I only became aware of the release of R-Kive, the 3-CD Genesis compilation released in the fall of 2014, a few months after it came out. I wrote a lengthy review – actually more of a description simultaneously serving as a summary of the band’s career – of it for the music service KKBox (the first part is online here, though I'm not sure what happened to the second part). As long as that article was, there was a lot more I could have said about R-Kive that I didn’t include there, so this is sort of a supplemental review. First of all, I should note that my earlier article, though written in the knowledge that it would be mainly used to promote the album, is an honest summary of my feelings about the compilation. I really do consider it to be an excellent summary of the band’s career, and I love the idea of including songs from each of the five key members’ solo careers to provide a fuller picture and introduce people to music that they might not have heard before. Also, all things considered, I think the song selection is a good one, and for the most part it’s hard to argue with the choices. I really do recommend the set very highly to any music fan who isn’t familiar with the music of Genesis or is only familiar with a small part of their career.
Of course, like any other fan, I can think of alternative choices that I might have preferred over the songs included. However, I must admit that I like all the songs that were chosen enough that I would have a hard time dropping them, with maybe one or two exceptions. The truth is, if I were to make my own version of R-Kive, I’d be tempted to expand it to four CDs in order to include even more songs I think it’s a shame to leave out while keeping the vast majority of what’s already on there. In particular, I’d be inclined to add more solo tracks, not because I necessarily prefer them to the Genesis tracks (on the contrary, on the whole I prefer the Genesis material throughout the band’s career, even in the 1980s – though that sentiment would no doubt horrify a vocal segment of fans), but because I think that would make the set an even more thorough introduction to the complete world of Genesis. In fact, even four CDs isn’t quite enough to fit all the songs I consider essential listening, especially since many of the Genesis tracks I’d want to add are very long (and just four eight to ten minute tracks take up half a CD). I will talk about my attempt to assemble a 4-disc R-Kive set in a future essay.
First, some additional thoughts on the collection as a whole. I particularly like the chronological sequencing, as it allows listeners to hear how the band (and its individual members) evolved over time. While the previously released Platinum Collection is also a great overview of the group’s career, one reason it is surpassed by this collection, aside from the inclusion of solo tracks in this one, is that the previous set was sequenced backwards, starting with the newer material and going back. While this is more or less how I was exposed to Genesis myself, having first heard the hits in the 1980s and then gone back to the early years, I prefer to listen the band’s evolution in the forward direction, not least because, unlike some other fans, I think the later material is just as good in its way as the early stuff, if not always quite as inventive. In any case as in reality the band’s evolution happened in this direction, going forward in time is the best way to hear it.
The exclusion of the first album – most likely mainly because of licensing issues, not because the band prefers to ignore that part of their career – means we don’t hear the very first part of this evolution, but “The Knife” does make a much better opening track than anything on the debut would have. While some of the same fans referred to above, namely those who only like complex songs in the progressive rock vein, may think that the compilation is too heavily weighted toward the later material – particularly as Invisible Touch and We Can’t Dance are represented by three songs apiece, whereas the early albums, with the exception of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, are only represented by a single song each, this is in fact debatable, especially given the length of the early songs. In fact, “Supper’s Ready” alone takes up more space on the collection than all the songs from either of the above-mentioned albums. In fact, if anything is underrepresented, it is a few of the albums in the middle period, like Wind & Wuthering and Duke (which incidentally indicates that Tony Banks, despite his central role in Genesis – to the point that some, including at one point Steve Hackett, accused him of controlling things – did not make the final decisions on the Genesis songs, as he has often said that these two albums are, along with Foxtrot, his favorites). My biggest objection to the selection of Genesis songs included, and it’s not a big one, probably lies here, though it’s hard to fix it within a three CD format.
The solo songs were apparently chosen by the relevant band members themselves. It’s interesting to note that both Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel avoided picking their very biggest commercial successes and most widely known songs such as “Against All Odds”, “One More Night”, “Sussudio”, “Sledgehammer”, and “In Your Eyes”, while Mike Rutherford’s picks are more obvious (since Banks and Hackett have had less mainstream commercial success – aside from Hackett’s involvement in GTR – their choices can’t really be judged on this basis). I’ll have more to say on the individual song choices later on, but I’ll say that while I might have chosen slightly differently, overall the solo songs accomplish the stated purpose of providing representative examples of each member’s solo work and showing how they fit into the context of the history of the band itself.
So if I had to stick to the three CD format, how would my version of R-Kive differ from the one that was released? All the songs on the first disc are great, so it would be hard to make any changes. I would be a little tempted to substitute “Firth of Fifth” for “The Cinema Show”, as the former is perhaps my favorite Gabriel-era Genesis song, but as the latter is another favorite, it’s hard to imagine actually taking it off. I would consider dropping “I Know What I Like” instead, but I like it too, if not quite as well as the other two songs from Selling England by the Pound, and as the band’s first hit single, it has too much historical significance to leave off (anyway, since it’s much shorter, dropping it wouldn’t create enough room for the much longer “Firth of Fifth”). As far as the other albums are concerned, while there are one or two songs I like as well as the ones that were included (e.g. “The Fountain of Salamacis” versus “The Musical Box”), the ones that were picked are pretty much what I’d have picked. I don’t have especially strong opinions about most tracks on Steve Hackett’s Voyage of the Acolyte (except that I dislike some of the keyboard sounds, which hinders my enjoyment of a few tracks), but “Ace of Wands” is a good choice.
On the second CD, it’s a little easier to think of possible substitutes for what was included, but again the latter are still great, so I’m not sure I’d actually change anything, with maybe one exception. I like most of the tracks on A Trick of the Tail about equally, so while if starting with a blank slate I might well have chosen “Dance on a Volcano”, “Entangled”, “Squonk” or “Mad Man Moon”, I like “Ripples” just as much as any of these, so I probably would just stick with that. Wind and Wuthering has three of my favorite Genesis songs, “One for the Vine”, “Afterglow”, and “Blood on the Rooftops”. If I were forced to rank them, they’d probably be in that order, but it would be a close match. So while I think it’s a shame that they left off “One for the Vine” and “Blood on the Rooftops”, especially the former, if they’d left off “Afterglow” I would have thought it was a shame, too, so probably I’d keep their selection. “Solsbury Hill” is one of my favorite Gabriel songs, so I’d definitely keep that, and while there are songs on And Then There Were Three I like as well or even slightly better than “Follow You Follow Me”, the latter is still good and is historically significant as the band’s first big hit in both the UK and US. The Tony Banks and Steve Hackett songs are reasonable choices (though if I had been making the selection I might have picked a song from Banks’s 1983 album The Fugitive, and there are other Hackett songs I would have considered), “Biko” is a great choice from Gabriel’s third album, and the Genesis songs from Duke, Abacab, and Genesis are all obvious choices, though each of these albums has at least one or two more songs that are excellent candidates. “In the Air Tonight” is an even more obvious choice for Phil Collins, and “Silent Running” is probably still my favorite Mike & the Mechanics song, so there’s no arguing with that selection either. In fact, the only pick I’d be strongly tempted to change is “Easy Lover”. I like the song, but there are better choices. My favorite Collins song other than “In the Air Tonight” is “I Wish It Would Rain Down”, but of course chronologically that would have to go on the third CD, and adding it there would push at least one Invisible Touch track onto this disc, which would mean splitting up the tracks from that album. Also, “I Wish It Would Rain Down” is quite long, so it might not fit. An easier option would be to pick another Collins song from the 1984-85 period. In that case, rather than choose one of the hits (though I like them well enough, particularly “Take Me Home”), I’d choose “Long Long Way to Go”, my favorite song from No Jacket Required and one of his best songs.
