生祥樂隊《野蓮出庄》演唱會山下民謠
Sheng Xiang & Band: Water Snowflake Goes to Market
Foothills Folk
After four years, Sheng-Xiang & Band finally finished their new work Water Snowflake Goes to Market.
The trilogy of I-Village started off from I-Village, which is lost in the process of modernization, through the Village Besieged by the petrochemical industry, and finally, after ten years, the Water Snowflake Goes to Market, reaching its destination. One sees how weeds from the marsh survived hardships on their way to the market, becoming visible to the mainstream society at last. In the midst of Sheng-xiang Lin’s soft yet tenacious chant of the laid-back “B-list music”, dish after dish is ushered in from mountainous and riverside Hakka villages with vivid scenes of rural daily routines.
Catering Executive Chefs from Neimen × Essence of Taiwanese Cuisine × Hakka Creativity
Water snowflake, which requires intensive labor, receives parental help from Vietnamese migrant workers to be sent on its way to the market. In the pigeon pea soup hides the silhouettes of our aboriginal friends. As for black nightshade, it leaves behind a good reputation as it travels from north to south, with a charisma loved by all: Hakka, Min, Paiwan, and Amis.
This time, we will start off with our Hakka cuisines from the lower Tamsui River. We have also invited along chefs trained in Taiwanese cuisine from the renowned caterer Shinelong Banquet in Neimen, a hometown to many catering executive chefs. We play around with the essence of Taiwanese cuisine and components of Hakka cuisine, using new cookery vocabulary to interpret Water Snowflake Goes to Market.
Water Snowflake Goes to Market starts off from the Tamsui River, bringing together music and cuisine. We look forward to meeting you there by the riverside.
Sheng-Xiang & Band
Members of the Sheng-Xiang & Band include LIN Sheng-xiang (six-stringed moon guitar/electric moon guitar/vocalist), Ken Ohtake (guitar), Toru Hayakawa (bass guitar/electric piano), Alex WU (percussion), Noriaki Fukushima (drums), HUANG Po-yu (suona, guan), and Poet CHUNG Yung-feng. CHUNG and LIN have become songwriting collaboration partners since 1998, when they formed the Labor Exchange Band and released their first album Let us Sing Mountain Songs. To date, the team has already released ten albums altogether. CHUNG has won the Best Lyrics category twice (2005 and 2007) at the Golden Melody Awards, while LIN has swept away ten Golden Melody Awards, ten Golden Indie Music Awards, two Golden Horse Awards, and one Taipei Film Award.
Japanese members Ken Otake and Toru Hayakawa joined the band in 2006 and 2009, respectively. Alex WU became part of the team in 2011, while Noriaki Fukushima and HUANG Po-yu became members in 2014. As all band members can do jazz improvisation, their performances are always full of pleasant surprises. The Band has a focused interest in farm and factory worker rights, and environmental issues. Its music is firmly rooted in the Taiwanese musical tradition, but takes influences from contemporary western music.
In 2001, Sheng-Xiang & Band started to perform on international stage, and has toured a dozen countries spanning Europe, Asia, and America. In July 2018, the Band performed on the SummerStage in Central Park, New York, bringing the one-of-a-kind Taiwanese-style country rock to the international audience.
LIN Sheng-xiang
LIN Sheng-xiang is a singer from the foothills of Meinong, a small town in southwestern Taiwan, where he spent his childhood years. To date, he has published 11 music albums and 3 soundtrack albums, and has received 9 Golden Melody Awards (two of which he turned down), 10 Golden Indie Music Awards, 1 Taipei Film Award, and 2 Golden Horse Awards. Lin has been on singing tours to various places around the world, including Europe, America, and Asia. His daily activities include songwriting, singing, writing soundtracks for films, and raising kids.
In 1998, LIN returned to his hometown to participate in a protest movement against a dam project in Meinong. Since then, his music themes have been focusing on the land, and its farm and labor workers. LIN’s music integrates traditional Taiwanese musical elements with western musical rhythm, resulting in a combination that essentially surpasses both. LIN also experimented with musical instruments by ingeniously modifying the moon guitar and other three-stringed instruments. His Planting Trees (2006) discusses the quiet power and the value of agriculture, and his Growing up Wild (2009) focuses on the life stories of females. In 2010, LIN finished the album The Land is My Study, which is the fruitful result of a special collaboration transcending space and time with the late renowned Hakka writer CHUNG Li-he. He started the Sheng-Xiang & Band in 2013 and published I-Village, singing out the glory and sorrow of his hometown. In 2016, he released his first two-CD concept album Village Besieged through crowdfunding, telling stories of the entangling fights between farm workers and the petrochemical industry.
CHUNG Yung-feng
A lyricist, a poet, a music producer, and a cultural administrator, CHUNG Yung-feng has been the most important partner for LIN Sheng-xiang during their 15 years of collaboration.
