Ma Shifang. Network diagram
Yangtze River Daily Rong Media June 12 (reporter Wan Jianhui) "Nanjing", "Chengdu" ... There are also Wuhan singer Feng Xiang's "Hanyangmen Garden" and "Liudu Bridge", and recently, a folk song that sings the city has become a popular music phenomenon that has attracted much attention. Ma Shifang, a well-known music critic in Taiwan, also noticed this phenomenon and had unique insights. On the afternoon of the 11th, Ma Shifang was invited to Wuhan Wuwai Bookstore to participate in the reader sharing meeting, and the reporter of Changjiang Daily conducted an exclusive interview with him.
A belly full of pop music
Ma Shifang was born in Taipei in 1971 to her mother Tao Xiaoqing, an important promoter of folk songs on Taiwanese campuses in the 1970s, and a writer to her father, Liang Xuan. At the age of 9, Ma Shifang told stories on the radio classical music program, and after graduating from high school, she began to work as a radio guest, introducing classical rock music.
He has been a radio host for 28 years. In June 2015, his video program "Hear and Say" premiered, introducing singers, tracks and anecdotes about cross-strait pop music from the 1920s and 1930s to the 1970s and 1980s.
Ma Shifang knows that many music scenes are in charge, because Li Zongsheng and other later music celebrities were his family's guests.
"There are so many interesting stories in the history of pop music, it is difficult to take the initiative to dig, and I don't know how to know so many palms, which may be related to my family, or it may be related to me as a host, interviewing many singers every year, and contacting many people in the circle." 」
Li Zongsheng shut himself in the bathroom to write songs
Ma Shifang said, "I know too much about the production process of pop music, pop music is actually a craft, and writing songs is a particularly hard thing for singers. "Whether it is a writer or an artist, they have a consensus: creation depends on discipline, not inspiration.
For example, Li Zongsheng, writing "Let Me Rejoice and Make Me Worry", was really uninspired, at that time in Hong Kong, living in a hotel, with his wife, he really had no way, the headquarters in Taipei called to urge the manuscript. He shut himself in the toilet, locked the door, sat down on the toilet, and wrote it down with all his heart, and that's how he wrote it.
Luo Dayou wrote "Wild Lilies Also Have Spring", and then it was time to sing it to Pan Yueyun, he only knew that this song was related to a movie, he wanted to finish, what to do, everyone was waiting for him. "It's like a dream." He scolded himself as he wrote, but there was no way, because every minute and every second of time asked for money. "I'll just think of you and hate you..." Feel free. Some places are not so neat. But later it turned out that this song was also very good, and it became a famous work of Luo Dayou.
<h1>The song of the city must have an appeal that transcends the locality</h1>
The more "local" it is, the more likely it is to be the world
Read+: What is your impression of Wuhan and its musicians?
Ma Shifang: I came to Wuhan for the first time, and I went straight from the airport to a hotel near the Wuwai Bookstore, without taking a closer look at the city. But at dinner in the evening, friends in Wuhan used their mobile phones to broadcast Feng Xiang's songs, which felt particularly good. The Wuhan dialect is not completely incomprehensible, and Feng Xiang's voice is leisurely and relaxed. Back at the residence, I quickly checked Feng Xiang's works, including "Hanyang Gate Garden", "Yellow Crane Tower", "Liudu Bridge", I heard that they were all named after Wuhan place names.
Read +: Is there a song named after a city or a place name in a city?
Ma Shifang: In 2013, musician Xie Mingyou released an album called "Tainan", many of the songs in "Tainan" were sung in Hokkien, and the chants in this album had the smell of Tainan.
Read +: Luo Dayou's "Lukang Town" mentions Taipei many times, is it a song written in Taipei?
Ma Shifang: Not counted. This is not because there are more Lukang than Taipei in the song. The neon lights in Taipei in the song are just a symbol, but in fact, they write about the drifting, alienating and disillusioned feelings of the "North Drift" youth. This is the feeling that every urbanizing society, small town youth entering the metropolis, is a global proposition.
Reading +: So, some songs named after the city have nothing to do with the city?
Ma Shifang: Yes. For example, Li Zhi sang "Memories of Zhengzhou". However, some songs, with the singer's birth or life in the city, the distinctive characteristics of the region, even if the song name is not named after these cities, does not affect the fans' love, but strengthens the vitality and continuous dissemination of these songs, such as the Xinjiang and Northwest folk music elements in The Horse Strip Song, and the Northeast Two-Person Rotation Element in the Second-hand Rose Song.
