Folk song has long been the metier of Chiang Chen-tao. Since 1969 when he first came back to his fatherland to hold vocal recitals for his fellow compatriots, he has touched and won the hearts of numerous local music lovers with his sonorous voice, emotional expressions and dramatic gestures. During the Taipei Music Festival, he gave a recital on August 25 which reaffirmed his popularity Accompanied by Chen Cheng-hsiung as conductor and the Chung Hsing Orchestra, Chiang presented a total of 18 folk songs from different provinces of China during the concert.

When Chiang mounted the stage, wearing a long black Chinese gown, a pair of black plimsolls, and smiling openly and warmly, the audience was immediately in sympathy with him. As the songs, with titles such as "The Sun Rises Amid Beauty." "Lee San Pao," "I Wait for You Until Daybreak," "Under the Silver Moonlight," "Mountaineer's Songs from the Lu-hong Highlands" and "Thinking of My Mother" unfolded, he transported his listeners through many different moods, humorous, sentimental or pastoral, but all heart-warming. In response to the applause from the capacity audience. Chiang gave an encore of a song he himself composed, entitled "Good Morning, Taipei," which he dedicated to the Taipei Music Festival. After the concert was thus rounded out successfully, Taipei city mayor Lee Teng-hui, showed his respect and appreciation by stepping on to the stage to shake hands with the singer.

Through a combination of Western musicology with Chinese style singing, Chiang has been able to create his own unique style. His ambition to introduce Chinese musical treasures to the world came in 1951 when he first arrived in Paris He immediately started to collect and arrange Chinese folk songs systematically by categorizing them according to different provinces and dynasties. He also arranged classical Chinese songs so they could be accompanied by piano or other musical instruments to give them new life. The time he spent studying Chinese regional operas, such as Peiping, Cantonese and Taiwanese, and even drums with master Chang Tien-yu, proved helpful to his career as a balladeer.

Born during a time of war, Chiang suffered deprivations and hardships as a child. To escape from the persecution first of the Japanese, then of the Chinese Communists, his family moved from Yentai in Shantung province to Tientsin in Hopei province, then to Tsingtao, Hong Kong and back to Tientsin again. Later, he entered the Peiping College of Music to practice singing with Ying Shang-neng, who was, however, purged during the cultural revolution. After his graduation, Chiang was sent to work at an opera theater in Shanghai, but was soon transferred to do manual labor. In 1973, after fleeing the China mainland, Chiang worked in Hong Kong as a singer of theme songs from movies. After saving a small sum of money, he was able to enter the Paris Academy of Music, get married and acquire a small jewelry shop on a street in front of the Louvre. He never forgot his mission to work for the development of Chinese national music, however.

Recently, he enthusiastically invited several Chinese musicians from overseas, including Tseng Chien-yi from Vienna, and Wu Long, Lu Li-li and Yang Su-ching from ltaly to organize a Han Sheng (Sound of the Chinese People) music group to spread Chinese national music all over the world. He said: "After U.S. derecognition of the Republic of China, the Chinese Communists, in order to launch united front tactics against overseas Chinese, sent art groups to perform all over the world. The overseas artists from free China can no longer hold back. We will stand in the front line to fight against them with music. We will never shrink."

Last spring, the Han Sheng music group performed in ltaly, and was warmly received and critically acclaimed. In the autumn, the musicians will tour European countries, before presenting the Chinese opera "Sweet Lady" next summer in Taiwan, and later at the Hong Kong art festival. Expressing their fervent love for their country and its culture, Chiang and his friends have vowed to make music of China heard in every corner of the world.

[Explain picture]

Emotional expressions and dramatic gestures are the trademark of Chiang 's performance.

President Chiang receives Chiang Chen-tao and his wife.

Emotional expressions and dramatic gestures are the trademark of Chiang 's performance.

Emotional expressions and dramatic gestures are the trademark of Chiang 's performance.

Emotional expressions and dramatic gestures are the trademark of Chiang 's performance.

President Chiang receives Chiang Chen-tao and his wife.