Taiwan Campus Folk Song Movement

30-second overview: On December 3, 1976, at a concert at Tamkang College of Arts and Sciences, Li Shuangze smashed a Coca-Cola bottle and asked, “Why must we sing foreigners’ songs?” This “Tamkang Incident” launched Taiwan’s folk song movement. Yang Xian had premiered Four Rhymes of Nostalgia at Zhongshan Hall in 1975; Hu De-fu brought Indigenous ancient melodies into the scene; and the 1977 Jin Yun Awards and the Folk Style singing competition commercialized the movement, giving rise to a generation of folk singers including Chyi Yu, Tsai Chin, Yeh Chia-hsiu, and Li Chien-fu. Although the decade-long movement came to an end as talent went abroad and commercial forces took over, the spirit of “singing our own songs” continued into the generations of Lo Ta-yu, Cheer Chen, and Deserts Chang.

On December 3, 1976, at a concert at Tamkang College of Arts and Sciences,¹ a Filipino overseas Chinese student walked onstage holding a Coca-Cola bottle and carrying a guitar. Angrily, he asked the audience: “Why must we sing foreigners’ songs?” He slammed the Coke bottle onto the floor.² The sound of shattering glass later came to be seen as the moment when an era of musical colonialism was broken. That man was Li Shuangze, and this moment became known as the “Tamkang Incident,” the most symbolic starting point of Taiwan’s folk song movement.

Why did young people need to sing their own songs? As Taiwan in the 1970s faced a series of diplomatic crises, including withdrawal from the United Nations and the break in diplomatic relations between the Republic of China and the United States, young people began to think about a fundamental question: in this rapidly changing world, what voice truly belonged to us?

A Turning Point in the Times: Why “Sing Our Own Songs”?

Before the 1970s, Taiwan’s musical landscape was dominated almost entirely by Western popular music. From campuses to cafés, English-language songs were heard everywhere. Young people knew the melodies of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, yet knew almost nothing about the stories of their own land.

This sense of cultural uprootedness became sharper under the pressure of international events. Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, the termination of diplomatic relations between Taiwan and the United States in 1978, and the rise of the Baodiao movement to defend Chinese sovereignty over the Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands all led Taiwan’s youth to ask: Who exactly are we? Where is our voice?

Against this historical backdrop, “singing our own songs” was no longer merely a slogan, but a movement of cultural self-awareness. Young people were no longer satisfied with being listeners to Western music. They wanted to use their own language and their own stories to create a sound that belonged to this land.

Three Pioneers: Yang Xian, Hu De-fu, and Li Shuangze

Yang Xian: The Sower of Modern Folk Song

On June 6, 1975, Yang Xian, then a student at National Taiwan University’s Institute of Oceanography, held a “Modern Folk Song Composition Concert” at Taipei’s Zhongshan Hall.³ He set Yu Kwang-chung’s poem Four Rhymes of Nostalgia to music and introduced the concept of “modern folk song” for the first time.

Yang Xian’s innovation lay in combining modern Chinese poetry with American folk and country music, creating a musical form that Taiwan had not seen before. This concert is regarded as the formal beginning of Taiwan’s folk song movement, and Yang Xian consequently became known as the “father of modern folk song.”⁴

Hu De-fu: The Original Voice

Indigenous singer Hu De-fu was another important initiator of the movement.⁵ His performances at Columbia Café were a slow-moving form of cultural transmission. Hu began singing ancient melodies of the Puyuma people, allowing urban young people to hear, for the first time, the most primal and unadorned sounds of Taiwan’s land.

In 1974, Hu De-fu held the “Beautiful Rice Ears” concert. This was also the occasion on which Yang Xian first publicly presented Four Rhymes of Nostalgia, planting the seed for the Zhongshan Hall concert the following year.

Li Shuangze: The Bugle Call of Revolution

If Yang Xian was the sower and Hu De-fu the initiator, then Li Shuangze was the bugle call of revolution. The “Tamkang Incident” of December 3, 1976, was the most dramatic moment of Taiwan’s folk song movement.