Born into a tobacco farm family, CHUNG was the lyricist for the Labor Exchange Band. CHUNG, LIN, and CHEN Guan-yu together won the Best Album Producer at the 2000 Golden Melody Awards, when their credits included the album Let us Sing Mountain Songs. He was a two-time winner in the Best Lyricist category at the Golden Melody Awards for his Hakka lyrics, once for Getting Dark in 2005, and once for Planting Trees in 2007. He was again nominated for the same category in the Golden Melody Awards for I-Village in 2014.
Toru Hayakawa
A bass guitarist, Toru Hayakawa is considered a young superstar in the jazz circle in Japan. He has cultivated a unique performance style of lively rhythmicity often lacking in most Asian musicians. Since he is also familiar with multiple melodic instruments, he is not restricted by the rhythmic pattern in the low tone range in his role as a bass guitarist. Instead, he can go beyond the characteristics of the instrument and surf leisurely with his musician partners on the wave of the music piece.
Ken Ohtake
Ken Ohtake has been LIN Sheng-xiang’s closest and most important music partner in recent years.
Born in Japan in 1974, Ohtake became familiar with the electric guitar and pop music during his high school years. When he went to college, he started to expose himself to music of different genres, including rock, jazz, folk, etc. In recent years, he has been concentrating on perfecting his acoustic guitar skills, and has partnered for many years with Takashi Hirayasu, a guru in Okinawa folk music, to rearrange traditional folk songs. He was commended by Hirayasu as “the most calm and profound partner”.
Through rational decomposition and analysis of music, Ohtake extracts innovative music energy through simple unplugged strumming, creating an acoustic effect more rich and imaginative than is possible by electronic effects units. He and LIN, a rising Hakka folk music writer, first came across each other during the 2003 Migration Music Festival. They later formed a close partnership in performance and songwriting, and have attracted great attention in the music circle. In 2006, Ohtake put a perfect finishing touch to the performance of Planting Trees, and in 2009, he held a close dialogue between guitars in Growing up Wild. He and Lin became inseparably in sync in The Land is My Study in 2010.
Noriaki Fukushima
Noriaki Fukishima studied music with Ryojiro Furusawa, a late jazz musician in Japan. His drumming styles are varied, ranging from pop rock, to jazz, to free improvisation, all of which are a breeze to him. In 2014, he toured around Taiwan for the first time with Ohtake and Hayakawa as members of the Tokyo Chuo-Line Band. In 2015, the team had a performance in Hong Kong that was very well received. In the same year, Fukushima joined the Sheng-Xiang & Band to record the two CDs for the album Village Besieged and went on a concert tour with the group.
Alex Wu
Graduated from the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts, Alex WU is an expert in many instruments, including erhu (a two-stringed bowed Chinese musical instrument), Latin percussion, Chinese percussion, ethnic hand drums, and jazz drum sets. Due to his outstanding performance, he was already invited to perform with several renowned traditional Chinese musicians when he was still in college. His solid training in classical Chinese music and multifaceted talents in percussion have allowed him to cross several music genres in recent years, including world music, jazz, Latino, and pop. He has worked with several singers and music groups, including A-Mei (a famous aboriginal pop singer in Taiwan), Jody CHIANG (a Taiwanese pop diva), Richie JEN (a famous Mandarin pop singer from Taiwan), Penny TAI (a Mandarin pop singer from Malaysia), Ondekoza (a Japanese troupe specializing in taiko drumming), Metamorphosis (a jazz band from Taiwan), and A Moving Sound (an ensemble of traditional music from Taiwan). WU is currently a member of the Montunos Latin Band, the Sizhukong Jazz Band, and A Moving Sound. He also teaches at his alma mater, the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts.
HUANG Po-yu
Born in the 80s, HUANG Po-yu is a young musician majoring in suona, a double-reeded horn in the traditional Chinese instrument family. He graduated from the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts, and is now studying at the Taipei National University of the Arts. He studied music with LU Yen-ling (professional tenor suona player), LIN Tzu-youg (professional alto suona player), KUO Chin-tsai (renowned suona player from Taiwan), and HUANG Chang-tung (suona player), and has received instructions from famous suona players from China, including GUO Ya-zhi, LI Guang-cai, and SHAN Wen-tong.
Catering Service｜Shinelong Banquet
Established in 1953, Shinelong Banquet is a caterer from Neimen, Kaohsiung, a hometown to many catering executive chefs. A family business currently run by the third generation, the caterer aims to continue the tradition of the Taiwanese catering culture by introducing innovative ways into the the old business customs. It hopes to familiarize the younger generation with the essence of the local Taiwanese cuisine, and allow infinite possibilities to blossom in the field of catering business.
Production Team
- Vocalist & Six-stringed moon guitar | LIN Sheng-xiang
- Poet | CHUNG Yung-feng
- Bass | Toru Hayakawa
- Guitar | Ken Ohtake
- Drums | Noriaki Fukushima
- Percussion | Alex WU
- Suona | HUANG Po-yu
- Catering Service｜ Shinelong Banquet