Chen Ming-chang: Taiwanese Bard

Chen Ta was born in 1904 in Hengchun, a town in southern Taiwan that suffers from poor soil and bitter wind. He picked up the Yueching, a four-stringed Chinese instrument that is plucked like a banjo, and sang for a lifetime. At the end of the seventies, singing the Hengchun folk song "Remembering" for "Hsin Chuan," a Lin Huai-min dance that portrayed the spirit of the pioneers who opened up Taiwan, he became one of the symbols of the campus folk singing movement. He has already passed away.

In 1956, Chen Ming-chang was born amid the perfumed pleasures of Peitou's red light district. He carries a guitar on his back, writing songs in Taiwanese. In the late eighties, with songs like "Afternoon Drama," he did the college circuit, creating a new wave of Taiwanese songs. He's in the prime of his life.

A cold wind blows against my red eyes: Many people often lump Chen Ming-chang and Chen Ta together. It's not only because neither follows a set pattern in the way they sing and both sing with great feeling and local color. It's also because Chen Ming-chang was deeply influenced by Chen Ta. Only after listening to Chen Ta's "Remembering" did Chen Ming-chang begin writing Taiwanese songs. Indeed, his medley of songs "Coming from the Mainland to Taiwan" echoed "Remembering" in praising his ancestors for their courageous journey from the mainland to Taiwan. Ten years ago, when Chen Ta died in a car accident, the younger Chen wrote "Red Eye Ta" in his memory.

The story of Chen Ming-chang's sudden rise to prominence is also not unlike Chen Ta's.

Starting in elementary school, he began studying guitar with the older brother of a classmate who busked in the whorehouses. So as not to disturb others, late at night he would often hide himself in the bathroom, where he'd strum and sing. When folk songs were the campus rage, he entered the Golden Rhythm Creative Competition and tried out for a spot in the band "Wooden Guitar." Because his voice was rough and his scales shoddy, he won neither. He later sent more than 100 songs to any record company he could find. All were returned for his personal enjoyment.

Then in 1987, through an introduction of a friend, he wrote the soundtrack for Hou Hsiaohsien's-Dust in the Wind. Recording with only a NT$600 guitar, he won France's Nantes Film Festival award for "Best Dramatic Score." Two years ago, sponsored by Rock and Roll Monthly and Crystal Records, Chen Ming-chang did the whole Taiwanese college circuit. His audiences increased from 20 or 30 to hundreds or even over a thousand.

Afterwards, such domestic creative powerhouses as Lan Ling Theater and U Theater both worked with him, and he did a succession of soundtracks--for the films Peony Bird and The Chocolate War and for a Japanese public service commercial that Hou Hsiao-hsien made on acid rain. He even served as producer for a record by nightclub comedian superstar Liao Chun.

Heavy footsteps all year long: From meeting rejection everywhere to being a darling of cultural and intellectual circles in just a few years, Chen Ming-chang relied on more than just luck.

"In style of music, Chen Ming-chang is unlike the current popular Taiwanese singers who only draw from Western rock and roll, country and blues. He uses such traditional Taiwanese sources as the island's folk songs, Taiwanese opera, and the nankuan and peikuan operatic musical styles," comments Weng Chia-ming, a columninst for the China Times Express supplement Black Turntable. "His songs best capture the flavor of Taiwan's new age," and his lyrics are all distilled from people and real life. Taking such people as actors, fishermen, farmers, prostitutes and winos as their focus, his profiles capture Taiwanese society in transition.

For example, "Goodbye! Peitou" is the song of an old bar girl: "I have taken my lifetime of happiness to lay your road to the sulphur springs, paved on this crumbling old road at dusk." It illuminates a Peitou milieu in decline.

"Afternoon Drama," which describes an afternoon thundershower that scatters a play's audience, also makes use of a style of music used in Taiwanese opera to mourn the loss of outdoor theater: "This afternoon no one watched our Chen San and Wu Niang . . . each beat of the gongs and drums celebrates the reunion, but there are no cheers below and rain above."

It's the flavor of life: Most of Chen Ming-chang's creative material comes from his own life experience and impressions.

"Since I was small, I lived amid a Peitou of folk drama and busking. Next door was a bath house. I could talk for days and nights on end without telling all my stories," says 30-year-old Chen Ming-chang. In earlier years, he took a lot of lowly jobs in order to earn a living, and these are also one of his sources of material. He has peddled goods, worked as a fish farm salesman and sold pianos and insurance. Up to the present, he is still in the orchid business. From doing business, he not only has a deep familiarity with numerous locales but also has come in contact with all kinds of street people. He also studies with teachers of Taiwanese opera and the nankuan and peikuan musical styles so that he can mix these into his creative pot. His award-winning sound track for Dust in the Wind was created out of three months of wandering in the mountain area of Chioufen.

And his songs that make judgments about social realities also take their beat from the pulse of life: "Completely silent, we live the hard life that fate dictates. Black smoke and waste water have accompanied me for 30 years. The rivers and seas are full of dead fish. Confused, I don't know where my heart is. The windows of every house are barred. The rich and the powerful still fear bullets; the streets are full of protest marches; and my heart is salty, sweet and sour. . . ." ("Bamboo Pole Poetry") And so it is that he forcefully advocates environmentalism and criticizes the wrongs of society, not fearing that he will be labeled an extremist. But he didn't expect that, with such an image, he would attract a bevy of young admirers in their teens and twenties.

Muddleheaded carefree youth? After performing on dozens of campuses and playing countless concerts, he has seen children wear T-shirts with the same bright slogans as his and even ape his habits of wearing sandals, smoking and chewing betel nut. Yet his own thoughts float back some ten years ago to an appearance of Chen Ta at the Scarecrow Western restaurant in Taipei. "Reading glasses perched at the end of his nose, he wore a brownish-gray suit. Beneath the stage, amid the sizzle of steaks, the youths in the audience were listening to folk songs that spoke of a life so distant from their own."

"In coming to listen to my concerts, in buying my tapes, aren't they just affirming an 'alternative' consumerism?" he asks poignantly.

As for his own work, he believes that he's still in his experimental phase, and doesn't dare draw any conclusions, but he does emphasize that his songs are not commercial works. He let his "Mainland Medley" develop for four years before facing the world with it, and he revised "Bamboo Pole Poetry" for two years before making a final draft. In order to enrich his creative material, he still walks everywhere in his sandals, seeking out teachers of the old singing traditions.

Bitter lotus heart, sweet sugar cane: Chen Ming-chang's "Bamboo Pole Poetry" was inspired by his 70-year-old nankuan teacher Chinshi, who is pained that because he can't read lyrics or music, his legacy will be lost when he dies. This poem is also a portrayal of the state of Chen's own heart:

Last night with the bamboo poles swinging,

I went to the roof--look, look at the past.

Thinking of being almost thirty,

　Confused, I don't know where my heart is,

Thinking of nankuan my heart grows anxious,

With neither lyrics nor music, what am I to do?

Cicadas sing the passing of every fall,

Only hoping for the flowers of spring.

Ah . . . friends! Drink up.

Listen to me tell my story in my dull way.

[Picture Caption]

Seeking out Taiwan's old masters of performing arts has given Chen's (left) songs a rich local flavor. (photo by Vincent Chang)