By Jocelle Koh
Graphics by Allison Sun

When we caught up with Taiwanese band The Chairs hot off the heels of their win at the 30th Golden Melody Awards, the guys seemed as down to earth and chill as ever. Often referring to their music as a dreamlike journey, we requested for a tour through their musical wonderland, diving deep into their musical inspirations, backgrounds and what they hope to achieve through their music.
 
1.Firstly, congratulations on winning ‘Best Vocal Group’ at the 30th Golden Melody Awards! When you first knew about being nominated, did you have any hopes for winning at the awards?
 
Of course we are so thankful for the judges’ affirmations, this is our first Golden Melody Awards experience, everyone was very much looking forward to it. However we didn’t have too much expectations towards winning, we felt that being nominated was already a big achievement and affirmation in itself!
 
2.Overseas audiences are perhaps not as familiar with your works. Could you share with us a little about each of your band members, and why you started this band to begin with?
 
Our members are Yong Jing (Lead Vocals, Guitarist), Zhong Ying (Lead Vocals, Guitarist), and Ban Sen/Bo Yuan (Bassist). We started playing together since we were in Guitar club in high school, and this year is our tenth year as a band. In university we named ourselves Chair Band and started releasing works under that name until we released our first album in 2015. This was a big musical milestone for us.

By Jocelle Koh
Graphic Design by Allison Sun

We fell in love with Taiwanese R&B outfit Sugarcat back in 2017, back when they were just a two-person unit composed of A-lan (lead vocalist, guitarist) and Gao Zhen (lead vocalist, drummer). Releasing songs in a familiarly cheerful vein of R&B but with a new twist, the guys were a hit with me, and continued to be as they toyed with different iterations of East-meets-West fusions within their amiable sound across a myriad of singles.
 
So when their debut self-titled album ‘Sugarcat’ came out earlier this year, seeing the boys debuting this time with a full band, I had to get in on the action and pick their brains. I was particularly curious about what it was which led them to experiment with East-meets-West R&B that felt very much like a revamp of the early works of Jay Chou, David Tao and Khalil Fong; and it seems that our guesses at their musical influences weren’t far off the mark at all.
 
“We didn’t consciously try to emphasise East-meets-West in our music, especially since this style has been done before (Khalil Fong, David Tao, Jay Chou…), of course we have been deeply influenced by them. I think you could say that since we grew up nurtured by Mandarin music while exploring overseas classics as we grow; through listening discovery and practicing our instruments, this has slowly had a big influence on our musical logic.”

​By Jocelle Koh
Graphic Design by Allison Sun

Mulling over things after concluding my phone interview with singer-songwriter Diana Wang, I realised that the alternative R&B darling is (to the best of my recollection) the only artist whom I’ve interviewed three times*. Multiple interviews are a rare occurrence for various reasons, but the most pertinent one being that we only write features when we feel there’s a story there that needs to be told.
 
Wang is like a cat with nine lives; constantly reinventing, constantly reimagining and constructing new possibilities for herself as an artist. As a result, with each new body of work it seems there are always new stories to be told and new perspectives to be unearthed. So I was particularly looking forward to chatting with the Netherlands-born artist and diving deep into the experiences that lay behind her latest mini album ‘Moon’.
 
If her last album ‘Poem’ with FU MUSIC was a curated reintroduction to Diana Wang, Wang’s latest body of work ‘Moon’ reveals a deeper, more introverted side to the demure diasporic artist.

As the inaugural Taiwanese Waves showcase at New York City’s Summerstage draws close for the fourth year, this year’s line-up is spectacularly and regally feminine in nature. Nicknamed ‘Taiwanese Baes’, the event has chosen to feature some of the most unique and empowering female artists the scene has to offer, including unique up-and-comer 9m88 and Aboriginal powerhouse Abao, as well as pioneers in the indie rock and pop scenes respectively; Tizzy Bac and OneFang (Wanfang).
All with their own stories to tell, the four acts come together in the city that never sleeps to bring a diverse audience a new sense of what it means to be a female artist who is part of the Taiwanese music scene in this day and age. Read on to hear more about their thoughts on New York City, and what to expect from this years’ festivities.

1: Impressions of New York
Hui-Ting (Tizzy Bac): City of the world (laugh)

9m88: A really big, smelly, and culture dimensional city that a lot of fun things happen.