This young man, recently returned from study travels in Spain and the United States, was originally supposed to perform in place of the injured Hu De-fu. Instead, he chose the most confrontational method to pose a question that cut to the soul of the audience below: “Why must we sing foreigners’ songs?”

The moment Li Shuangze smashed the Coca-Cola bottle was magnified from an outburst of personal emotion into a symbol of an entire generation’s resistance to cultural colonialism. His cry to “sing our own songs” quickly became the spiritual slogan of Taiwan’s campus folk song movement.

🎵 Listen: Li Shuangze, “Formosa” — version sung by Yang Tsu-chun

Engines of Commercialization: The Jin Yun Awards and Folk-Song Western Restaurants

The “Tamkang Incident” lit the fire of “singing our own songs,” but what truly brought folk songs into everyday society and turned them into a mass trend was the entry of commercial forces.

In 1977, Rock Records’ predecessor Hsin Ko Records launched the “Jin Yun Awards” singing competition; in 1978, Haishan Records founded the “Folk Style” competition.⁶ These two competitions became cradles for folk singers. Chen Ming-shao, Pao Mei-sheng, Li Chien-fu, and Wang Hai-ling emerged from the Jin Yun Awards; Tsai Chin and Yeh Chia-hsiu became representative figures of Folk Style; and Chyi Yu and Su Lai were stars who crossed the two camps.

At the same time, folk-song Western restaurants appeared everywhere. From Taipei venues such as “Wooden Boat” and “Scarecrow” to cafés across Taiwan, these places became stages where folk singers honed their craft and interacted with audiences. They were hubs of cultural exchange, allowing folk songs to move from campuses into society.

Stars of the Golden Age

Intellectual Folk Song

The intellectual strand of folk song, represented by Chyi Yu, pursued a fusion of poetry and philosophical reflection. Chyi Yu’s clear voice interpreted classics such as The Olive Tree and “Walking in the Rain,” revealing the literary side of folk song.

Native-Soil Folk Song

Yeh Chia-hsiu’s Country Road and Pan An-bang’s “Grandma’s Penghu Bay” represented the simplicity and warmth of the native-soil strand. These songs depicted the hometown that lives in everyone’s heart and touched the feelings of wanderers who had left home behind.

Urban Folk Song

Tsai Chin, Cheng Yi, and others represented the refinement and maturity of urban folk song. Their singing technique was more professional, and their musical arrangements more elaborate, bringing a modern metropolitan color into folk music.

The Birth of Classic Works

Countless classics were born during this period:

“Descendants of the Dragon” (lyrics and music by Hou Dejian, first sung by Li Chien-fu) emerged against the background of the 1978 termination of diplomatic relations between Taiwan and the United States. Expressing ethnic feeling and cultural identity among Chinese communities, it became one of the most historically weighty songs of the folk movement. “The Olive Tree” (Chyi Yu), with the line “for the little birds flying in the sky,” conveyed a romantic longing for freedom; “Just Like Your Tenderness” (Tsai Chin) displayed the subtlety and depth of urban romance; “Country Road” (Yeh Chia-hsiu) brought nostalgia and innocence together perfectly; “Grandma’s Penghu Bay” (Pan An-bang) wrote childhood memories and maritime lyricism into song; “Autumn Cicada” (Yang Fang-yi and Hsu Hsiao-ching) depicted the melancholy of youth; and “If” (Shih Pi-wu and Tai Chao-mei) offered a romantic imagining of love.