On the third CD, there are some things I might change, though again most of it I’d leave as it is. The three selections from Invisible Touch are fairly obvious ones, though I’d at least consider putting on “Domino”, in which case it’d have to replace “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight”, which is the only one that is nearly as long. I’d consider substituting it for “Invisible Touch” (though unlike many people, I like the latter), but it’s so much longer that there wouldn’t be space. However, as I like “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight”, and “Land of Confusion” is the best of the hits from the album, I could also imagine just keeping the original selections. “The Living Years” was somewhat overplayed at the time and I can understand those who feel it is overly sentimental, but it’s still a good song with emotional depth (not to mention being by far the best known Mike & the Mechanics song), so I’d keep it. As mentioned above, I’d have liked to have seen “I Wish It Would Rain Down” on the set, as it is one of Collins’s best songs, but as it is quite long it might be hard to squeeze on. There’s also the question of what it should replace; as noted above, ideally it would replace “Easy Lover”, but that would require a lot of reshuffling. It could replace “Wake Up Time”, but the latter is a decent song and I can sympathize with Collins’s desire to include a track from a more neglected album rather than yet another hit. “Red Day on Blue Street” is an excellent choice from Still, though there are a few other songs I’d have considered from that album, which is overall the best of Tony Banks’s solo albums.
Then there are the selections from We Can’t Dance. Unlike most fans of the older Genesis material, I don’t dislike songs like “I Can’t Dance” or “Hold on My Heart”; on the other hand, there are quite a few songs I like better just on We Can’t Dance, not to mention on earlier albums. I might still keep “I Can’t Dance”, as it was a pretty big hit and has a sort of quirky charm, and I’d certainly retain “No Son of Mine”. But I’d probably replace “Hold on My Heart”. Ideally I’d replace it with something like “Driving the Last Spike” or maybe “Fading Lights”, but these would probably not fit. Of the other singles off the album, my favorite is “Jesus He Knows Me”, so that’d probably be my choice, but I’d also consider one of the relatively short album tracks like “Living Forever” or even the non-album track “On the Shoreline”. As for the rest of the disc, the remaining selections from Mike & the Mechanics, the Ray Wilson-era Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett, and Tony Banks’s classical ventures all are good choices, though there are other possibilities, particularly for Gabriel. All in all, if I had to redo R-Kive within the 3-CD format, my version would differ very little from the actual one.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Banned Songs and Censorship in Taiwanese Popular Music History (禁歌與歌曲審查對台灣流行音樂的影響)
Last month was the first time since I started this blog that I've missed a month entirely. Aside from being busy with various things (many of them music related), the main reason was that I was away for over half the month on a trip to Eastern Europe. I acquired a number of CDs of local rock and pop music in the countries I visited and maybe when I've had time to listen to them all I'll write about some of them.
Earlier this year I was asked to write an article about censorship and banned songs in Taiwan popular music. To save time I wrote it in English, in which I can write much faster (and better) than in Chinese, and gave it to them to translate. The Chinese version (edited somewhat for length and other requirements) should be published soon, but here's my original English draft. Since the article would ultimately be published in Chinese, I wrote all the artist, composer, lyricist and song names in Chinese, and quotes that were in Chinese I didn't bother to translate either. I've added romanizations of some individuals' names, but I haven't taken the time to translate other things. Many of these same people and songs are mentioned (with romanizations and translations) in
previous articles of mine, such as the one linked to here as well as this one and this one.
For most of the history of popular music in Taiwan, songwriters and performers have had to contend with censorship. This censorship has taken a number of different forms and has been imposed by a number of different agencies, usually but not always governmental ones, and has led to a number of different results, from forcing the re-writing of songs, restricting the outlets available for them to be broadcast and performed, and outright banning of songs from publication. Government censorship was haphazard and mostly reactive for most of the 20th century, but for the last decade of the martial law era it was done systematically. Even after the end of martial law, songs with provocative content would sometimes encounter censorship of some form.
The first known case of song censorship dates back to the era of Japanese rule in Taiwan. A song called 〈街頭的流浪〉 (守真作詞，周玉當作曲，青春美演唱) was released near the end of 1934. It described unemployed men wandering the streets and included lyrics like 「頭家無趁錢 轉來食家己」. Because the colonial government disapproved of this negative (if realistic) portrayal of social problems, the song was banned a little over a month after it was released. Due to the references to its banning in contemporary newspapers and in accounts of the era, 〈街頭的流浪〉 has been called Taiwan’s first banned song. The song itself, however, was largely forgotten afterwards and was only rediscovered this century when a collector came across a copy of the record, allowing music historians to hear for the first time what this almost legendary song actually sounded like.
In the years after Japan went to war with China, restrictions were gradually imposed on cultural activities in Taiwan by the Japanese authorities. By 1939, composers like 鄧雨賢Deng Yuxian were having to help produce songs such as 郷土部隊の勇士から (鄉土部隊之勇士的來信) (later given Hoklo [福佬語] lyrics by 文夏Wen Xia, who performed it under the title 媽媽我也真勇健) to support the war effort, and by the 1940s, the popular music industry had been shut down entirely. But the end of Japanese rule and the takeover by the Nationalist government did not bring an end to censorship of popular music in Taiwan. Instead, a new censorship regime was imposed on the Taiwanese music industry, one that in various guises would remain in place for almost half a century.
One type of song that was immediately banned by the Nationalist government was those that were considered pro-Japanese. This included cover versions of any songs that were regarded as Japanese wartime propaganda songs, even when they had been given new lyrical content, including songs such as 〈沙鴦之鐘〉、〈蘇州夜曲〉、〈支那之夜〉 and 〈媽媽我也真勇健〉. Songs that had already been banned by the Nationalist government in China for being “promoting socialism” 「宣揚社會主義」, such as 〈漁光曲〉and〈義勇軍進行曲〉, or for being “pornographic”「黃色歌曲」 (though the majority of them at most told of romantic flirting with no truly sexual content), such as 〈天涯歌女〉、〈桃李爭春〉、〈桃花江〉、〈三年〉、〈何日君再來〉and〈魂縈舊夢〉, were also banned in Taiwan.
A particularly interesting case was the popular song 〈何日君再來〉. The music for this song was written by劉雪庵 under the pen name 晏如 and the words were written by someone using the pen name 貝林. It was first recorded in Shanghai by 周璇, whose version was released in 1938, and quickly became very popular (there was even a contemporary Hoklo [福佬語] language cover version in Taiwan). Though the song was originally just a love song with no political content, it was banned by several different governments. When the Japanese occupied Shanghai during the war, they banned the song in part because of a performance by ethnic Japanese singer 李香蘭Li Xianglan in which she sang the song while wearing a white dress against a blue background (a combination reminiscent of the Nationalist flag), leading the Japanese authorities to believe the song was expressing a desire for the Nationalists to return to Shanghai. After the war in Taiwan, the song was banned by the Nationalists as leftist, but supposedly also because its title sounded like 「賀日軍再來」, implying a desire for the Japanese army to return to Taiwan. Back in China, the Communists banned it because it could be interpreted as expressing a desire for the Nationalists to come back. So a completely innocuous love song encountered censorship from three entirely different regimes in China and Taiwan.
One of the best known songs to appear in Taiwan in the immediate post-war period was the Hoklo classic 〈補破網〉, written by lyricist 李臨秋Li LinQiu and composer 王雲峰Wang Yunfeng. This song was first released in 1948, just a year after the February 28 incident in which Taiwanese had rebelled against the corrupt Nationalist administration imposed on the island after the departure of the Japanese, only for the rebellion to be bloodily crushed by troops sent over from China. While the song may not have been directly inspired by the need to mend the tears in the fabric of the society, it captured the feeling of the times very well. However, while the Nationalist authorities seemingly didn’t associate the lyrics of the song with the February 28 incident (otherwise they probably would have banned it outright), they considered the original two verses that李臨秋Li Linqiu had written too negative, so they forced him to write a third verse and give the song a happy ending. In later decades, 李臨秋Li Linqiu said he’d rather people didn’t sing the third verse, as he only wrote it under duress.