Wan-Fang: My impression of New York is that many people go to New York to find his or her true-self, searching for dreams and search for who they really are. When we throw ourselves in New York, it’s like we are nothing so that we can feel the true-self and the most original stage of ourselves. By seeing people from around the world, I think it’s a process that you can understand some things.

ABAO: It’s a fashion city.

2: How many times have you been to New York? What are you looking forward to do in New York?
Hui-Ting (Tizzy Bac): This is my first time going to New York. I will go to MOMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art first, and then the next thing is to go to "Sleep No More".

9m88: I've been to New York a lot. It's a bit nervous for me to come back to New York because it's my first time coming back ever since I left at the end of last year. I feel a bit of resistant. Don't know how my feelings will be, but I have a lot of good friends that I miss in New York, really looking forward to seeing them.

Wan-Fang: I haven't counted how many times. I will stay a few days longer, but I'm not sure what I will do, I want to see what is happening in this city. I want to see what would happen if I just throw myself in New York. No special plans to do anything.

ABAO: This is my first time going to New York. I want to go find some elements that is related to Soul music, go see some performance and street dancing parties.

Article by Matt Taylor
Graphics by Allison Sun

Editor's Note: Following on from our 'Songs of Defiance' piece on LGBTIQ Mandopop, the recent Hong Kong protests caught our attention and made us think about the Cantopop canon in a new light. If 'Songs of Defiance' define the spirit of musical and societal interactions in Taiwan, 'Songs of Survival' truly represent Hong Kong's brand of fighting spirit. 

The word ‘Cantopop’ is one that immediately brings to mind legends such as Sam Hui 許冠傑, Anita Mui 梅艳芳, and Jacky Cheung張學友. A symbol of Hong Kong’s reputation as the cultural powerhouse of the Chinese-speaking world in the 1980s; these artists and many more were the embodiment of a cultural and economic golden age with their soaring ballads, irresistible dance numbers, and elaborate over-the-top performances. By the 1990s however, the rise of China as a potential market and the impending handover of Hong Kong to the Beijing government seemed to have set the industry on a seemingly irreversible decline.

As such, it makes sense that contemporary iterations of Cantopop are also inherently political - an intrinsic barrier to the Mainland’s Mandarin-language culture homogenization efforts. In a fight to keep alive Hong Kong’s uniqueness and autonomy as a nation; people are clinging to Cantopop in a last-ditch survival effort to express their identity and be heard.
​
Especially given the recent protests surrounding a controversial extradition bill, Cantopop is emerging more and more as a critical mouthpiece for the people of Hong Kong. Here we look at the ways Hong Kongers are using the Cantopop canon to make their voices heard. 

Author: Jocelle Koh
Graphic Design: Allison Sun

With an unmistakable perm and effortlessly jazzy vocals, 9m88 has been both a breath of fresh air and a dark horse on the Mandarin music scene ever since her ever-growing presence and laidback sound was featured on rapper Leo Wang’s song ‘Weekends With You’ in 2016. Note the use of the word ‘feature’ rather than ‘debut’ – for all the success that the fashion and musically-forward artist has garnered over the years (performing at Clockenflap; collaborating with contemporary greats such as Sodagreen’s Wu Qing Feng, OZI, Ma Nien-Hsien; appearing on Marie Claire, Vogue, the list goes on…) the singer-songwriter has yet to debut with a full body of work.
 
Seeing all the hints being dropped on her social medias though, we feel that a great deal of long-awaited original work might be coming our way very soon! Yet before it does, we wanted to unpack the phenomenon of 9m88 and her ascent to visibility through the tactic of collaboration.

Given the increasing saturation of the market and therefore need to stand out, defining success in a pop musical collaboration setting has also become even more stringent and multifaceted. Does the song capture a good mix of the artists’ respective sounds? Does it have potential to create visibility that will translate to new engaged audiences? Does the positioning of the artists fit together? Was the cost required to collaborate worth the visibility? How does one define their expectations for ‘visibility’? And so the list goes on and on and on… In short, executing collaborations is easy enough, but creating a successful and effective collaboration is no walk in the park

9m88: The Perfect Collaboration Partner
 And yet, 9m88 seems to be the queen of this delicate balancing act of collaboration. In a chicken-and-egg cycle, her high-quality brand attracts the right kinds of partners, and through intimate collaboration she skilfully and painstakingly renegotiates the final product (music and visuals) to work very much in her favour. For stakeholders, her presence on a project is both lucrative and quality-approved; and on the creative side of things her indomitable uniqueness AND musical versatility make her the perfect collaboration partner.
 