🎵 Selected Folk Classics: Pan Yue-yun, “Wild Lily Also Has Spring” ｜ Hu De-fu, “Wind of the Pacific”

The End of an Era and Its Transformation

In the early 1980s, Taiwan’s campus folk song movement began to decline. This decline had multiple causes:

A Break in Talent

After graduation, the movement’s main figures went abroad for advanced study or entered military service, creating a break in the talent pipeline. After releasing West of the Yang Pass in 1977, Yang Xian went to the United States to study traditional Chinese medicine. In September 1977, Li Shuangze drowned off the coast of Tamsui while trying to rescue a young man in the water; he was only 28. The two works he left behind in his lifetime, “Formosa” and “Young China,” were later completed and recorded by Yang Tsu-chun and Hu De-fu.² Many folk singers also temporarily or permanently left the musical stage because of career plans.

Changes in the Social Atmosphere

By the late 1980s, Taiwan’s social atmosphere had changed dramatically. After the lifting of martial law, the localization movement rose, and the atmosphere on university campuses shifted toward criticism of mainland Chinese cultural hegemony. Grassroots local culture began to replace the fresh, clean-cut style of campus folk song.

The Double-Edged Sword of Commercialization

Although commercialization made folk songs more widely accessible, it also gradually made musical creation more formulaic, eroding the innocence and experimental spirit of the movement’s early stage.

Legacy and Influence: Rebellious Heirs

Although the campus folk song movement came to an end, the legacy it left behind profoundly shaped later Taiwanese popular music.

Lo Ta-yu: Folk Song’s Rebellious Heir

Lo Ta-yu may be described as the most important rebellious heir of the folk song movement. He inherited the folk spirit of “singing our own songs,” but rejected folk song’s gentleness and innocence, turning instead to sharper and more critical ways of engaging social reality. From Pedantry to “Home,” Lo Ta-yu opened a new era in Mandarin-language popular music.

The DNA of Modern Independent Music

The independent folk singers we hear today, such as Cheer Chen, Deserts Chang, and Crowd Lu, all inherit the DNA of the folk song movement. They likewise create music with their own language and their own stories, and likewise attend to personal emotion and social issues, though their modes of expression are more diverse and more individualized.

The Enduring Spirit of “Singing Our Own Songs”

The greatest legacy of the folk song movement is the enduring spirit of “singing our own songs.” Whether in later new folk music, rock, or today’s independent music, this spirit continues in some sense: to use music to express one’s own voice, and to use creation to respond to the questions of the times.

Revival and Remembrance: Folk Song 40 and Folk Song 50

Entering the twenty-first century, as the folk song generation reached middle age, nostalgia began to ferment. Commemorative events such as “Folk Song 40” and “Folk Song 50” were held one after another, bringing these classic songs back into public view.

Yet this remembrance points toward the ideal itself: the belief that music could change the world. In today’s commercialized and digitized musical environment, the innocence and idealism represented by the folk song movement seem all the more precious and moving.

Conclusion: The Meaning of Voice

Taiwan’s folk song movement lasted only a short decade, yet it transformed the entire landscape of Mandarin-language music. It proved one thing: voice carries identity, cultural self-awareness, and the spirit of an era.

When Li Shuangze smashed the Coke bottle at Tamkang, the question behind “Why must we sing foreigners’ songs?” was in fact “Who are we?” and “What kind of people do we want to become?” That question remains valid today, and remains worth deep reflection by every creator.

In today’s globalized world, we may need even more urgently to ask: in a world filled with all kinds of voices, what voice truly belongs to us? How can we remain open while still finding our own cultural roots?

The answer Taiwan’s folk song movement gives us is this: do not be afraid to create with your own language and your own stories. Only in this way can we leave behind, in this world, a voice that truly belongs to us.

Further Reading

• Development of Taiwanese Popular Music — The mainstream axis of Mandarin-language popular music after the folk song movement, from Lo Ta-yu to Cheer Chen and Deserts Chang
• Taiwanese Literature After the Lifting of Martial Law — Another movement of cultural self-awareness after martial law was lifted in 1987, sharing the same spiritual source as folk song’s “singing our own songs”
• Taiwanese Cinema — The contemporaneous Taiwan New Cinema movement, another axis of local cultural awakening in Taiwan during the 1970s and 1980s

References