Un Chi Chien Andalou

October 5, 2009 7:54 AM

Does anyone have any details about this East Asian song?

I found a cassette at the local free bookshop yesterday. There was no case and no mention of an artist, but there were vague tracklistings on the cassette. The name of the song is "Shou Hou Chi Chien". Can anyone translate the lyrics or tell me more about the artist/song [was it famous?]

The tracklist:
A1. Black Forest - Hei Sen Lin [This appears to be a Chinese movie from the 60s]
A2. Take Off Your Veil
B1. Shou Hou Chi Chien
B2. Ying Bin Wu
B3. Taiwan Hau

I really like the song and would like to do a remix of it, and the more details I have, the better.

Thanks in advance.

posted by cloeburner to media & arts (10 comments total)

I'm afraid i've no idea what the song is, but i really like it - can you put the rest of the album up by any chance?
posted by mairuzu at 1:17 PM on October 5

Me and a friend from a Minnan-speaking bit of Fujian just had a listen and neither of us think it's in any Chinese language. Just a guess going off the fact that that Shaw brothers film Hei Senlin ('Black Forest') was filmed on location in Taiwan, I wonder if it's in a Taiwanese aboriginal language? I know next to nothing about those cultures (bar the story about that other song that got pinched by Deep Forest for their Olympic theme) but might be a useful avenue for further investigation.
Are there any Chinese characters on the cassette? If so an scan might help a search - the pinyin is non-standard which is only adding to the myriad possibilities for guessing what the title might actually be.
posted by Abiezer at 9:32 PM on October 5

Looks like you've got yourself a tape of Taiwanese folk dances! Googling the exact phrase for the song title brings up this page, which mentions "Shou-Hou Chi-Chien" in a list of Taiwanese folk dances that also include other tracks from your cassette (B3's "Tai-Wan Hau" (Hello Taiwan?) and B1's "Ying Pin Wu").

The spelling isn't the pinyin romanization that mainland China uses, but I think the names on the tracklisting are meant to depict Mandarin names anyway (possibly using Wades-Giles romanization), though I agree that the song doesn't sound like Mandarin and that it's probably in some sort of Taiwanese dialect. I don't know much about Taiwanese culture either, but I doubt the dialect is Hokkien (based on the few times I've heard it spoken in films). Some of the words do remind me of Japanese, though, and Japan did occupy Taiwan for a time, so maybe the song's in a Taiwanese dialect that has some Japanese mixed in it? Hope this helps narrow it down! And if you can put up a picture of the cassette, if there's any characters on it, that should make it easier to ID the language and find the song.
posted by cobwebberies at 11:11 PM on October 5

Ah ha, now we're cooking. Going from cobwebberies link, the song was one of those performed by 張慶三 (the Chang Ching-shan at the linked page, would be romanised Zhang Qingsan in hanyu pinyin and Chang Ch'ing-san in Wades Giles I believe, so it does seem to be that odd random system you used to get). Anyway, googling Mr Chang's name came up with this thread at a Taiwanese folk song and dance forum and there's a track list there that includes:
"Chang, C-S Shou-Huo Chi-Chieh Taiwan 80 --------------------- 收穫季節"

I bet that's our song with a typo on the tape and again some very wacky romanisation (would be shouhou jijie in hanyu pinyin and the chien put me off the scent)。 收穫季節 means something like 'Harvest Time' and I suppose it's a harvest festival song. It lists another name which I thought might be the singer, 李玉琳 (Li Yulin), but a search for that found a crappy Geocities page with a doc file that had this:

收穫季節 (李玉琳)
簡介 : 本舞於民國六十八年七月由李玉琳在十八期土輔中所編 . 並由其輔導
之組員參加比賽 . 或創作冠軍獎 .
音樂 : 2 / 4 C . C . S . -1044唱片 .

