "Generation Y," grew up in a time of unprecedented information openness. Restrictions were lifted on newspapers, and the numbers of papers multiplied. These dedicated large amounts of space to introducing alternative music from overseas and Taiwan. Then, several dozen cable TV channels were added and foreign music videos flooded in. "When the public turned on the TV they saw foreign information and music from around the world and their needs changed." They would no longer be satisfied with the love songs that dominated the Mandarin pop music market.
Looking at these new artists, like Faith Yang, Shunza and Chang Chen-yueh, and at their different styles, Crystal boss Jen Chiang-ta says that the structure of the record market has at last changed and that new styles like R&B, World Music or rock-based music are acceptable to a growing audience.
Will Lin produced Faith Yang's "One" album. The album features UK rock-style music and vocals, with neo-psychedelic and new wave influences. Her vocals range from low to high intensity making it difficult to pin down. Will Lin's Baboo had a similar style five years ago. Their albums sold 20-30,000 copies, but now Yang's has sold l60,000.
Shunza's music is classic US black music, ranging from rock and jazz to R&B. A style that Taiwan's female singers have rarely tried in the past has taken the market by storm, and her musical style and moving voice have been the subject of intense discussion on the Internet.
Chang Chen-yueh's musical style has been described as "Different from US or UK rock, having a kind of Taiwan 'beat' youth feel."
"The success of various new types of music in the market is a case of 'the times make the hero,' but there are also cases of 'the hero makes the times,'" says Weng Chia-ming. 20 years ago campus folk singers joined in the pop music reform movement. The rise of these new artists today is a change brought about by the move into commercial market production by members of the bands that were on the scene when Crystal was pushing new music about a decade ago. For example there are Will Lin of Wrecking Crew, who produces Faith Yang, and Youth Band's Chia Min-shu, who produces Shunza.
"Their familiarity over many years with pop music, observation of pop culture and previous experience of defeat have allowed them to create new trend-setting Taiwan music," says Weng.
Self-expression
There are a variety of musical styles, and the content of songs is also wide-ranging.
In contrast to Wu Bai's Southern Taiwan background and hard life before he made it, the songs of Chang Chen-yueh and the others are mainly about the lives of urban kids or about personal feelings. What is the same as Wu Bai, however, is the fact that they are heavily self-expressive and are not influenced by traditional values.
Chang Chen-yueh's songs describe the work, girl-chasing and friend-making of city-kid life. Students say that they like his irreverent and funny lyrics. Landy Chang heard a young employee at a garage singing the words to a Chang Chen-yueh song to himself while working-"Changing unconsciously. . . but I'm always changing, always changing, always changing, always changing, I want to dump."
Shunza, who was born in Beijing, grew up in the US and studied music in Switzerland, sings of the desire to return home after years of wandering, sentiments which have won her a following in the ranks of students living away from home. She has also touched upon lust, an area that female Taiwanese singers rarely do, with the lyrics "I just can't get enough of you." She also sings that the world is so boring that even the toys protest.
There are also many songs that are socially conscious or which are protest songs. Sandee Chen, who has been performing for three years, mainly has used her personal life as the subject of her songs before. Her latest album which came out last year, "Before a Bad Person Becomes Bad," had an urban folk style and clearly expressed her views on society-satirizing the paparazzi, commemorating Peng Wan-ju, complaining about the refuse collection regulations and reflecting on the Chen Chin-hsing incident. Also, Luan Tan sang about how people are not as nice as they used to be, The Chairmen satirized the KMT and the four-girl group Ladybug shouted "Get lost pervert" and "Stop, stop, stop all these boring sex games."
Alternative management
The post-martial-law atmosphere has formed the Taiwan alternative music we see today. Within the music industry system, Magic Stone Records, which used to be an alternative label, has chosen a path between underground and commercial record company operation. They have chosen the good and discarded the bad in both business modes and have carved out an alternative business path which is one of the phenomena worthy of note accompanying this wave.
They on the one hand stress packaging and marketing to make up for the weaknesses of traditional underground products, while milking the strength of underground music-live performance. They also provide a free space for artists to express themselves.