〈補破網〉was far from the only song to encounter censorship for being too dark. 張邱冬松Zhangqiu Dongsong’s 1946 composition 〈收酒矸〉 was also banned for painting too bleak a picture of poverty in Taiwan, much like 〈街頭的流浪〉 had been under the Japanese. 呂泉生Lu Quansheng’s 1949 composition 〈杯底不可飼金魚〉, which was apparently inspired by ethnic tensions in Taiwan in the wake of the February 28 incident, is another well-known song from this era that was banned at some point. It should be pointed out, however, that for the first couple of decades of the post-war period, much of the censorship tended to be somewhat haphazard, as different songs might be banned by different government authorities, and enforcement was not always consistent. A song might be banned from being broadcast or performed, but not from being published, or it might be banned in all contexts. Some songs were seemingly banned for a period of time, with the authority in question later lifting the ban or simply ceasing enforcement of it. If a song appearing on a record was banned, the disc jockey would often simply mark its title with an “X” or a “禁”. Sometimes the title would be crossed out, and occasionally tape would be placed over the grooves on the record itself so that the song couldn’t be played. In extreme cases, the record would be deliberately scratched. Censorship also applied to performances. Famous Hoklo singer 洪一峰Hong Yifeng tells of an occasion when he was performing the song 〈寶島四季謠〉(葉俊麟作詞，洪一峰作曲) on television and he was cut off when he sang the line 「春天時，草山…」 because the mountain north of Taipei originally named 草山 ["Grass Mountain"] had been renamed 陽明山 [Yangming Mountain] by Chiang Kai-shek, and the old name had been banned.
Songs were often banned or censored by local or provincial authorities (as the Nationalists still claimed sovereignty over China, they maintained separate national and provincial administrations in Taiwan under the pretense that Taiwan was merely one of many provinces), but in the early decades more comprehensive censorship was chiefly the responsibility of the Military Garrison Command [警備總司令部], which was the authority responsible for maintaining martial law and suppressing dissent. Beginning in the 1970s, responsibility for censorship of publications, including records, was transferred to the Government Information Office [新聞局]. Both of these authorities occasionally published books listing banned songs or alternatively songs that had been approved for broadcast.
The censorship in this era was primarily reactive, in that the authorities often only banned songs after their popularity brought them to their attention. Some records were sold locally in huge quantities before (and often even after) being banned, such as the sexually suggestive 高雄Kaohsiung area folk song〈鹽埕區長〉 (楊東敏作詞，郭萬枝改編自牛馬調，麗美、郭萬枝演唱), which was a huge hit in south Taiwan following its release in 1964. But even mainstream pop songs were often banned well after their initial release. For example, the song 〈苦酒滿杯〉 (慎芝作詞，姚讚福作曲), a Mandarin adaptation of a Japanese era popular song titled 〈悲戀的酒杯〉, was first released in the early 1960s. In 1967, however, a cover by 謝雷Xie Lei became massively popular, leading the authorities to ban the song for being to dark and melancholy. Interestingly, while later printings of the 謝雷Xie Lei album originally titled《苦酒滿杯》 were retitled 《男人的眼淚》 after one of the other songs on the album, 〈苦酒滿杯〉 was not actually removed from the album; it was just retitled 〈酒與人生〉. The song 〈向日葵〉, which was one of a number of songs banned for references to the sun, since the well-known Chinese Communist song 〈東方紅〉 referred to Mao Zedong as the sun, was also simply re-titled 〈金黃色的花蕊〉. In some cases, the record company would release a new version of the song which was less objectionable. For example, the hugely popular song 〈今天不回家〉 (諸戈[莊奴]作詞，古月[左宏元]作曲，姚蘇蓉演唱) was banned for its “unhealthy” message, so it was later re-released as 〈今天要回家〉. Penalties for performing or broadcasting banned songs varied as well. In one well known instance, popular singer 姚蘇蓉Yao Surong was performing in a club when the audience repeatedly urged her to perform her very popular but banned hit 〈負心的人〉 (慎芝作詞，猪俣公章作曲). She finally acquiesced, and as a result her “singer’s license” was revoked, forcing her to go abroad to Hong Kong and Southeast Asia to continue her career. Ironically, as she became very popular overseas, this helped to promote Taiwan’s Mandopop industry in Chinese communities outside Taiwan, helping Taiwan to eventually take over from Hong Kong as the main center of the international Mandopop industry.
Language was also an area where censorship played a role. As television became more popular as a medium for broadcasting popular music, the government also used it to promote Mandarin over Taiwanese languages such as Hoklo, Hakka and the various aboriginal languages. The number of non-Mandarin songs that could be broadcast was severely limited, to the extent that the Hoklo popular music industry had declined dramatically by the end of the 1960s and singers such as 洪一峰Hong Yifeng had to go to Japan to continue their careers. Production of Hakka and aboriginal music was less obviously affected by these policies, as it was mostly outside the mainstream industry to begin with.
The government did actively encourage use of Mandarin among aboriginal groups as part of their general policy of “Sinicizing” the aboriginal population, and both censorship and propaganda had some effect on aboriginal songs of the era. As early as 1952, a large scale performance of aboriginal music and dance called 「改良山地歌舞講習會」 was held at 台北市中山堂. 南王前輩歌手李春花 sang an aboriginal song that was popular in the 台東 area, and by the next year the patriotic song 〈台灣好〉 (台東民謠，羅家倫詞、佩芝改編), based on the same melody, had been published in songbooks. It went on to become one of the best known patriotic, anti-Communist songs in Taiwan. Aboriginal songs were also used to spread propaganda messages among the aboriginals themselves, such as Puyuma songwriter Baliwakes [陸森寶]’s 1958 composition 〈當兵好〉 (several of his other songs, such as 民歌手胡德夫唱紅的 〈美麗的稻穗〉, were much more ambivalent about army service by young aboriginal men), or in later years songs like 〈我們都是一家人〉, which was popularized by the China Youth Corps [救國團].
In local performances, aboriginal performers were sometimes told to perform in Mandarin, presumably because the officials observing were suspicious of anything they couldn’t understand. On the other hand, songs performed in aboriginal languages sometimes escaped censorship because of the language barrier. The popular Amis song 〈送情郎到軍中(阿美三鳳)〉 told of a girl accompanying her boyfriend as he reported for army duty. 研究阿美歌謠的孫俊彥教授指出, when the song mentions the national flag flying over the base, the Amis term used literally translates as “red flag”, a description usually associated with the flag of the People’s Republic of China. Most likely if the authorities had understood Amis, this would have led to the song being censored; after all, red was such a sensitive color in this period that the famous Japanese era Hoklo song 〈四季紅〉(Four Seasons of Red) (李臨秋作詞，鄧雨賢作曲) had to be retitled 〈四季謠〉"Four Seasons Melody". While 〈送情郎到軍中〉 escaped censorship, the first attempt to bring the 「山地日語」["Mountain (Aboriginal) Japanese"] song 〈愛愛乾杯〉, popular in the 台東Taidong region since the early post-war period, to a non-aboriginal audience was immediately banned because the 閩南語 version of the song had been given the title 〈爽歪歪〉. It was only a few years later that the song became very popular due to its use in the 布袋戲budaixi production 《史艷文》 under the titles 〈合要好合要爽〉 and 〈醉彌勒〉, though most listeners were unaware of the song’s aboriginal origins.
In 1973, an explanation of the publication law was promulgated that specified 12 reasons for banning a song. These reasons were as follows: ：「違反國策」、「為匪宣傳」、」「抄襲匪曲」、「詞意頹喪」、「內容荒誕」、「意境晦淫」、「曲調狂盪」、「狠暴仇鬥」、「時代反應錯誤」、「文詞粗鄙」、「幽怨哀傷」、「文理不通意識欠明朗」. The following year, a list of 91 banned songs was published by the GIO [新聞局], including songs such as 〈向日葵〉、〈夢醒不了情〉、〈只要為你活一天〉、〈回頭我也不要你〉、〈愛情如水向東流〉、〈一寸相思淚未盡〉、〈今夜你不要走〉、〈交叉線〉、〈一條日光大道〉、〈熱情的沙漠〉 and 〈月亮代表我的心〉. Many of these songs had only been released recently, but others had first been released several years earlier. In many cases, it is not clear in retrospect why a particular song was banned. 〈熱情的沙漠〉 (李潔心作詞，加瀨邦彥、山上路夫作曲，歐陽菲菲演唱) was almost certainly banned because the repeated “ahs” in the song were considered sexually suggestive. But while 〈一條日光大道〉 (陳平作詞，李泰祥作曲) may have been banned because of the reference to the sun, a reporter writing in 1982 when the version of the song by 齊豫Qi Yu and composer 李泰祥Li Taixiang became a hit (the ban apparently having been lifted) stated that the song had been banned because of the “foreign” term “kapa” in the lyrics (the authorities were often uncomfortable with unknown foreign terms, seemingly out of fear that they could have some forbidden meaning, though the same linguistic chauvinism that led them to promote Mandarin over local Taiwanese languages may also have played a role).