"About Harvest Time (Li Yulin)
This dance was created by Li Yulin in July of Minguo 68 [i.e. 1979] at the Centre for Teaching Folk-dance and a group of dancers s/he coached performed this in competitions and won championships with it.
Music: In 2/4 time, from the record C.C.S. 1044 [presumably Chang Ching-shan recording no. 1044]"
I agree with it sounding a bit Japanese in places, but would be surprised if it's any type of Hokkien or Hakka - my friend speaks a Hokkien dialect as a native and I'd expect them to recognise one on tape. Will ask again as it was hardly a scientific study, more a 'quick, what do you reckon this is?'. I still suspect on of the aboriginal languages though.
posted by Abiezer at 12:00 AM on October 6

Oops, reading over my comment, "由李玉琳在十八期土輔中所編" should be something more like 'created by Li Yulin at the 18th session of the Centre for Teaching Folk-dance/central folk dance teaching camp" or something similar.
posted by Abiezer at 12:09 AM on October 6

That is some ace detective work, Abiezer! So cool. I'm super rusty on my few years of Mandarin study, so the farthest along I got was guessing that the "chi" might be a "ji" of some sort. (Seeing "Hsi Yu Chi" for 西遊記 used to bug me as a kid, so Wades-Giles is still the first thing that comes to mind when I see non-hanyu pinyin, very scientific.) Oh, and I don't think it's a Hokkien/Hakka dialect either, though that might have been unclear. Quite curious about the song's language now, that's for sure.

I wonder if looking up the other songs on the cassette would help further identify this one, like if they were all recorded by the same person or in the same language, or if the tape's just a compilation of someone's Top Five Taiwanese Folk Dances.
posted by cobwebberies at 2:15 AM on October 6

Well, I'd have got nowhere near without your initial breakthrough cobwebberies. Sense I get is that maybe Mr Chang was a folk-song collector too - I wonder if that serial number refers to some catalogue of songs he collected - the thread on that Taiwanese site is an obit post for him and has various posts with images of books he edited - must admit only skimmed it and they seemed to be folk-dance collections.
Had a quick look at some aboriginal folk culture sites in Taiwan, and I see this page (had to check Google cache to access it myself) mentions "the obvious signs of music performance style of Basay、Kavalan、Amis and Japanese" in the music of one group, the Kavalan, and that their harvest songs were called miomio sinawari. No idea if that's the style of song we have, but fits with the Japanese influences we heard. I wonder if the OP could contact a folk song agency in Taiwan to inquire further?
posted by Abiezer at 3:15 AM on October 6

Wow, that's amazing detective work. The cassette has only pinyin on it, so there is no further help beyond the track titles I gave you. I am going on a bike ride, but when I get back, I will record the rest of the songs and upload them and that might be of some assistance. Thanks, this is an incredible response.
posted by cloeburner at 5:07 AM on October 6

As a thank you and to assist further research, here is the full tape.
posted by cloeburner at 7:18 AM on October 6

Maybe the song's in some kind of Amis? Searching for "收穫季節 (李玉琳)" brings up this one school's page (translated), where the dance is listed amongst a bunch of other dances that refer to the Ami (阿美族), a group of non-Han Taiwanese aboriginals. And "Taiwan Hau" sounds sort of like this song, sung by Ami singer Difang Duana (郭英男), which got turned into a remix that you might like. The Difang remix also comes with its own copyright controversy, but I'm guessing that wouldn't affect your remix goals based on this bit from Difang's wiki page:

In response to these lawsuits, a local Taiwanese recording industry representative, from the Association of Recording Copyright Owners, said that folk music was in the public domain and aboriginal people who performed, or arranged, it could not claim any copyright on it (whereas, it can be assumed, non-aboriginal performers like Genesis could claim that copyright).

No idea if that's accurate (IANAL), but there you go! And thanks for putting up the rest of the tape, cloeburner. It's got some awesome-sounding stuff on there.
posted by cobwebberies at 2:53 PM on October 6