User:DrIdiot/Chen Ming-chang

Chen Ming-chang (陳明章) (born July 4, 1956) is a Taiwanese singer, guitarist, yueqin player, composer, and producer born in Beitou. He is known for writing scores for the Hou Hsiao-Hsien films Dust in the Wind (1985) and The Puppetmaster (1993), as well as for Taiwanese language songs such as "She Is Our Darling" (伊是咱的寶貝, 1993) and "Wandering to Tamsui" (流浪到淡水, 1995).

Early life
Chen Ming-chang was born in 1956 in Beitou Village, Yangmingshan Administrative Bureau (now Beitou District in Taipei). Performances of traditional operas and plays happened almost every day in his neighborhood, including beiguan, nanguan, Taiwanese opera, and glove puppetry, and as a result he was steeped in traditional Taiwanese culture ever since his youth. His mother would also sing old Taiwanese songs growing up, passing the stylistic tradition to him orally. His father also often took him to glove puppetry shows, where the action, puppets and songs left a deep impression on a young Ming-chang.

High school years
Chen Ming-chang's musical journey started very early from seeing Nakasi performers in neighboring Beitou hotels, while his grandfather also took him all over to see open air theater performances. His first musical instrument was his older brother's guitar, which his mother bought for 2700 NTD as a reward for his high school admission. His brother barely used it and left it for Ming-chang, then in his 2nd year of middle school, to play with.

In his youth, Chen Ming-chang hoped to become a baseball player. He was not very studious and in 1972, he was admitted to Fuxing Senior High School in Beitou and played first base for the high school team. He dreamed of going to the United States to play in the MLB. Neglect his homework to practice baseball, it took him four years rather than the usual three to complete high school.

Music was just a hobby for Chen Ming-chang until his third year in high school, when he realized that he had a particular sensitivity toward sound. In his own words, "I was very slow at reading music, but after I heard a song I could immediately transcribe it." Starting then, he began to experiment with Western-style music and joined his school's guitar club. By his account. he would often practice from 9 P.M. to 4 or 5 A.M. every night and then sleep into the afternoon before going to school, sneaking into the military instructor's office to change the roll call sheet before going to the guitar club.

Military service and afterwards
The 70s in Taiwan saw the beginning of the campus folk song movement, and it was during this time that Chen Ming-chang's natural musical talents were stirred. After graduating from high school, he formed a musical group called the Wooden Guitar Chorus (木吉他合唱團), which consisted of his friends Jonathan Lee, Chang Bing-hui (張炳輝), Cheng Wen-kui (鄭文魁), Hu Chao-yu (胡昭宇), Chen Yung-yu (陳永裕), Chiang Hsueh-shih (江學世), et cetera.

It was then that Chen began to experiment with composing music, as his singing was not good enough for the group, according to the album notes to his 1990 album An Afternoon Drama. In a 2002 interview, he said that the group would practice singing during their studies at Minghsin University of Science and Technology, but since he was serving his mandatory military service at the time he couldn't participate. After he was discharged, they already had two guitarists and had no need for another. To make a living, he worked as a merchant selling a variety of goods, such as clothing, watches and pianos.

Taiwanese consciousness (1980s)
In 1982, at age 26, Chen Ming-chang's father suffered from a stroke, and he went back to Beitou to help take care of him as well as help his mother run their jewelry store. Two years later, when his younger brother finished his military service, Ming-chang decided he would try his hand at music again. His supportive mother and sister bought him a piano and a four-track recorder. They converted the fourth floor of their house into a recording studio, where Ming-chang would teach guitar in the evenings after working in the family shop.

According to Chen, "it was only after I became a music teacher that I began to ponder the question: what is Taiwanese music? What is my Taiwanese music?" He was led to this question by a chance encounter with Chen Da as well as learning about the 228 Incident.