In the same period, the government began a deliberate effort to promote songs that it considered “healthy” or “clean” by designating them as 「淨化歌曲」. These songs included patriotic songs like 〈台灣好〉、〈桃花舞春風〉、〈梅花〉 and 〈中華民國頌〉, as well as those that promoted what the government considered healthy values, such as 〈友情〉. Singers were required to sing a number of these songs in order to receive a singer’s license. At least one third of all songs performed on television variety shows were required to be 「淨化歌曲」. This requirement could be a burden for hosts, as the singer 楊祖珺Yang Zujun (aka t.c. yang) discovered when she hosted the folk song program 《跳躍的音符》 in the late 1970s. If her guests couldn’t sing the required quota of 「淨化歌曲」, she had to do it herself. As someone who was not a supporter of the Nationalists (she later became involved in opposition politics), this eventually was too much to endure, leading her to quit the program.
楊祖珺Yang Zujun had perhaps the most experience with censorship of any of the performers involved in the campus folk song movement. In 1979, the Government Information Office instituted a requirement that all songs be submitted to a censorship committee prior to publication (on record or tape) or broadcasting; in other words, the government began taking a proactive approach to censorship, rather than banning songs retroactively. Every week, the committee would review new releases and determine if they were suitable for publication and broadcast. A song might be deemed acceptable for publication but not broadcasting, or the committee might require that changes be made before the song could be approved. The same year that this system was put in place, 楊祖珺Yang Zujun was recording her first solo album. She hoped to record a number of songs by 李雙澤, one of the founders of the folk song movement. The song 〈美麗島〉 (陳秀喜作詩，梁景峰改寫，李雙澤作曲) was approved for publication but not broadcasting, because the committee felt it had a “pro-Taiwan independence flavor” [有台獨意味] (not long after the song would inspire the name of the dissident magazine 《美麗島》, the founders of which organized the march in Kaohsiung that resulted in the 高雄事件). But the other 李雙澤 songs that楊祖珺 had hoped to include on the album, such as 〈少年中國〉 (蔣勳作詩，李雙澤改寫，李雙澤作曲) and 〈老鼓手〉 (梁景峰作詞，李雙澤作曲) were not even approved for publication, the former because it was deemed to “look forward to unification by the Chinese Communists” [「嚮往中共統一號召」] and the latter most likely due to its ironic references to freedom and democracy. So in the end, 〈美麗島〉 was the only 李雙澤 on the album, and the album itself was taken off the market by the record company within a year of release because 楊祖珺Yang Zujun’s increasing social activism had made her “problematic”.
But even seemingly apolitical songs from this era encountered censorship. The innocuous-sounding 〈抉擇〉 (梁弘志作詞作曲，蔡琴演唱) didn’t get approved until the record company’s third attempt (a later observer said it was because of the line 「尋覓雨傘下哪個背影最像妳…啊這真是個無聊的遊戲」). According to a contemporary newspaper report, the record company had expected the song to win approval easily, and had already printed copies of the record which then had to be withdrawn. The extremely popular 〈橄欖樹〉 (三毛[陳平]作詞，李泰祥[楊祖珺]改寫，李泰祥作詞作曲，齊豫演唱) was banned from being broadcast, apparently because the authorities didn’t approve of lines like 「不要問我從哪裡來，我的家在遠方」, though the record still sold very well and the song became李泰祥’s best known composition.
The requirement to have songs approved by the censorship committee caused all sorts of problems for songwriters, record producers, and record companies. Since it was hard to be sure what the censors might object to, even songwriters who tried to self-censor in an effort to ensure approval would still occasionally have problems. Often initial pressings of a record would have to be withdrawn and re-recorded because of an unexpected failure of a key song to be approved, as in the case of 〈抉擇〉. On the other hand, once a song was approved, any unapproved changes made to it afterwards could land the record company in trouble. One example of this was the 1981 release 〈大兵歌〉 (楊立德作詞，羅大佑作曲，許不了、方正演唱). According to a contemporary newspaper report, after receiving complaints that the song was insulting to the military, the GIO [新聞局] claimed that the released version was different from the approved one, and penalized the record company滾石唱片 – though one has to wonder if they may have been using this as an excuse for retracting an approval that they may have regretted in retrospect, as it seems probable that the approved version, which couldn’t have been very different from the final one, would also have been considered objectionable by conservatives.
羅大佑Luo Dayou, the most significant singer-songwriter of the 1980s, also had many problems with censorship, despite the fact that political repression had relaxed somewhat in comparison with the White Terror of previous decades. He released his first album 《之乎者也》 in 1982, and it was an immediate success, appealing to young intellectuals due to its intelligent and socially conscious lyrics and its rock-oriented arrangements. But the album’s title track was initially rejected by the censors and was only approved for publication after 羅大佑Lu Dayou changed the line 「歌曲審查之 通不通過乎 歌曲通過者，翻版盜印也」, which ironically was the one that was considered most objectionable. The original line appeared in versions of the song released outside of Taiwan, and 羅Luo deliberately included it in the liner notes of the Taiwan release. The new line he wrote, 「眼睛睜一隻 嘴巴呼一呼 耳朵遮一遮 皆大歡喜也」, may well have been a slightly sarcastic comment on the censorship as well. But while the new version was approved for publication on record, it was still banned from being broadcast. This got some DJs into trouble, as after 羅Luo performed the song in a concert at the Sun Yatsen Memorial Hall, some of them played it on the radio, mistakenly assuming that any song that was performed there must have been passed censorship (after this the Sun Yatsen Memorial Hall instituted a rule that all songs performed there had to have been approved by the censors). Nor was 〈之乎者也〉the only song on 羅Luo’s debut album that had problems with the censors. 〈戀曲1980〉 also had to be altered slightly before release, with the line 「今夜的歡樂 將是明天創痛的回憶」changed to 「今夜的歡樂 將是明天永恆的回憶」(in concert performances 羅Luo sang the original lyric).
羅大佑Luo Dayou’s later albums also had censorship issues. 〈亞細亞的孤兒〉, one of the key tracks on his second album 《未來的主人翁》 (1983), was only gotten past the censors due to the addition of the dedication 「紅色的污泥—致中南半島難民」 in order to make the censors think the song was about Nationalist refugees in Southeast Asia, when in fact it was about Taiwan, a much more sensitive topic. 羅Luo’s third album 《家》(1984) had even more songs that failed to meet the censors’ approval, including 〈吾鄉印象〉 (吳晟作詞)、〈耶穌的另一個名字 〉 and the sarcastic 〈超級市民〉. According to the account in his book 《昨日遺書》, even some of the lyrics that 羅Luo originally wrote for the “Do They Know It’s Christmas” / “We Are the World” style multi-artist sing-along 〈明天會更好〉 (羅大佑、張大春、許乃勝、李壽全、邱復生、張艾嘉、詹宏志作詞，羅大佑作曲) met with disapproval.
