When you think of "musical poets", who do you think of? Is it Li Jian, who has frequently presented masterpieces in recent years? Is it the youthful Pu Shu? Or the school ballad Godfather Old Wolf?
In fact, long before them, there was a name that had already resounded across the taiwan strait and the three places. In the long river of Chinese music, this "music poet" has played an indelible role in promoting and leaving behind countless classics - he is the godfather of folk songs, Hu Defu.
Breaking out of the ground, majestic like mountains and rivers
Hu Defu, who is now exactly 70 years old, was born into an aboriginal family in DawuShan, Taitung County, Taiwan, and grew up in the tribe as a child, which taught him to live with nature. Mountains, rivers, lakes and seas have also become playmates that have accompanied him for many years.
After spending his childhood, Hu Defu came to Taipei to study, and at tamkang Middle School, where he was studying at that time, he saw the music world that his heart longed for.
Chen Sizhi, the principal of Tamkang Middle School at the time, would lead all the teachers and students to sing hymns and folk songs every day, and also let Hu Defu and other students who were just showing their musical talents form a quartet.
After entering college, Hoodev pursued music even more avidly, with English folk and Western music being his favorites. So later when he sang at the Café of the Colombian Embassy, he sang mostly popular English songs at the time.
The change in his understanding of music came after he met Li Shuangze, another pioneer of the folk song movement. After learning of Hudev's indigenous identity, Li Shuangze suggested that Hudev try to sing his own ethnic music, and Hudev began to understand the charm of national music and reflect on his own music creation.
"The Child on the Back of the Cow" is Hoodev's first work, which begins with the life on the back of the cow as a child, and the fragrance of the grassland and the quiet beauty of the valley come to the face. It also set the tone for Hoodef's countless later works — the vitality of breaking through the earth, and the beauty of mountains and rivers.
In 1974, Hu Defu held a concert of his works, becoming the first singer in Taiwan to hold a concert of his own works. In 1975, Hu Defu and Yang Xian held a modern folk song concert at Zhongshan Hall in Taipei, which became a landmark event of the "Campus Folk Song" movement.
Until his return to the music scene at the end of the 20th century, Hood retired for many years due to political factors, during which he devoted himself to speaking out for social issues and indigenous rights, while not forgetting to create, producing works of considerable significance such as "Why" and "No Song".
Half a world style, "Hurry" left behind
After giving a glimpse into the history of Chinese music in the 1970s, Hudev finally returned in the late 1990s.
He returned to Tamkang Middle School, where he had been enlightened, and found the piano played by the Canadian teacher in the chapel, and the producer kept the tape recorder on, singing whatever Hudev did.
The song recorded on this two-string piano later formed Hoodev's first album, Hurry, which ranged from "The Child on the Back of an Ox" from more than thirty years ago to "The Wind of the Pacific", which was newly created at the time.
But it is difficult for the average listener to identify the age of these songs, because each one is full of poetry that is not limited to time and space, and full of Hoodev's pulse and true feelings.
It was over 50 years before the release of the first album, so "Hurry" has more depth and thickness. At the 17th Golden Melody Awards in 2006, "Hurry" helped Hudev win the Best Lyricist Award, of which "Winds of the Pacific Ocean" won the Best Song of the Year Award.
That year's Golden Melody Awards were a group of stars, and the best annual song nomination was Tao Zhe's classic work "Sun Tzu's Art of War" in "Taiping Shengshi", and the best lyricist nomination was "Chopard in November" lyricist Fang Wenshan.
Hudelf's first words after winning the Best Lyricist Award were: "I want to thank my Brothers and Sisters of the Beinan tribe who accompanied me at the bottom of my life, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, in that material-free era." ”
He dedicated his talent and poetry to his homeland without reservation. Half a world of style, hurriedly left a sound.
Poetry into the song, life goes on
When he was a teenager, he was exposed to black spiritual songs, and when he was young, he was particularly enthusiastic about Western music, and Hudev's second album was a masterpiece that crossed national borders - "DawuShan Blues".
In search of musical inspiration, Hood made a special trip to Nashville, the birthplace of American country music. At that time, a friend introduced him to a recording engineer, who in turn introduced him to american musicians, the Black Spirit Song Choir, and the Prague Symphony Orchestra, who performed with Hoodev to complete the album.
In addition, "Dawushan Blues" also has Zhang Huimei and the golden song orchestra MATZKA to contribute, and finally named after Hu Defu's hometown of Dawushan, which shows the temperament of the album "mother tongue is the soul, foreign language is the body".
The third album, "Fragrant Valley", returned to his native language, and once completed the self-playing and self-singing One Take recording, thoroughly recording the singer Hudev over the years.
The throbbing longing for his mother, the surging praise of the earth, the lamentation and sentimentality of nostalgia, and the unadorned choking and sighing of the sixty-four-year-old, all covered with poetic clothing, with his melancholy and vigorous singing voice, transformed into a beautiful musical wandering.
With "Time", Hudev crossed time and space to sing again, a poetic feast of reunion was finally completed, the miracle of the long river of time was reborn, and the youth moment finally became eternal.
This is an affectionate dialogue between the sixty-eight-year-old Hudev and the twenty-year-old Hudev, telling the wind and frost and longing accumulated over the past fifty years.
Fast forward to the age of seventy, Hu Defu brought "The Last Hunter", setting a record for the oldest album in the Chinese music industry.
This album brings "poetry into song" to the extreme, and dialogues with a group of poets across time and space - Meng Jiao, Ma Zhiyuan, He Zhizhang, Master Hongyi...
Ancient poems intersect with thousands of years of ancient ballads, and the life experience of ancient rare years is interspersed with them, creating a dream chapter of poetry and song.
The poet is most afraid of the exhaustion of inspiration and the exhaustion of Jiang Lang's talents, and in the past fifty years of music career, he still has a strong desire to create and create creative ability, and Hu Defu is unparalleled in the Chinese music scene.
In his poems, it is the hurried years, the whispers of The Great Wu Mountains, the fragrance of the earth, the echoes of time, the mountains, rivers, lakes and seas in the information age, the loneliest hunter.