The boss of Friendly Dogs Records, Shen Kuang-yuan, who has nurtured new talent for years, says that Magic Stone's marketing and packaging abilities are very worthy of study. Taking Faith Yang's albums as an example, he reckons that the music is good but the "individuality" of the packaging of the music is the key to its success. She expresses her feelings from a unique angle, showing her individualism in the cool cover photo, the changing intensity of the music (* la UK post-punk) and lyrics like "You only treated me like a game when you realized how much I loved you," " I'm poisoned by you" and "I'm cursed by you." He thinks that Faith Yang does not have as many ideas as the record makes her seem to have. Wu Bai wrote "Alone" for her, which is able to whip up the atmosphere during live shows. The whole design of the album meets the requirement for individuality that is popular at this time.
Some people think that, after his success, Wu Bai has already been packaged as an idol by Magic Stone. However, Jen Chiang-ta of Crystal says that "However he is packaged his music is the same!" He believes that Magic Stone still attach great importance to musical creativity. The song "Wandering Down to Tanshui" that Chen Ming-chang produced for The King of Kinmen sold an impressive 600,000 copies. It seems that the song was helped by the fact that it was used in a beer commercial on TV which featured the popular local film director and writer Wu Nien-chen. The commercial was able to give full expression to the sentiment "Everybody have a drink together, cheers!" in the song. However, when he was trying to find a company to release the song, Chen met with refusal at every turn. The two singers are disabled, older and sing in a colonial-era style, so no-one believed they could be a success. Only Magic Stone was willing to give them a try, which shows that they have time for different types of music.
Alternative promotion?
Looking from another angle, did the rise of various new heroes last year take Taiwan's audience into a whole new area of music? Veteran musician Fred Lo-jun Chen believes that saying that the artists have alternative characters is more accurate than saying that the music is alternative. Taking Shunza and Faith Yang as examples, the former has a talent for both writing and performing that has been rarely seen in a female singer-songwriter before. Yang, meanwhile, has a rebellious character. Both have very Western performing styles and are very active and unrestrained on stage. However, in terms of their songs, while they have many alternative influences, the songs that attract the public's attention are still rock and love songs.
Looking closely at the lyrics to "Going Home" and "A Sky Full of Stars," Chen says that "The feelings stirred are still those of a traditional young girl" and are nothing new. He believes that last year's songs offer nothing too different. Many in the business have also pointed out that, although life-related songs are the strong point of this wave of new singers and they are free of sticky sentiment, they also lack "depth of thought."
Although some people say that the change is not big enough, change has started and most people are glad to see this. As a wave of US and UK style music washes over Taiwan, some people can't help asking what direction Taiwan's music should be developing in.
Returning to Taiwanese roots
Looking back over the last 10 years, Jen Chiang-ta says that what is lacking at the current stage is music with a local flavor. Chen Ming-ta, who has set himself the task of inheriting the Taiwanese folk song style of the renowned Chen Ta, sold 10-20,000 copies of his albums ten years ago. Now they sell about 30,000, showing only a slight increase. He is still trying to get off the ground in terms of sales and has fared differently from the artists with various US- and UK-influenced styles that have been accepted by audiences.
World Music is a global trend. Bobby Chen's New Formosa Fun Park Band combined Hakka music and Taiwan aboriginal music. The termination of their work was seen by many as a shame. However, the combining of rock and nan bei guan music by Luan Tan last year raised people's hopes. The ability of nan bei guan music, the sound of which is instantly recognizable as Taiwanese, to create atmosphere stands up to comparison with the Celtic-influenced music of the film Titanic. Jen Chiang-ta hopes that they will continue with this kind of creativity.
Wu Bai's new album this year, "Lonely Tree, Lonely Bird," differs from his name-making album "Wasting Youth," which featured covers of old Taiwanese songs, in that it contains only new songs. In media interviews he has said that every time he goes overseas he feels that his work is not Taiwanese enough. He now wants to use his own society and land for inspiration, because he believes that only ideas and feelings that are close to his own heart can stand up to the test.
Several years ago Wu Bai said, "Sex and drugs and rock-'n-roll was something that 'couldn't happen' in Taiwan, but we made it happen." In 1998 he will strive for new heights of creativity and success.