羅大佑Luo Dayou’s friend and fellow songwriter 侯德健Hou Dejian also had problems with the censors. In late 1982, a few months after 羅Luo released his debut album, 侯德健Hou Dejian released a solo album titled 《龍的傳人續篇》 which also included several songs that explored social issues in some depth. One of these, 〈未來的主人翁〉 (different from 羅大佑Luo Dayou’s song of the same name) took a critical look at education, and perhaps unsurprisingly was not approved by the censors. Due in part to his frustration with censorship (though the sort of Chinese nationalistic idealism that had led him to write 〈龍的傳人〉 no doubt also played a role), in mid-1983 侯德健Hou Dejian went to China via Hong Kong, making him a traitor in the eyes of the Nationalist government in Taiwan. His song 〈酒干倘賣無〉, which featured prominently in the movie 《打錯車》, was removed from Taiwan releases of 蘇芮Su Rui’s accompanying hit album released in June of 1983 (though it appeared on Hong Kong releases and pirated cassette copies in Taiwan). In the liner notes to 齊豫Qi Yu’s album 《你是我所有的回憶》, released later that year, the lyrics to the title track were credited to the song’s composer 李泰祥Li Taixiang, but years later 齊豫Qi Yu revealed that they had been written by 侯德健Hou Dejian, and 李泰祥Li Taixiang had been credited to avoid censorship.
Throughout the 1980s, songs on albums were marked with the number of the meeting of the censorship committee at which it had been approved (such as「審148」 or 「178次」). By 1988, in 320 meetings the committee had reviewed over twenty thousand songs, about one-sixth of which had not been approved. Over nine hundred songs that were approved for publication on record were not approved for broadcasting. While by the mid-1980s most songs seem to have been approved without much difficulty (in part due to self-censorship by the songwriters and conservative choices of material by producers and record companies), there were always a few that had problems. For instance, the first two lines of 張艾嘉Zhang Aijia’s 1985 hit〈忙與盲〉(袁瓊瓊、張艾嘉作詞，李宗盛作曲) from the album of the same name had to be changed from 「曾有一次晚餐和一張床在什麼時間地點和那個對象」 to 「曾有一次晚餐和一個夢 在什麼時間地點和那些幻想」, though the lyric sheet showed the original version. But some songs in this period remained outside the censorship system altogether. For example, as Mandarin became widely spoken by aboriginal people, “aboriginal Mandarin songs” 「山地國語歌」 like 〈可憐落魄人〉 and 〈三分鐘的愛〉 appeared. 〈可憐落魄人〉 was brought to Taipei by 知本卑南族歌手陳明仁 Puyuma singer Chen Mingren and became hugely popular among non-aboriginal audiences in Taiwan and even in Southeast Asia. Copies of the song on tape and record sold in the hundreds of thousands in 1981 and 1982, mostly through night markets and similar places, far out-selling the mainstream records of the time. But the song was never submitted to the censorship committee, and with lyrics like 「你可以戲弄我 也可以呀利用我」, it certainly would not have been approved. Indeed, this song was specifically criticized in newspapers of the time, as was 〈三分鐘的愛〉, but the authorities seemingly were unable to do anything to stem its popularity. Many popular Hoklo songs of the era like 沈文程Shen Wencheng's〈心事誰人知〉 and 陳小雲Chen Xiaoyun's〈舞女〉 were also sold mainly through night markets and likewise remained mainly outside the system.
Martial law was finally ended in Taiwan in 1987, and most political restrictions were relaxed. The GIO song censorship system was not finally ended until 1990, but songs tended to be approved more easily than had been the case even a few years earlier. But songs on sensitive subjects could still face censorship. The influential 黑名單工作室Blacklist Workshop album《抓狂歌》, released in 1989, included the song 〈民主阿草〉 (王華作詞，王明輝作曲), which commented on the political atmosphere of contemporary Taiwan. Due to the very direct and sometimes sarcastic observations in this and other songs on the album, the mainstream television and radio stations wouldn't play any of the album, though it was not officially banned. One of the last albums to face significant censorship was the 1990 album 《把我自己掏出來》 by punk rocker 趙一豪Zhao Yihao. The songs 〈把我自己掏出來〉、〈改變〉 and〈震動〉 had to be re-recorded as〈把我自己收回來〉、〈這機天〉 and〈創造〉 respectively due to perceived sexual content and similar issues.
With the end of official censorship, artists and songwriters were freer to express themselves more directly about controversial political and social issues. As a contemporary newspaper article noted, albums such as 林強Lim Giong’s 《育樂世界》 and 黃舒駿Huang Shujun’s 《我是誰》, both released in 1994, reflected the increased creative space open to artists. But while the government no longer censored songs, that didn’t mean censorship had ceased to exist. For instance, both of the videos for 黃舒駿Huang Shujun’s 《我是誰》 encountered censorship from television stations, particular the video for 〈見怪不怪〉. 中視編審組The CTV review committee rejected both the video for 〈我是誰〉 and the one for〈見怪不怪〉, though most of their specific objections referred to the latter. Likewise, while 衛視音樂台 accepted the video for 〈我是誰〉 with minor changes, they asked for numerous changes to the video for 〈見怪不怪〉 and even changes to the lyrics, so in the end 黃舒駿Huang Shujun just gave up hope of having it broadcast. In the end, neither 《育樂世界》nor 《我是誰》 sold well compared to the artists’ previous albums, in large part because of the relatively conservative taste of most Taiwanese popular music fans. While many reasons could be cited for this conservativism, one distinct possibility is that this was a lingering legacy of decades of censorship, as most Taiwanese listeners had in a sense been trained to prefer a narrow range of music and lyrical content. While many young music fans of today are completely unaware of Taiwan’s history of censorship, it was without question a major factor in the evolution of popular music in Taiwan, and something that anyone who wants to understand the background of Taiwan’s music scene has to be aware of.
Earlier this year I was asked to write an article about censorship and banned songs in Taiwan popular music. To save time I wrote it in English, in which I can write much faster (and better) than in Chinese, and gave it to them to translate. The Chinese version (edited somewhat for length and other requirements) should be published soon, but here's my original English draft. Since the article would ultimately be published in Chinese, I wrote all the artist, composer, lyricist and song names in Chinese, and quotes that were in Chinese I didn't bother to translate either. I've added romanizations of some individuals' names, but I haven't taken the time to translate other things. Many of these same people and songs are mentioned (with romanizations and translations) in
previous articles of mine, such as the one linked to here as well as this one and this one.
For most of the history of popular music in Taiwan, songwriters and performers have had to contend with censorship. This censorship has taken a number of different forms and has been imposed by a number of different agencies, usually but not always governmental ones, and has led to a number of different results, from forcing the re-writing of songs, restricting the outlets available for them to be broadcast and performed, and outright banning of songs from publication. Government censorship was haphazard and mostly reactive for most of the 20th century, but for the last decade of the martial law era it was done systematically. Even after the end of martial law, songs with provocative content would sometimes encounter censorship of some form.
The first known case of song censorship dates back to the era of Japanese rule in Taiwan. A song called 〈街頭的流浪〉 (守真作詞，周玉當作曲，青春美演唱) was released near the end of 1934. It described unemployed men wandering the streets and included lyrics like 「頭家無趁錢 轉來食家己」. Because the colonial government disapproved of this negative (if realistic) portrayal of social problems, the song was banned a little over a month after it was released. Due to the references to its banning in contemporary newspapers and in accounts of the era, 〈街頭的流浪〉 has been called Taiwan’s first banned song. The song itself, however, was largely forgotten afterwards and was only rediscovered this century when a collector came across a copy of the record, allowing music historians to hear for the first time what this almost legendary song actually sounded like.
In the years after Japan went to war with China, restrictions were gradually imposed on cultural activities in Taiwan by the Japanese authorities. By 1939, composers like 鄧雨賢Deng Yuxian were having to help produce songs such as 郷土部隊の勇士から (鄉土部隊之勇士的來信) (later given Hoklo [福佬語] lyrics by 文夏Wen Xia, who performed it under the title 媽媽我也真勇健) to support the war effort, and by the 1940s, the popular music industry had been shut down entirely. But the end of Japanese rule and the takeover by the Nationalist government did not bring an end to censorship of popular music in Taiwan. Instead, a new censorship regime was imposed on the Taiwanese music industry, one that in various guises would remain in place for almost half a century.
