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Long-ge's Long Live
The heart and soul of an Amis drunkard
Written by Scott Ezell
THREE YEARS ago, Taitung abo-folksingers Banai (巴奈) and Chen Jian-nian (陳建年) were racking up sales with new releases for the local label Taiwan Colors Music (TCM). That's the only reason the label even began producing its recently released Long Live, a raw, rough jewel of abo-folk and talking blues that would be could have easily been ruined. But it wasn't.
The album puts the name of the recording artist a Long Live, though I prefer to call him Long-ge (龍哥) and will do so here. He shuffles through the album with his bottles and his cigarettes, doing nothing special except being himself, which as we all know is damn near impossible in the music industry. He thwacks the chords and melody out of an NT$800 guitar, forgets whole verses of songs, and spins stories like he has not a care in the world. The singing is primarily in Mandarin, with a few songs in Amis, his native aboriginal tongue. All of it is captured through recording media and pub PAs that add hisses and buzzes and aspirate pops on the "p"s.
The recording is a rare accomplishment. When folk or aboriginal music is moved from the street to the studio it is usually ruined. Long-ge was probably able to escape because he's so far out of the loop that the music industry machine couldn't pick him up on its radar. TCM is also the kind of label that allows such music to happen.
My favorite cut on the album is "Myself", in which Long-ge lays his drunkard self out on the table and stumbles in and out of politics and metaphysics, but without ever leaving himself behind. Some of the lines go like this: "Drunken, who's never been? Lee Tung-hui has been, Chen Shui-bian's even worse, Lien Chan just yesterday (this is nothing to do with politics!)" He also laments his own prospects within Taiwan's dollar democracy: "It's been a really long time since I had work, a long time since I had a tomorrow, a long time since I had a future." Then resignation emerges near the end of the song, as Long-ge sings, "I look at the calendar, already 30 years have gone by...but I'm still me, I'm still me..."
The album starts off with a song of wandering, a familiar theme of among abo folksingers that's often related to cultural disenfranchisement. Later in "Unfair", he brings theme into overtly political terrain. The song claims that aboriginals are the true owners of this land, and the fish and game of the rivers and mountains. The song goes on to say that, "Taiwan's ecology has been destroyed/ It's not aboriginals' fault/ Taiwan's original mountain forests were not destroyed by aboriginals." Unfortunately it's a rather simplistic take on a thorny issue. Certainly it was not aboriginal culture that destroyed the forests, though the actual work of felling and hauling the giant hinoki of the ancient forests was done by tribal workers. They were hired and forced to do so by Han Chinese conglomerates who acquired the rights from the KMT. Taiwanese aboriginals are unfortunately implicated in the destruction of their own land and traditions.
The last two songs are traditional Amis songs, sung gorgeously and in vocal harmony with another Amis singer, Li Bao-rong. These come off as effortless, and also connect seamlessly with the rest of the album. Long-ge seems to have internalized his traditional musical heritage, and maintained it within himself even while he has evolved into musical autonomy.
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The liner notes of Long Live and much of the promotional material surrounding Long-ge romanticize his drinking, turning him into a sort of noble drunkard. On one hand I something valid in Long-ge's refusal to grow up ("Refuse to Grow up", song #6). Maybe a certain level of self-destruction is preferable to furthering the wholesale destruction of the earth and his own culture. But at the same time, the death and destruction I've seen come out of a bottle also makes me cringe. To simply stand up and sing what he is with no apology is Long-ge's greatest accomplishment in these songs. His voice and heart wouldn't change if he never took another hit of wine.
Long ge plays Witch's Pub Thursday night at 9:30, and it should be a rollicking good show. Fellow Amis singer Li Bao-rong will join him on stage, as will A-minor, the roving abo backing band. Long-ge's album, Long Live, is available at Eslite stores, White Wabbit Records at the Wall, and at most major record stores.
▲文載於《破報300號》。
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