1975-1993: #10, Blacklist Studio, “Songs of Madness” (黑名單工作室, 抓狂歌) (1989)

Blacklist Studio, Songs of Madness, 1989

Blacklist Studio, Songs of Madness, 1989

ranking: #10 on 1975-1993 list

The end of martial law in 1987 opened the floodgates for dissent and clamor — some progressive, some reactionary, some progressive then reactionary.  In a blistering 43 minutes across a mere nine songs, Songs of Madness (抓狂歌) distills that moment of noisy contradiction with unprecedented critical self-reflection.  It’s not exactly a political album, but a freeze-frame of the turmoil, laced with anger and irony.

Suddenly Taiwan could be seen and expressed as a collision of voices and ideologies, refracted through broken glass.  For rock collective Blacklist Studio (黑名單工作室), the many sides of Taiwanese society could only be experienced through a mix of genres and dialects.  New wave rock meets rap meets folk song; Taiwanese crashes into Mandarin, English, and Japanese.  Appropriately, the members of Blacklist Studio take turns venting their frustration and regret rather than singing as a collective. In this stark vision of Taiwan, there is no harmony.

“Imperial Taipei” (台北帝國) kicks things off with the kind of vivid social realism of old school political hip-hop; this is the New Taiwanese Song’s call-to-arms, its “broken glass, everywhere!”  Its narrator takes us through the old streets of Zhongxiao East Road, from prostitutes whispering in English (“Say yes my boy”) to the brand names of foreign-made motor scooters in the streets, the details of everyday life spun to — get this — caution the listener about the coming imperialism of the U.S. dollar.

Surprisingly, Songs of Madness is never preachy, largely because it’s so tongue-in-cheek.  “Mad” (抓狂), a cover — rather, a complete rethinking — of the Thai classic “Yin Dee Mai Mee Pun Hah,” takes the chant and drone structure of the original to depict a world numbed by madness and religion.  The sing-song-y melody and hypnotically good vibes only make the madness madder.

The irony is most apparent on the rap tracks, often called the first of the genre in Taiwanese-dialect music.  “Papa’s Words” (阿爸的話) is a critique of aimless youth.  In a sort of reverse “Parents Just Don’t Understand” (with the same old school flow), the song describes a son who gets lost in dreams of the global, never learning English properly and going to Japan only to hit a dead end.  Despite a fairly monotonous delivery — vocalist Wang Ming Hui relies on the same metrical patterns and three half-beat line-endings — “Papa’s Words” is as funny as it is tragic.  When he rhymes “I’m sorry” with “Thank you very much-ee,” you don’t know whether to laugh at the dad or the son he’s parodying.

“Taxi” is the album’s tour de force.  A collage of traffic noise and taxicab banter, sassy vocals and charismatic rap, the song is a literal collision of personalities on the streets of Taipei.  The deliveries are syncopated deliriously and the Taiwanese tones are wildly unpredictable.  Over car horn-like trumpet squeals, the song asks repeatedly, “Hey hey taxi, where are you headed?” — an unmistakable allegory for a nation speeding manically into the unknown.

Social message is even more explicit on “A Democracy Bumpkin” (民主阿草), whose provocative story of protests in the Hsimenting area of Taipei would have landed the songwriters in jail a decade earlier (thus justifying the band’s name).  What’s most fearless about the song is how deftly it narrates how misunderstanding and suspicion can lead to political fury.  It’s a bold, sometimes frightening, picture of how politics and the police state can permeate any facet of everyday life.

Even at its tenderer moments, the album never loses that edge.  “Dragon Festival Celebration” (慶端陽) by Chen Ming Chang (陳明章) is a standard folk song, but Chen’s vigorous delivery sounds more battered than festive.  As in “Imperial Taipei,” the fast-paced present leaves little time to be nostalgic for the past.  “Too Sad to Speak” (傷心無話) with guest vocals by Yeh Shu Ying (葉樹茵) is reminiscent of the stereotypical tragedies Taiwanese-dialect pop is famous for, but the instrumentation is western classical not Japanese enka.  The result is not longing for bygone years so much as sheer desolation.

That refusal of sentimentality is what makes Songs of Madness so uncompromising in its fervor.  This is music caught in the headlights of modernity, but shouts back without blinking.  Dense with detail and emotion, Songs of Madness is chaotic music about a chaotic world.