One type of song that was immediately banned by the Nationalist government was those that were considered pro-Japanese. This included cover versions of any songs that were regarded as Japanese wartime propaganda songs, even when they had been given new lyrical content, including songs such as 〈沙鴦之鐘〉、〈蘇州夜曲〉、〈支那之夜〉 and 〈媽媽我也真勇健〉. Songs that had already been banned by the Nationalist government in China for being “promoting socialism” 「宣揚社會主義」, such as 〈漁光曲〉and〈義勇軍進行曲〉, or for being “pornographic”「黃色歌曲」 (though the majority of them at most told of romantic flirting with no truly sexual content), such as 〈天涯歌女〉、〈桃李爭春〉、〈桃花江〉、〈三年〉、〈何日君再來〉and〈魂縈舊夢〉, were also banned in Taiwan.
A particularly interesting case was the popular song 〈何日君再來〉. The music for this song was written by劉雪庵 under the pen name 晏如 and the words were written by someone using the pen name 貝林. It was first recorded in Shanghai by 周璇, whose version was released in 1938, and quickly became very popular (there was even a contemporary Hoklo [福佬語] language cover version in Taiwan). Though the song was originally just a love song with no political content, it was banned by several different governments. When the Japanese occupied Shanghai during the war, they banned the song in part because of a performance by ethnic Japanese singer 李香蘭Li Xianglan in which she sang the song while wearing a white dress against a blue background (a combination reminiscent of the Nationalist flag), leading the Japanese authorities to believe the song was expressing a desire for the Nationalists to return to Shanghai. After the war in Taiwan, the song was banned by the Nationalists as leftist, but supposedly also because its title sounded like 「賀日軍再來」, implying a desire for the Japanese army to return to Taiwan. Back in China, the Communists banned it because it could be interpreted as expressing a desire for the Nationalists to come back. So a completely innocuous love song encountered censorship from three entirely different regimes in China and Taiwan.
One of the best known songs to appear in Taiwan in the immediate post-war period was the Hoklo classic 〈補破網〉, written by lyricist 李臨秋Li LinQiu and composer 王雲峰Wang Yunfeng. This song was first released in 1948, just a year after the February 28 incident in which Taiwanese had rebelled against the corrupt Nationalist administration imposed on the island after the departure of the Japanese, only for the rebellion to be bloodily crushed by troops sent over from China. While the song may not have been directly inspired by the need to mend the tears in the fabric of the society, it captured the feeling of the times very well. However, while the Nationalist authorities seemingly didn’t associate the lyrics of the song with the February 28 incident (otherwise they probably would have banned it outright), they considered the original two verses that李臨秋Li Linqiu had written too negative, so they forced him to write a third verse and give the song a happy ending. In later decades, 李臨秋Li Linqiu said he’d rather people didn’t sing the third verse, as he only wrote it under duress.
〈補破網〉was far from the only song to encounter censorship for being too dark. 張邱冬松Zhangqiu Dongsong’s 1946 composition 〈收酒矸〉 was also banned for painting too bleak a picture of poverty in Taiwan, much like 〈街頭的流浪〉 had been under the Japanese. 呂泉生Lu Quansheng’s 1949 composition 〈杯底不可飼金魚〉, which was apparently inspired by ethnic tensions in Taiwan in the wake of the February 28 incident, is another well-known song from this era that was banned at some point. It should be pointed out, however, that for the first couple of decades of the post-war period, much of the censorship tended to be somewhat haphazard, as different songs might be banned by different government authorities, and enforcement was not always consistent. A song might be banned from being broadcast or performed, but not from being published, or it might be banned in all contexts. Some songs were seemingly banned for a period of time, with the authority in question later lifting the ban or simply ceasing enforcement of it. If a song appearing on a record was banned, the disc jockey would often simply mark its title with an “X” or a “禁”. Sometimes the title would be crossed out, and occasionally tape would be placed over the grooves on the record itself so that the song couldn’t be played. In extreme cases, the record would be deliberately scratched. Censorship also applied to performances. Famous Hoklo singer 洪一峰Hong Yifeng tells of an occasion when he was performing the song 〈寶島四季謠〉(葉俊麟作詞，洪一峰作曲) on television and he was cut off when he sang the line 「春天時，草山…」 because the mountain north of Taipei originally named 草山 ["Grass Mountain"] had been renamed 陽明山 [Yangming Mountain] by Chiang Kai-shek, and the old name had been banned.
Songs were often banned or censored by local or provincial authorities (as the Nationalists still claimed sovereignty over China, they maintained separate national and provincial administrations in Taiwan under the pretense that Taiwan was merely one of many provinces), but in the early decades more comprehensive censorship was chiefly the responsibility of the Military Garrison Command [警備總司令部], which was the authority responsible for maintaining martial law and suppressing dissent. Beginning in the 1970s, responsibility for censorship of publications, including records, was transferred to the Government Information Office [新聞局]. Both of these authorities occasionally published books listing banned songs or alternatively songs that had been approved for broadcast.
The censorship in this era was primarily reactive, in that the authorities often only banned songs after their popularity brought them to their attention. Some records were sold locally in huge quantities before (and often even after) being banned, such as the sexually suggestive 高雄Kaohsiung area folk song〈鹽埕區長〉 (楊東敏作詞，郭萬枝改編自牛馬調，麗美、郭萬枝演唱), which was a huge hit in south Taiwan following its release in 1964. But even mainstream pop songs were often banned well after their initial release. For example, the song 〈苦酒滿杯〉 (慎芝作詞，姚讚福作曲), a Mandarin adaptation of a Japanese era popular song titled 〈悲戀的酒杯〉, was first released in the early 1960s. In 1967, however, a cover by 謝雷Xie Lei became massively popular, leading the authorities to ban the song for being to dark and melancholy. Interestingly, while later printings of the 謝雷Xie Lei album originally titled《苦酒滿杯》 were retitled 《男人的眼淚》 after one of the other songs on the album, 〈苦酒滿杯〉 was not actually removed from the album; it was just retitled 〈酒與人生〉. The song 〈向日葵〉, which was one of a number of songs banned for references to the sun, since the well-known Chinese Communist song 〈東方紅〉 referred to Mao Zedong as the sun, was also simply re-titled 〈金黃色的花蕊〉. In some cases, the record company would release a new version of the song which was less objectionable. For example, the hugely popular song 〈今天不回家〉 (諸戈[莊奴]作詞，古月[左宏元]作曲，姚蘇蓉演唱) was banned for its “unhealthy” message, so it was later re-released as 〈今天要回家〉. Penalties for performing or broadcasting banned songs varied as well. In one well known instance, popular singer 姚蘇蓉Yao Surong was performing in a club when the audience repeatedly urged her to perform her very popular but banned hit 〈負心的人〉 (慎芝作詞，猪俣公章作曲). She finally acquiesced, and as a result her “singer’s license” was revoked, forcing her to go abroad to Hong Kong and Southeast Asia to continue her career. Ironically, as she became very popular overseas, this helped to promote Taiwan’s Mandopop industry in Chinese communities outside Taiwan, helping Taiwan to eventually take over from Hong Kong as the main center of the international Mandopop industry.
Language was also an area where censorship played a role. As television became more popular as a medium for broadcasting popular music, the government also used it to promote Mandarin over Taiwanese languages such as Hoklo, Hakka and the various aboriginal languages. The number of non-Mandarin songs that could be broadcast was severely limited, to the extent that the Hoklo popular music industry had declined dramatically by the end of the 1960s and singers such as 洪一峰Hong Yifeng had to go to Japan to continue their careers. Production of Hakka and aboriginal music was less obviously affected by these policies, as it was mostly outside the mainstream industry to begin with.
The government did actively encourage use of Mandarin among aboriginal groups as part of their general policy of “Sinicizing” the aboriginal population, and both censorship and propaganda had some effect on aboriginal songs of the era. As early as 1952, a large scale performance of aboriginal music and dance called 「改良山地歌舞講習會」 was held at 台北市中山堂. 南王前輩歌手李春花 sang an aboriginal song that was popular in the 台東 area, and by the next year the patriotic song 〈台灣好〉 (台東民謠，羅家倫詞、佩芝改編), based on the same melody, had been published in songbooks. It went on to become one of the best known patriotic, anti-Communist songs in Taiwan. Aboriginal songs were also used to spread propaganda messages among the aboriginals themselves, such as Puyuma songwriter Baliwakes [陸森寶]’s 1958 composition 〈當兵好〉 (several of his other songs, such as 民歌手胡德夫唱紅的 〈美麗的稻穗〉, were much more ambivalent about army service by young aboriginal men), or in later years songs like 〈我們都是一家人〉, which was popularized by the China Youth Corps [救國團].
