Green Meadow Charity Folk Concert

Source: Cassette Life Column: Twelve Kinds of Progress That Shook 2008
From: NetEase Entertainment
Date: January 2, 2009Author: Chiu Ta-li

In 1978, Yang Tzu-chun hosted the program “Jumping Notes” on TTV. In May, she resigned in protest against the GIO’s mandatory requirement to perform sanitized songs. She then went to the “Women’s Vocational Training Center” at the Kuang-tz’u Benevolent Institute of the Taipei City Government in Sungshan, where she voluntarily taught 36 detained girls aged 13 and 14 who had been forced into prostitution. On August 16 of that year, she organized the “Green Meadow Folk Songs Charity Concert” at the Jung-hsing Garden to raise funds for these young women. The girls set new lyrics to “Formosa” — calling it “Our Voice” — and at the end led everyone on stage and in the audience in singing together “Old Drummer” and “Formosa.”

This was the first large-scale outdoor concert in postwar Taiwan, attended by four thousand people. Compared to other charity concerts of the time, it placed greater emphasis on music and on the relationship between music and the public.

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External Links

• What Is the Folk Song School? (Black Hand Nakasi)
• Taiwan Industry Studies (Cultural Industries: A Structural Analysis of Cultural Production, p. 180)
• Then, Our Ears Were Still Pure (Underground Nostalgia Blues)