1975-1993: #89, Shi Hsiao-rong, “Shi Hsiao-rong” (施孝榮, 施孝榮專輯) (1981) (Shi Xiaorong)

Shi Hsiao-rong, Shi Hsiao-rong, 1981

Shi Hsiao-rong, Shi Hsiao-rong, 1981

ranking: #89 on 1975-1993 list

Shi Hsiao-rong’s self-titled record (施孝榮專輯) represents a fantasy of pop multiculturalism in Taiwanese campus folk.  In other words, it is a product of its time, though we still have much to learn from it.  Shi Hsiao-rong is an aboriginal of the Paiwan tribe in Southern Taiwan.  His music evokes his aboriginal roots, not to explicitly celebrate difference, but to musically forge a kind of cultural harmony.  More specifically — and importantly — this harmony is dictated by a hegemonic Chineseness.

Take “Ode to Red Cliff” (赤壁賦), which begins with a thunderous adventure-film call-to-arms.  Together with the exotic “ho-hay!” intro, the opening moments of this tale of heroism borrows the fantasy of the primitive, in order to paint a scene from classical Chinese history: a Three Kingdoms battle by way of Su Dongpo (蘇東坡) and images of the jiangshan.

Nowhere is this ethnocentric logic more obvious than on the aptly-titled “Chinese Love” (中華之愛), which begins with a similarly thrilling horn — a call to attention.  Attention to what?  The lyrics make no mistake: “Return return!  To the lovely Jiangnan of my memory”, “Harness the Great Wall!  No harness is strong enough for the surging gallop of my boiling blood! / Harness the Great Wall!  No harness is strong enough for the deepness of my memory!”  The return of the primitive (i.e. horse-riding) is a return to… what?  A mythical China?  Do aboriginal Taiwanese have memories of the triumph of the Great Wall?  Cultural memory is a tricky thing; pop music movements like campus folk can dissipate that trickiness into the natural triumph of snare drum gallops, disco sizzle, root-seeking tambourines, choral harmonies, and string-section heroics.

When the album doesn’t use Shi’s aboriginal connotations to celebrate Chineseness, it uses a Han perspective to gaze at aboriginal culture.  The famous opening track “Visiting Spring” (拜訪春天) is justly beloved for using aboriginal rhythms (but Mandarin lyrics) to reinvigorate campus folk.  Its stomping-sway is as delightful as a pastoral prance or a campfire chorus.  Its variations on the exotic chorus (solo lead, background singers, all together, then slowed-down) is as mythical as the seasons turning.  It ends with, of course, intoxication: “Ah…I’m drunk many times over. / I…am drunk many times over.”  In other words, this is “world music” tameness, but worse: for Taiwan, this isn’t the music of the world, but the music of one’s hometown, though shaken of its spirit by the town bully.

Given its age, all of this would be easily forgivable until we remember that campus folk sprang from “modern folk,” which was spearheaded by an aboriginal with political motivations: Kimbo (胡德夫).  Shi Hsiao-rong, on the other hand, is a product of a TV talent show, a commodity from the very beginning.

Taken as campus folk and as commodity, Shi Hsiao-rong’s album has moments that transcend the cliches, but also moments that stutter over them embarrassingly.  An example of the latter: when track four roars “fly! fly!” in all of its tortured campus folk cheesiness, it’s ridiculous enough.  When, two tracks later, he does another “fly! fly!” chorus, he sputters and crashes.  But I do like the album’s Xu Zhimo (徐志摩) adaptation, “Under the Moon, Pieces of Shadow from Thunder and Sky” (月下雷峰影片), one of campus folk’s best borrowings of poetry, whose yearning chorus is even gentler, and perhaps more moving, than the famous “Saying Good-bye to Cambridge Again” (再別康橋).