In local performances, aboriginal performers were sometimes told to perform in Mandarin, presumably because the officials observing were suspicious of anything they couldn’t understand. On the other hand, songs performed in aboriginal languages sometimes escaped censorship because of the language barrier. The popular Amis song 〈送情郎到軍中(阿美三鳳)〉 told of a girl accompanying her boyfriend as he reported for army duty. 研究阿美歌謠的孫俊彥教授指出, when the song mentions the national flag flying over the base, the Amis term used literally translates as “red flag”, a description usually associated with the flag of the People’s Republic of China. Most likely if the authorities had understood Amis, this would have led to the song being censored; after all, red was such a sensitive color in this period that the famous Japanese era Hoklo song 〈四季紅〉(Four Seasons of Red) (李臨秋作詞，鄧雨賢作曲) had to be retitled 〈四季謠〉"Four Seasons Melody". While 〈送情郎到軍中〉 escaped censorship, the first attempt to bring the 「山地日語」["Mountain (Aboriginal) Japanese"] song 〈愛愛乾杯〉, popular in the 台東Taidong region since the early post-war period, to a non-aboriginal audience was immediately banned because the 閩南語 version of the song had been given the title 〈爽歪歪〉. It was only a few years later that the song became very popular due to its use in the 布袋戲budaixi production 《史艷文》 under the titles 〈合要好合要爽〉 and 〈醉彌勒〉, though most listeners were unaware of the song’s aboriginal origins.
In 1973, an explanation of the publication law was promulgated that specified 12 reasons for banning a song. These reasons were as follows: ：「違反國策」、「為匪宣傳」、」「抄襲匪曲」、「詞意頹喪」、「內容荒誕」、「意境晦淫」、「曲調狂盪」、「狠暴仇鬥」、「時代反應錯誤」、「文詞粗鄙」、「幽怨哀傷」、「文理不通意識欠明朗」. The following year, a list of 91 banned songs was published by the GIO [新聞局], including songs such as 〈向日葵〉、〈夢醒不了情〉、〈只要為你活一天〉、〈回頭我也不要你〉、〈愛情如水向東流〉、〈一寸相思淚未盡〉、〈今夜你不要走〉、〈交叉線〉、〈一條日光大道〉、〈熱情的沙漠〉 and 〈月亮代表我的心〉. Many of these songs had only been released recently, but others had first been released several years earlier. In many cases, it is not clear in retrospect why a particular song was banned. 〈熱情的沙漠〉 (李潔心作詞，加瀨邦彥、山上路夫作曲，歐陽菲菲演唱) was almost certainly banned because the repeated “ahs” in the song were considered sexually suggestive. But while 〈一條日光大道〉 (陳平作詞，李泰祥作曲) may have been banned because of the reference to the sun, a reporter writing in 1982 when the version of the song by 齊豫Qi Yu and composer 李泰祥Li Taixiang became a hit (the ban apparently having been lifted) stated that the song had been banned because of the “foreign” term “kapa” in the lyrics (the authorities were often uncomfortable with unknown foreign terms, seemingly out of fear that they could have some forbidden meaning, though the same linguistic chauvinism that led them to promote Mandarin over local Taiwanese languages may also have played a role).
In the same period, the government began a deliberate effort to promote songs that it considered “healthy” or “clean” by designating them as 「淨化歌曲」. These songs included patriotic songs like 〈台灣好〉、〈桃花舞春風〉、〈梅花〉 and 〈中華民國頌〉, as well as those that promoted what the government considered healthy values, such as 〈友情〉. Singers were required to sing a number of these songs in order to receive a singer’s license. At least one third of all songs performed on television variety shows were required to be 「淨化歌曲」. This requirement could be a burden for hosts, as the singer 楊祖珺Yang Zujun (aka t.c. yang) discovered when she hosted the folk song program 《跳躍的音符》 in the late 1970s. If her guests couldn’t sing the required quota of 「淨化歌曲」, she had to do it herself. As someone who was not a supporter of the Nationalists (she later became involved in opposition politics), this eventually was too much to endure, leading her to quit the program.
楊祖珺Yang Zujun had perhaps the most experience with censorship of any of the performers involved in the campus folk song movement. In 1979, the Government Information Office instituted a requirement that all songs be submitted to a censorship committee prior to publication (on record or tape) or broadcasting; in other words, the government began taking a proactive approach to censorship, rather than banning songs retroactively. Every week, the committee would review new releases and determine if they were suitable for publication and broadcast. A song might be deemed acceptable for publication but not broadcasting, or the committee might require that changes be made before the song could be approved. The same year that this system was put in place, 楊祖珺Yang Zujun was recording her first solo album. She hoped to record a number of songs by 李雙澤, one of the founders of the folk song movement. The song 〈美麗島〉 (陳秀喜作詩，梁景峰改寫，李雙澤作曲) was approved for publication but not broadcasting, because the committee felt it had a “pro-Taiwan independence flavor” [有台獨意味] (not long after the song would inspire the name of the dissident magazine 《美麗島》, the founders of which organized the march in Kaohsiung that resulted in the 高雄事件). But the other 李雙澤 songs that楊祖珺 had hoped to include on the album, such as 〈少年中國〉 (蔣勳作詩，李雙澤改寫，李雙澤作曲) and 〈老鼓手〉 (梁景峰作詞，李雙澤作曲) were not even approved for publication, the former because it was deemed to “look forward to unification by the Chinese Communists” [「嚮往中共統一號召」] and the latter most likely due to its ironic references to freedom and democracy. So in the end, 〈美麗島〉 was the only 李雙澤 on the album, and the album itself was taken off the market by the record company within a year of release because 楊祖珺Yang Zujun’s increasing social activism had made her “problematic”.
But even seemingly apolitical songs from this era encountered censorship. The innocuous-sounding 〈抉擇〉 (梁弘志作詞作曲，蔡琴演唱) didn’t get approved until the record company’s third attempt (a later observer said it was because of the line 「尋覓雨傘下哪個背影最像妳…啊這真是個無聊的遊戲」). According to a contemporary newspaper report, the record company had expected the song to win approval easily, and had already printed copies of the record which then had to be withdrawn. The extremely popular 〈橄欖樹〉 (三毛[陳平]作詞，李泰祥[楊祖珺]改寫，李泰祥作詞作曲，齊豫演唱) was banned from being broadcast, apparently because the authorities didn’t approve of lines like 「不要問我從哪裡來，我的家在遠方」, though the record still sold very well and the song became李泰祥’s best known composition.
The requirement to have songs approved by the censorship committee caused all sorts of problems for songwriters, record producers, and record companies. Since it was hard to be sure what the censors might object to, even songwriters who tried to self-censor in an effort to ensure approval would still occasionally have problems. Often initial pressings of a record would have to be withdrawn and re-recorded because of an unexpected failure of a key song to be approved, as in the case of 〈抉擇〉. On the other hand, once a song was approved, any unapproved changes made to it afterwards could land the record company in trouble. One example of this was the 1981 release 〈大兵歌〉 (楊立德作詞，羅大佑作曲，許不了、方正演唱). According to a contemporary newspaper report, after receiving complaints that the song was insulting to the military, the GIO [新聞局] claimed that the released version was different from the approved one, and penalized the record company滾石唱片 – though one has to wonder if they may have been using this as an excuse for retracting an approval that they may have regretted in retrospect, as it seems probable that the approved version, which couldn’t have been very different from the final one, would also have been considered objectionable by conservatives.
