Yang’s recent works have been gradually veering from personal memories to a fable framework and evolving toward imaginations of a collective and surroundings. The Rhythm Inside derives from Yang’s experience of choir and is in collaboration with the Choir and the director from Taipei Municipal Heping Senior High School. A back-and-forth correction during the practice runs through the work along with a narrator who sometimes partakes in the narrative and sometimes withdraws from it. In this way, on the one hand, the relationships between an individual and a collective are fictionalized. On the other hand, a choir is viewed as a social microcosm.
Ode to Bozung, the Hakka song performed by the Choir, manifests a nostalgia for nation or collective event commonly found in a Taiwanese folk song. Its lyrics and composition develop into melodious and stimulating tunes. At the moment, the Yimin spirit of an era built with a sense of melodiousness and resonates to the collective awareness and identity which are metaphorized in The Rhythm Inside.
Ode to Bozung
“Yimin Ye” is an honorific title for militia who fought and sacrificed their lives to defend their homeland in strife, civil disorder and war. “Yimin” is the representative folk belief of Hakka people in Taiwan and the “Yimin Festival” is the most significant yearly festival of their culture. When the Hakka people were forced to immigrate to Taiwan, they found sustenance in their religious belief toward “Yimin Ye.” Nowadays, it is the spirit of “Yimin” and “Bozung” that represent the Hakka people’s bravery to blaze a trail.
Ode to Bozung describes “your love” from different ways, which is the core value of its lyrics and portrays the brightness and righteousness embodied in the Hakka spirit.
Ode to Bozung
Lyrics By: Lo Sirong
Composed By: SHIH, Ching-Ju
Authorized by TMC Culture and Arts Foundation
Performed by Taipei Municipal Heping High School Choir
Piano: Huan-Wei Lin
Director: Enoch Lu
Recorded and Mixed: J-H CHEN
Recording Assistant: Roger Hsu, Chien-Heng LUO
Equipment Coordinator: Yu-Chen LIN