The road home
“The road, the wind, yes, led me from home. / The time, the dream, true, took me away. / A daughter gone, sure, may wander the byways. / But, no matter what road the daughter is on, / she’ll still speak with the accent of home.” —Gone From Home.
Her Hakka roots are indeed her starting point, but Lo refuses confinement to things Hakka. “You have to keep moving forward in life, keep moving down the road,” says Lo, whose concern extends to the fate of all women. More Than One, the album she released last year, includes poems in three different languages—Mandarin, Minnan, and Hakka.
Lo selected the poetry for her album in much the way a butterfly gathers nectar. First she read lots of poems aloud to get a feel for the sound and imagery and determine whether they had a “three-dimensional sound.” Then she read lots of other works by the individual authors to understand each poet’s linguistic universe, storytelling style, and world view, and the things each poet cares about most. “I wanted to select works that were truly original and unique.”
“When you sing poetry, the most important thing is to bring the feelings and cultural context behind the words into relief.” A lot of people will tweak the original wording of a poem to accommodate the rhythm or the beat of a song, but Lo insists on keeping the poetry unchanged. She works hard to ensure that a poem and song mesh together as a single work, with a life of its own. She keeps trying out new things until she’s satisfied.
“Climb over those mountains’ peaks / Then you can pass that shrine to the local Land God / Pass several more Land God Shrines / Then that small creek will appear / Plant a few pines and cypress trees / Then you can reach that dense forest.”
When she read Concerning the Value of One’s Homeland, by Ling Yu, Lo felt as though she were slowly perusing a scroll. “Ling Yu explores the way forward one step at a time in search of the place and time of her childhood. There’s no big rush to come up with answers; the idea is to make the readers feel like they are walking along hand in hand with the author. She makes life feel like an inkwash scroll that is slowly unfurled, and then slowly rewound.”
When poets hear Lo’s works, they’re always pleasantly startled, and feel that she’s opened up new possibilities for their poetry, and infused it with new life.
The first time the poet Chen Yu-hong heard Lo sing her work I Told You Before was during a conference session. Chen was rendered speechless, and nearly burst into tears on the spot.
“I told you before, my forehead my hair miss you / Because the clouds comb each other in the sky my neck my earlobes miss you / Because the idle worry of the lane with the suspended bridge and the alley with the grass bridge / Because of the unaccompanied Bach slipping silently into the river outside the city.”
The note of complaint in these lines reveals the core sentiment of the poem.
For Lo, each song carries within it a seed of life that will grow into whatever was meant to be.
“For each song, each potted plant, and each person, there is a certain state they were meant from the start to assume. I hope to get closer to that state, to bring it into being.” She wears a crucifix, but in fact Lo holds to no particular religious belief. What she seeks is balance, harmony, and a return to what nature had in mind all along. “It’s like the Earth, which tilts on its axis yet still travels along its appointed orbit.”
Lo sees no absolute separation between the secular and the sacred. “The act of creating art is at a higher level than humans. When the spirit enters a certain state, you become something of a prophet.”
The band members of Lo Sirong & Gomoteu constitute a miniature United Nations, and their diversity is reflected in the band's rich fusion of different musical traditions.
You can leave home, but you can’t leave your accent behind.
No matter what the venue, Lo Sirong always performs bare-footed. She says that channeling the Earth’s energy as she sings gives her tranquility and strength. (courtesy of Lo Sirong)