羅大佑Luo Dayou, the most significant singer-songwriter of the 1980s, also had many problems with censorship, despite the fact that political repression had relaxed somewhat in comparison with the White Terror of previous decades. He released his first album 《之乎者也》 in 1982, and it was an immediate success, appealing to young intellectuals due to its intelligent and socially conscious lyrics and its rock-oriented arrangements. But the album’s title track was initially rejected by the censors and was only approved for publication after 羅大佑Lu Dayou changed the line 「歌曲審查之 通不通過乎 歌曲通過者，翻版盜印也」, which ironically was the one that was considered most objectionable. The original line appeared in versions of the song released outside of Taiwan, and 羅Luo deliberately included it in the liner notes of the Taiwan release. The new line he wrote, 「眼睛睜一隻 嘴巴呼一呼 耳朵遮一遮 皆大歡喜也」, may well have been a slightly sarcastic comment on the censorship as well. But while the new version was approved for publication on record, it was still banned from being broadcast. This got some DJs into trouble, as after 羅Luo performed the song in a concert at the Sun Yatsen Memorial Hall, some of them played it on the radio, mistakenly assuming that any song that was performed there must have been passed censorship (after this the Sun Yatsen Memorial Hall instituted a rule that all songs performed there had to have been approved by the censors). Nor was 〈之乎者也〉the only song on 羅Luo’s debut album that had problems with the censors. 〈戀曲1980〉 also had to be altered slightly before release, with the line 「今夜的歡樂 將是明天創痛的回憶」changed to 「今夜的歡樂 將是明天永恆的回憶」(in concert performances 羅Luo sang the original lyric).
羅大佑Luo Dayou’s later albums also had censorship issues. 〈亞細亞的孤兒〉, one of the key tracks on his second album 《未來的主人翁》 (1983), was only gotten past the censors due to the addition of the dedication 「紅色的污泥—致中南半島難民」 in order to make the censors think the song was about Nationalist refugees in Southeast Asia, when in fact it was about Taiwan, a much more sensitive topic. 羅Luo’s third album 《家》(1984) had even more songs that failed to meet the censors’ approval, including 〈吾鄉印象〉 (吳晟作詞)、〈耶穌的另一個名字 〉 and the sarcastic 〈超級市民〉. According to the account in his book 《昨日遺書》, even some of the lyrics that 羅Luo originally wrote for the “Do They Know It’s Christmas” / “We Are the World” style multi-artist sing-along 〈明天會更好〉 (羅大佑、張大春、許乃勝、李壽全、邱復生、張艾嘉、詹宏志作詞，羅大佑作曲) met with disapproval.
羅大佑Luo Dayou’s friend and fellow songwriter 侯德健Hou Dejian also had problems with the censors. In late 1982, a few months after 羅Luo released his debut album, 侯德健Hou Dejian released a solo album titled 《龍的傳人續篇》 which also included several songs that explored social issues in some depth. One of these, 〈未來的主人翁〉 (different from 羅大佑Luo Dayou’s song of the same name) took a critical look at education, and perhaps unsurprisingly was not approved by the censors. Due in part to his frustration with censorship (though the sort of Chinese nationalistic idealism that had led him to write 〈龍的傳人〉 no doubt also played a role), in mid-1983 侯德健Hou Dejian went to China via Hong Kong, making him a traitor in the eyes of the Nationalist government in Taiwan. His song 〈酒干倘賣無〉, which featured prominently in the movie 《打錯車》, was removed from Taiwan releases of 蘇芮Su Rui’s accompanying hit album released in June of 1983 (though it appeared on Hong Kong releases and pirated cassette copies in Taiwan). In the liner notes to 齊豫Qi Yu’s album 《你是我所有的回憶》, released later that year, the lyrics to the title track were credited to the song’s composer 李泰祥Li Taixiang, but years later 齊豫Qi Yu revealed that they had been written by 侯德健Hou Dejian, and 李泰祥Li Taixiang had been credited to avoid censorship.
Throughout the 1980s, songs on albums were marked with the number of the meeting of the censorship committee at which it had been approved (such as「審148」 or 「178次」). By 1988, in 320 meetings the committee had reviewed over twenty thousand songs, about one-sixth of which had not been approved. Over nine hundred songs that were approved for publication on record were not approved for broadcasting. While by the mid-1980s most songs seem to have been approved without much difficulty (in part due to self-censorship by the songwriters and conservative choices of material by producers and record companies), there were always a few that had problems. For instance, the first two lines of 張艾嘉Zhang Aijia’s 1985 hit〈忙與盲〉(袁瓊瓊、張艾嘉作詞，李宗盛作曲) from the album of the same name had to be changed from 「曾有一次晚餐和一張床在什麼時間地點和那個對象」 to 「曾有一次晚餐和一個夢 在什麼時間地點和那些幻想」, though the lyric sheet showed the original version. But some songs in this period remained outside the censorship system altogether. For example, as Mandarin became widely spoken by aboriginal people, “aboriginal Mandarin songs” 「山地國語歌」 like 〈可憐落魄人〉 and 〈三分鐘的愛〉 appeared. 〈可憐落魄人〉 was brought to Taipei by 知本卑南族歌手陳明仁 Puyuma singer Chen Mingren and became hugely popular among non-aboriginal audiences in Taiwan and even in Southeast Asia. Copies of the song on tape and record sold in the hundreds of thousands in 1981 and 1982, mostly through night markets and similar places, far out-selling the mainstream records of the time. But the song was never submitted to the censorship committee, and with lyrics like 「你可以戲弄我 也可以呀利用我」, it certainly would not have been approved. Indeed, this song was specifically criticized in newspapers of the time, as was 〈三分鐘的愛〉, but the authorities seemingly were unable to do anything to stem its popularity. Many popular Hoklo songs of the era like 沈文程Shen Wencheng's〈心事誰人知〉 and 陳小雲Chen Xiaoyun's〈舞女〉 were also sold mainly through night markets and likewise remained mainly outside the system.
Martial law was finally ended in Taiwan in 1987, and most political restrictions were relaxed. The GIO song censorship system was not finally ended until 1990, but songs tended to be approved more easily than had been the case even a few years earlier. But songs on sensitive subjects could still face censorship. The influential 黑名單工作室Blacklist Workshop album《抓狂歌》, released in 1989, included the song 〈民主阿草〉 (王華作詞，王明輝作曲), which commented on the political atmosphere of contemporary Taiwan. Due to the very direct and sometimes sarcastic observations in this and other songs on the album, the mainstream television and radio stations wouldn't play any of the album, though it was not officially banned. One of the last albums to face significant censorship was the 1990 album 《把我自己掏出來》 by punk rocker 趙一豪Zhao Yihao. The songs 〈把我自己掏出來〉、〈改變〉 and〈震動〉 had to be re-recorded as〈把我自己收回來〉、〈這機天〉 and〈創造〉 respectively due to perceived sexual content and similar issues.
With the end of official censorship, artists and songwriters were freer to express themselves more directly about controversial political and social issues. As a contemporary newspaper article noted, albums such as 林強Lim Giong’s 《育樂世界》 and 黃舒駿Huang Shujun’s 《我是誰》, both released in 1994, reflected the increased creative space open to artists. But while the government no longer censored songs, that didn’t mean censorship had ceased to exist. For instance, both of the videos for 黃舒駿Huang Shujun’s 《我是誰》 encountered censorship from television stations, particular the video for 〈見怪不怪〉. 中視編審組The CTV review committee rejected both the video for 〈我是誰〉 and the one for〈見怪不怪〉, though most of their specific objections referred to the latter. Likewise, while 衛視音樂台 accepted the video for 〈我是誰〉 with minor changes, they asked for numerous changes to the video for 〈見怪不怪〉 and even changes to the lyrics, so in the end 黃舒駿Huang Shujun just gave up hope of having it broadcast. In the end, neither 《育樂世界》nor 《我是誰》 sold well compared to the artists’ previous albums, in large part because of the relatively conservative taste of most Taiwanese popular music fans. While many reasons could be cited for this conservativism, one distinct possibility is that this was a lingering legacy of decades of censorship, as most Taiwanese listeners had in a sense been trained to prefer a narrow range of music and lyrical content. While many young music fans of today are completely unaware of Taiwan’s history of censorship, it was without question a major factor in the evolution of popular music in Taiwan, and something that anyone who wants to understand the background of Taiwan’s music scene has to be aware of.
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