So how exactly did 9m88 leverage the art of artist collaboration to navigate her way upstream in such a competitive and saturated industry? We break down several of her notable collaboration projects to date in an effort to crack the code.

On a sticky, humid morning in sunny Singapore, I sat down to a skype call with the big thinkers behind the East-meet-West webseries ‘Pineapple’, Peter Rafe and Jane Chow as well as their composer Tav Bartlett. A comedy webseries set in Hong Kong; the themes within the series skilfully and uniquely expand past the jurisdictions of the little island within the compounds of a local international school.
 
Recently screened at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, the brainchild of co-creators Peter and Jane was borne from a lifetime of experiences as part of the Asian diasporic community, something which I myself am more than familiar with. Between the four of us at the skype interview, myself, Peter, Jane and Tav shared experiences and heritages that spanned the world over. Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, America, Botswana, Britain, Thailand, Australia…the list goes on.
 
Just from the sharing of each of our backgrounds, it became clear that for many members of the Asian diasporic population, our identities are not defined solely by the places in which we were born or raised. It is defined by an almost immiscible mishmash of our experiences, the cultural practices of our parents or surrounding communities, and everything else in between.

By Jocelle Koh
 
Young, vivacious and ready to take on the world, 18 year-old Jannine Weigel’s already-long list of accomplishments makes us feel old just by listing them. Not only does the Thai-German artist sing, dance and act; the fact that she transitions smoothly between performing in her familial tongues as well as English puts us very much to shame. Not to mention the fact that she’s acted in various television series’ and commercials since she was in her tweens. It’s clear that for Weigel, performance is in her blood.
 
Amassing a mind-boggling online following through her YouTube covers before moving swiftly on to releasing original, multilingual content that speaks to her heritage and experiences, Jannine’s ascent to visibility is buoyed by her evident passion and enthusiasm for performing and learning. From videos of her guessing the names of Vietnamese artists; to singing covers of American and German artists; to her own multilingual original works, it is clear that this young go-getter is living in a global, tech-friendly society, and very adept to this environment too. We dug deep to find out more about how the bubbly artist’s multicultural background and experiences have influenced her budding philosophy and musical works.
 
1. You’ve accomplished so much for your young years! Do you have a particular milestone that you’re really proud of?
​Thanks! Something that I'm really proud of until now, I think, is getting signed with Universal Music, because I've always wanted to work with Universal Music. And they just contacted me last year. So we kind of just started working together. And it was kind of still, like, … a surprise to me that they contacted me because I feel like Universal Music is such a big company, and that they decided to contact me and wanted to work with me is, like, a really great honor to me. So yeah.

Author: Jocelle Koh
This interview was done in collaboration with KKBOX SG

Many familiar with the K-pop or indie Korean scenes will have heard of Korean-American band Royal Pirates, whose English language tracks bridged many borders over the years with their unique musical stylings. Followers would also have heard about their talented bassist James JH Lee, whose passion for music allowed him to play as a bassist professionally for 13 years over a variety of genres including metal, indie rock and K-pop. In 2015, a debilitating and unfortunate accident severed James’ hand, putting an abrupt end to his career as a bassist, and forcing the musician to re-evaluate his life’s purpose and intention.
 
However, through all the ups and downs his journey to recovery took him on, there was only one constant in James’ life – his love for music. It was songwriting which helped him through; with songs from that dark period cumulating in the release of his latest work ‘The Light’. Borne from a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, we spoke to the now-artist about his uniquely empowering journey, and his transition from bassist to artist:
 
“So when you're playing the bass, you're supporting the band. You're kind of part of the foundation of the group…But … I have to do all of that now. And the singer has a lot of responsibility that I was not prepared for. So I eventually got to a point where I just let go. And I'm finally able to just be myself on stage. I just have fun with it. But when I was a bassist, I think I was trying to fit a role so hard that it's like trying to fit a square into a circle, kind of? It doesn't really make sense, especially with the type of music I was doing before. So now I just do whatever I want (laughs). And it's kind of liberating.”