Read +: What kind of song does it really belong to a city?
Ma Shifang: The more "local", the more likely it is to be the world, so the song that truly belongs to a city must have a universal vitality and appeal beyond the locality, so that people in foreign countries can also like it. For example, "Kill that Shijiazhuang Man" by Universal Youth Hostel is about the feeling of depression and the sense of despair before the emotions are about to explode, and their tour in Taiwan is so popular because it first has a grounded foundation, and then there is an artistic transformation process that can resonate with people thousands of miles away.
Therefore, if a musician creates a song that promotes a city as a starting point, the songs that come out must be difficult to hear. Similarly, most of the songs about the city collected by the public are difficult to hear. Now you give Zhao Lei another million and let him write "Chongqing" and "Xi'an", and he probably can't write it. Between the city and the song, they can't force each other.
Pop music is first and foremost a craft
Reading +: In recent years, some cities on the mainland have held music festivals, can they affect the cultural temperament of the city?
Ma Shifang: I have watched the Strawberry Music Festival in Beijing and the Simple Life Music Festival in Shanghai in the past few years, which attracts many young people and is very popular. Whether it can affect the cultural temperament of the city depends on the foundation of local musicians, and local musicians see the performances of the national frontline through these music festivals and inspire them. Cultivating music audiences, it seems that these music festivals account for a large proportion of professional fans who come from all over the country every time. However, in a city like Wuhan, I heard that there are more than one million college students, so the potential for cultivating a music audience is still very large. In general, running a music festival cannot change the cultural temperament of a city in the short term.
Read +: Why do you say that pop music doesn't have anyone educated on whom?
Ma Shifang: We all have this experience, that is, we think that the classic songs are mostly popular songs in our youth, and we will be very paranoid insistence on this. Surveys also show that the average age of the main listeners of popular music is 15 years old. Therefore, both singers and record companies must make music that young people between 15 and 20 years old like. For these teenagers, most of the songs they like are those songs that they feel enjoyable and emotionally "irritable". So pop music has no one to educate anyone, although a generation has a generation's taste, it must be flattering, sensational, and a mutual entertainment. Pop music cannot be raised to cultural standards without moving, I said that it is first and foremost a craft, otherwise, it is full of virtual things.
In the Internet era, the odds of having a music superstar are declining
Reading +: Compared with the 1980s and 1990s, why do we feel that there are fewer and fewer songs that can be accepted and sung by the whole people?
Ma Shifang: After 2000, we have entered the Internet era, young people have passively accepted popular music from the past, and now actively choose on the Internet, listening habits are decentralized, fragmented, and tastes are increasingly differentiated and niche. In the past, there were few ways of entertainment, and now it is worth distracting gameplay to play, so the fanatical level of music does not seem to be as hot as it was then. In such an era, the advantage is that the threshold for music creation is getting lower and lower, and anyone who has a work can get a try on the Internet. The bad thing is that musicians have fewer and fewer opportunities to earn money from their works to support themselves. There is no need to release an album, and now it is all online by singles. Singers are mostly popular by accident, and there must be a reason for redness, but they cannot be predicted. So in this era, the odds of having a musical superstar are declining.
Read +: Now that artificial intelligence can also create music, where will future musicians go?
Ma Shifang: Humans have to race with trains, and when the train first starts, they can also send Olympic champions to run with it, but after the train accelerates, humans have no drama. I think in the field of music creation too, this is already happening, there are robots that can help you compose music, and it's not necessarily bad. Now that artificial intelligence automatic composition is perfect, Hollywood in the United States will give some people in India to make music, use computers to combine work experience, and make works that meet the specifications, which is already happening.
However, the creation of lyrics or poems, considering what our aesthetic standards are, is immeasurable. Unlike playing Go, there is no absolute standard for beauty, which is something that is difficult for artificial intelligence to master. When I was a child, I saw a picture of a beautiful woman's face that was recognized all over the world as a face, but this face was not beautiful at all. Creation is the same, what is a painting called good-looking, how to call a song touching, the standard is relative, not absolute, this may be the biggest challenge encountered by artificial intelligence, some things are not scientifically definable, it is vague things.
【Editor: Geng Gazhuo】