At that time, Chen Da, a singer of Taiwanese language folk, was receiving a flurry of attention in Taipei artistic circles. One evening, Chen Ming-chang happened to hear Chen Da sing at a Western-style restaurant, and realized what his music was missing: "a feeling for this land and a reflection on our local culture." Hearing Chen Da sing, Chen Ming-chang was determined to make music that belonged to Taiwan. At the same time he became a music teacher, Chen also started a side business selling orchids. While visiting Keelung to acquire his wares, a drunken elderly man told him, in tears, about the 228 Incident. Since Taiwan was still under martial law at the time, Ming-chang's parents had never mentioned it to him.

Not long after, Chen Ming-chang collaborated with Chen Ming-yu (陳明瑜) and wrote his first Taiwanese language song, “Tang People Cross to Taiwan" (唐山過臺灣), a folk song about how early Chinese settlers had first crossed the Taiwan Strait by boat. He employed more traditional Taiwanese sounds such as the pentatonic scale.  In a later interview he noted that he felt that he could only express his deepest feelings through Taiwanese, not Mandarin.

Work with Hou Hsiao-hsien
After establishing his musical studio, a friend of his gave one of his cassette recordings to Hou Hsiao-hsien. After half a year, Hou's assistant gave him a call and asked if he write the musical score for Dust in the Wind. In 1987, Dust in the Wind became the first Taiwanese film to win an international prize for film score at the Three Continents Festival in Nantes, France. Afterwards, Hou would also ask Chen to write the score for The Puppetmaster in 1993, which won the prize for best score at the Film Fest Gent in Belgium. According to Chen, it was this prize that gave him some assurance that he could make a living writing music.

Blacklist Studio: Protest songs in Taiwanese
In 1987, martial law was lifted in Taiwan after nearly 40 years, and Taiwan entered a new era. At the time, Chen Ming-chang was working as a manufacturing assistant at Four Seas Records (四海唱片) along with Wang Ming-hui (王明輝), Chen Chu-hui (陳主惠) and Lin Wei-je (林煒哲), where they talked about working on something themselves. According to Chen: In the past the government prohibited people from speaking [in Taiwanese]; if you accidentally let some split in school they would make you stand with a placard reading "no dialects allowed." In this kind of education where students study 5,000 years of [Chinese] history, how many of them are familiar with [Taiwanese] history? The little details about Taiwan?

They formed the group Blacklist Studio and sought to interpret Taiwanese music through styles such as rap, folk, and rock, as opposed to the traditional tragic ballads of the past. In 1989, they released alternative Taiwanese rock album "Songs of Madness" (抓狂歌) with Rock Records. Each song reflected a social reality of the time: "Taxi" (計程車) and "Dad's Words" (阿爸的話) were about everyday life for the people, and the song "A-Tsao Democracy" (民主阿草) was a political satire about the "Thousand Year National Assembly" (referring to the fact that the most of the seats in the National Assembly, representing various provinces in China, were essentially made to be permanent members). Beyond reflecting the social situation of the time, the band opened new possibilities for Taiwanese language music.

The album was released close to election season, and the Kuomintang prohibited its broadcast. Though it was praised by critics, it was not a commercial success. Later, Chen Ming-chang would say: "We were prepared to be arrested or taken away but we still wanted to see whether the lifting of martial law was real or not."

"She Is Our Darling"
In 1990, Chen Ming-chang's music began to grow in popularity. He released two albums that year: Live Works 1 (現場作品(1)) and An Afternoon Drama (下午的一齣戲), and Live Works 2 in the following year. These works were all critically acclaimed in the music industry.

In 1992, after an island-wide tour of college campuses, Chen took a break from his solo career to write music for The Puppetmaster and other films. He felt that his music had become tired, and that it was easier to write film scores since the ideas were already in place.

In 1993, he wrote songs for events hosted by the Garden of Hope Foundation to rescue child prostitutes, and his experiences led him to write the song "She is Our Darling." This song was the anthem for the 228 Hand-In-Hand Rally in 2004, and was also played at the end of the 326 March To Protect Taiwan (三二六護台灣大遊行) in response to the passage of the Anti-Secession Law in China.