"There is no perpetual success in today's fashion-oriented markets." Should we be looking then to see what music is set to challenge today's alternative music?
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Last year these unknowns used what in the past was seen as "alternative" music and vocals to make an impression on the pop music market. What impact will they have on the pop music market? (courtesy of Magic Stone Music, Mandala Works, J&J Music, Crystal Records, Friendly Dogs)
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An outstandingly talented singer and dancer, A-Mei represents the new musical mainstream. The electric live shows of Taiwan's newest "Queen of Pop" have won wide acclaim. Her success also illustrates new popular music trends. (courtesy of Forward Music)
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Noisy, foul-mouthed, impulsive and wild, Ladybug are one of Taiwan's few female punk bands. (photo by Pu Hua-chih)
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In 1989 the Blacklist Workshop's "Crazy Song," with its political sarcasm and social criticism, overturned the long-term fixation of Taiwanese songs on gangsters and love. (photo by Liu Chen-hsiang)
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Spot the stars? Ten years ago Chao Chuan, Hsueh Yue, Huang Yun-ling, Chang Hung-liang and Will Lin who have made a name for themselves in the music business were all previous participants in Crystal's Taipei New Music Festival. (courtesy of Crystal Records)
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Known as a self-taught musician, Chen has set himself the task of inheriting the style of the renowned Taiwan folk artist, Chen Ta. His songs tell the stories of traveling players, vegetable sellers and other small figures in Taiwan life. His songs have a very strong feeling for rural Taiwan. The photo shows a small concert of Chen's outside an Eslite bookstore. (photo by Lin Meng-san)
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To preserve the last Taiwan traveling tea house performers Chen Ming-chang became their producer. Inspired by the hard life that the two have had, Chen wrote "Wandering Down to Tanshui." No-one could have guessed that the song would be the dark horse of the record market in 1997. (courtesy of Magic Stone Music)
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Not as concerned with justice as Blacklist Workshop and not as "Taiwanese" as Chen Ming-chang, he merges Western rock and a Taiwanese flavor. Wu Bai, who was once way out on the musical margins, has not changed. What has changed is the taste of music fans. (courtesy of Magic Stone Music)
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Since the start of the 1990's underground groups which stress creativity have been growing in number. One the most eye-catching of these is Clip, Their rap-style lyrics are vivid, direct and sometimes coarse, and it remains to be seen whether they will move from "underground" to the mainstream. (photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)
Noisy, foul-mouthed, impulsive and wild, Ladybug are one of Taiwan's few female punk bands. （photo by Pu Hua-chih）
In 1989 the Blacklist Workshop's "Crazy Song," with its political sarcasm and social criticism, overturned the long-term fixation of Taiwanese songs on gangsters and love. （photo by Liu Chen-hsiang）
Spot the stars? Ten years ago Chao Chuan, Hsueh Yue, Huang Yun-ling, Cha ng Hung-liang and Will Lin who have made a name for themselves in the music business w ere all previous participants in Crystal's Taipei New Music Festival. （courtesy of Crysta l Records）
Known as a self-taught musician, Chen has set himself the task of inheriting the style of the renowned Taiwan folk artist, Chen Ta. H songs tell the stories of traveling players, vegetable sellers and other small figures in Taiwan life. His songs have a very strong feeling for rural Taiwan. The photo shows a small concert of Chen's outside an Eslite bookstore. （photo by Lin Meng-san）
To preserve the last Taiwan traveling tea house performers Chen Ming-cha ng became their producer. Inspired by the hard life that the two have had, Chen wrote "Wandering Down to Tanshui." No-one could have guessed that the song would be the dark horse of the record market in 1997. （courtesy of Magic Stone Music）
Not as concerned with justice as Blacklist Workshop and not as "Taiwan ese" as Chen Ming chang, he merges Western rock and a Taiwanese flavor. Wu Bai, who was once way out on the musical margins, has not changed. What has changed is the taste of music fans. （courtesy of Magic Stone Music）
Since the start of the 1990's underground groups which stress creativity have been growing in number. One the most eye-catching of these is Clip, Their rap-style lyrics are vivid, direct and sometimes coarse, and it remains to be seen whether they will move from "underground" to the mainstream. （photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang）
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