Child of a Hakka village
Born in Kaohsiung’s Meinong District in 1971, Lin Sheng-xiang was a typical child of a farming family. At the end of 1998, he returned to Meinong to join in the campaign against the construction of a reservoir. He and members of the Labor Exchange Band set up a rudimentary studio in a traditional tobacco curing barn, where they recorded two albums, Let Us Sing Mountain Songs and The Night March of the Chrysanthemums, which are considered classic works in the history of social movements and music in Taiwan.
Lin has worked with several different groups of musicians over his career, from Kuan-tsu Music Pit (aka Guanzi Music Pit) and the Labor Exchange Band to Water3 and the current seven-man lineup of Sheng-xiang & Band. Lin is the lead singer and plays the yueqin or “moon lute” (a four-stringed guitar-like instrument with a round sound box), and the band also includes Chung Yung-feng, who has produced countless moving lyrics over the years; guitarist Ken Ohtake, a longtime collaborator of Lin’s; and bass player Toru Hayakawa, who has a deep foundation in jazz. Alex Wu, who handles percussion, joined the band for the 2013 album I-Village, and in 2016 they added the drums of Noriaki Fukushima and the suona (a traditional Chinese woodwind instrument) of Huang Po-yu for the concept double-album Village Besieged, thereby completing the group that brings Lin Sheng-xiang’s musical imagination to life.
Lin, influenced by new Taiwanese-language singers like Chen Ming-chang, began to write songs in his native Hakka language back in 1993. “I clearly understood that the artistic value of the songs I wrote in my mother tongue was higher than that of the songs I wrote in Mandarin. When you create, you want to bring out your best stuff. I mean, who would want to bring out their second best? So I had no doubts about pursuing a career in Hakka-language music,” says Lin.
Let Us Sing Mountain Songs was an album about the campaign opposing the construction of a reservoir in Meinong. Perhaps music about social movements needs interaction and a connection with the public, so that having the audience join in or sing in response is very important. For example, the album’s title track encourages people who have traveled from Meinong to Taipei to protest at the Legislative Yuan to be fearless. The singer sings “Come! Let us sing mountain songs,” and the people offstage respond en masse by singing the line back again, boosting each other’s courage. Another example is the song “The Night March of the Chrysanthemums,” which tells the story of a young man from the countryside who fails to make it in the city and returns to the land to grow chrysanthemums. Daydreaming, he imagines himself as a commanding officer taking the roll call of the chrysanthemums lined up in rows before him. At every live performance, as soon as the intro to this song is played, the people in the audience happily act as the chrysanthemums, standing to attention ready to call out “Present!” in response to Lin Sheng-xiang’s calling of the roll. Those on stage and off join together as one, which becomes part of the performance: This is the voice of the people, singing their own songs.
Lin Sheng-xiang’s mother has been an important supporter of his musical career.