In 1993, Chen Ming-chang also struggled with issues of alcoholism. He had long seen alcohol as a source of creative inspiration but that year suffered from anxiety and panic attacks which made it hard for him to think. He would sometimes not get out of bed until the afternoon, drinking and working into the night until sunrise. After a case of alcohol poisoning, his doctor forbade him from drinking, and he would go to the mountain temples in Beitou every day to listen to Buddhist scripture readings.

"Wandering to Tamsui" and the Danshui Wandering Minstrels
Because of his illness, Chen Ming-chang stopped writing music for two years until 1995, when he wrote "Wandering to Tamsui" (流浪到淡水), which was inspired by the lifestyles of wandering minstrels Chin Man-wang (金門王) and Lee Ping-huei (李炳輝). Chen won the Best Composer award at the 9th Golden Melody Awards in 1998 for the song. The Taipei County Government deemed that the song was representative of the unique qualities of Danshui (Tamsui), and installed the lyrics on a plaque on Tamsui Lover's Bridge on Tamsui Fisherman's Wharf.

In 1995, he would write the score for the Hirokazu Koreeda film Maborosi, which won the Best Music Award at the 1995 Mainichi Film Awards in Japan.

In 1997, Chen Ming-chang founded a musical group called the Danshui Wandering Minstrels. The members of the band all had day jobs: the guitarist A-Chang (阿昌) was a judicial scrivener, bassist Steve (史帝夫) was an American lawyer, the drummer Little Huang (小黃) was a manager at a medicine factory, Huai-yi (懷一) worked in advertising, and Chen Ming-chang was growing orchids. Only their manager A-liang (阿亮) worked for the group full-time. They agreed that to not give up their day jobs so that playing music would remain a fun hobby for them. The group practiced on Saturdays and performed all across Taiwan.

In 1999, he wrote the score for the Lin Cheng-sheng film March of Happiness, which won the Best Music Award at the Asia Pacific Film Festival and was nominated for the Best Music Award at the 36th Golden Horse Awards.

"Hong Kong! Freedom"
On July 27, 2019, Chen Ming-chang released a single titled "Hong Kong! Freedom" (香港！自由) on YouTube in support of the anti-extradition bill protests in Hong Kong. The song had two versions, one in Taiwanese and the other in Cantonese. He also participated in a free public concert in Liberty Square that November in support of the Hong Kong protests.



Discography

 * Blacklist Studio (黑名單工作室), 1989
 * Live Works 1 (現場作品(1)), 1990
 * An Afternoon Drama (下午的一齣戲), 1990
 * Live Works 2 (現場作品(2)), 1991
 * We Are Not A People Without Feeling (阮不是一個無感情的人), 1995
 * Do Not Ask Our Name (勿問阮的名), 1999
 * The Last Car From Su'ao (蘇澳來ㄟ尾班車), 2002
 * "She Is Our Darling" (伊是咱的寶貝), single, 2004
 * Beloved Old Station (心愛的老車站), 2005
 * Lin Cheng-sheng's Film, Chen Ming-chang's Music (林正盛的電影‧陳明章的音樂) 2005
 * Hou Hsiao-hsein's Film, Chen Ming-chang's Music: Dust in the Wind (侯孝賢的電影‧陳明章的音樂：戀戀風塵), 2005
 * Hirokazu Koreeda's Film, Chen Ming-chang's Music: Maborosi (是枝裕和的電影‧陳明章的音樂：幻之光), 2005
 * The Whales, Paulonia Flower Bride (海尪·油桐花新娘), 2006
 * A Pile of Guitars (一堆吉他), 2006
 * Shaking the Mountains and Rivers (撼山河), 2017
 * "Freedom! Hong Kong" (香港！自由), single, 2019

Related articles

 * New Taiwanese Song movement
 * Chen Da (singer)
 * Hou Hsiao-hsien
 * Blacklist Studio