On October 4th, Bai Yansong and Li Shouquan, two senior veterans, had a live conversation at the Shanghai Simple Life Festival, and many people regretted that they could not personally observe their conversation.
Watching the live broadcast in front of the computer has mixed feelings, because there are too many insights in the words that are worth chewing. For Taiwanese folk songs, thirty years have passed, and new problems have emerged with new minds, but in these old guys, there are always some shining things that attract you and last forever.
The atmosphere of the conversation is not different from a formal interview, but like a large study, all the people present are guests, some people are full of doubts, and people are not stingy to teach...
After the simple greeting of the host Zhu Dan, Bai and Li calmly took the stage and were personable. Bai Yansong joked: "The reason why I like music and dare to say it is because my surname is Bai, and it is also Bai anyway." "The atmosphere was also lively, and I knew that the conversation that followed was going to be interesting.
What makes you who you are now?
Bai Yansong is a talkative person, as soon as he sat down, he opened the conversation box, and he couldn't wait to introduce the artist around him to the young audience, saying that he was the gold medal producer of "A Game, a Dream" and "Hitch a Ride".
After the conversation began, he talked a lot about his youth, as well as the songs that influenced him in that era, most of which were Taiwanese folk songs from the 1980s.
Taking advantage of the thirty-year anniversary of the publication of "8 and a Half," he said, "I can't imagine that there would be no music in the course of my life, at least I wouldn't sit here."
Thirty years is a wonderful fate, and the word that Bai Yansong mentions the most is "gratitude". He was blunt: "I will never go back to the present, because the current song is so ugly!" ”
But this was another helpless thing, Zhu Dan interrupted him, thirty years ago the song is still needed, but because modern people have nothing to listen to, this is indeed a painful thing for art creators.
As a creator, Li Shouquan behaved very calmly, he felt that because this era was different from thirty years ago, there was no mobile phone and no Internet at that time, singing and writing songs was a very natural thing.
Whether it is to make that era more pure or too noisy, in fact, it is not about right or wrong, but about the times.
Bai Yansong is very sober, and he knows that the regression of the quality of the work is inseparable from the catalysis of the market. So he told the audience in a firm tone:
Now that everyone listens to a new song to evaluate whether it is good or not, it may only take half a song's time, and the creators will find ways to meet the status quo of this fast food. Therefore, what kind of works will appear in the Chinese music scene in the future, the decision is not in the hands of musicians, but in your hands! Your needs will shape the music.
In fact, what Bai Yansong really appreciates is not only the precious works of art thirty years ago, but also these works that are close to the heart that shaped him thirty years later.
Thirty years ago, when he was eighteen, he read obscure poems for the first time, he heard Cui Jian's cry of "Nothing" in the Workers' Gymnasium, he watched a complete World Cup match in his life, he participated in the first military training, read the first martial arts novel...
The forty-eight-year-old looked back and found that it was those humble things that shaped him. When you are eighteen years old, you meet anything, and these things will become indelible marks in your life.
He told the young audience below in a serious tone: "When you make a choice at the age of eighteen, you must be careful, not just give you a girl..."
Li Shouquan, who was on the sidelines, also came to be interested, and he admitted that the four years of college were the best time to know himself, just like himself, an economics student crossed the line to make music.
At the strong request of Bai Yansong, who called himself a guitar "abandoned" for a long time, he still picked up a box piano and sang the song "Zhang San's Song" with the whole audience.
Don't rush to share it until you're done
After a song was sung, a small episode occurred, Bai and Li sighed that the way of listening to songs had changed dramatically in the past thirty years, when Zhu Dan, as the host, said bluntly: The audience below is listening to songs on mobile phones.
Because, at the moment of singing on stage, in fact, few people focus on the chorus of the whole audience, but use mobile phones to record, hoping to send it to the circle of friends at the first time, hoping that everyone knows that they are with Li Shouquan and Bai Yansong.
But the real question is, how much do we actually hear? We are always anxious to share with others quickly, but before sharing, can we try to feel and experience with our hearts.
Why are songs from the eighties and nineties more enduring, because tapes at that time were very expensive, and you had to listen to them ten or twenty times after you bought them. Bai Yansong refers to the song that can only be loved by chewing repeatedly as "Second Eye Beauty".
They naturally talked about the record culture, the era of albums is dying, the era of singles is coming, and they all ask with regret: Will albums like "Lost Wall" and "Hitch a Ride" still exist in the future?
A song written for a wanderer
"8 and a Half" is a song written for the wanderers, intended to sing the mood of the foreigners in that era who worked hard in the city. In this era, wandering has been given a different meaning.
People in this era have neither a "hometown" nor a "former home", so what music can give us is an effective way to escape in the powerless reality.
It's just that the once "wandering" is optimistic. And today's "wandering" is a confession of fate...
If you drifted to a desert island with only one book and one record, what would you bring?
Bai Yansong's answer is Bach and the Tao Te Ching, and Li Shouquan's answer is "Ci Hai" and Schubert's unfinished...
Finally, there was one thing that particularly impressed me. An audience member asked, she felt that in the contradictory era, her youth was hard, and she did not know how to go on. Bai Yansong thought slightly and smiled slightly: "Beauty, it is easy to have no generation of youth." ”
Every era is not easy, and every era will encounter the problems of each era. Thirty years ago, Li Shouquan and his generation of young people gathered all day long to ponder the whirlwind of the "folk song movement" sweeping across the entire island of Taiwan, and Bai Yansong's generation of students were hungry under the tide of openness in an era when their material lives were not very fulfilling.
And our generation of young people are plagued by the paradox of buying a house or a car all day long, and are confined to a smaller pattern in order to live more steadily.
But is it still called youth when you live a solid life?