(Photo: CNA)
Chinese Name: 羅文裕
Born: 1976
Birthplace: Kaohsiung City (Southern Taiwan)
Wing Lo was born in 1976 in a Hakka community of Kaohsiung City’s Meinong District in southern Taiwan. Before he came up to Taipei for high school, he had barely ever spoken Mandarin; growing up, the people around him were all Hakka, spoke Hakka, and listened to music in Minnan Taiwanese – so when he took part in singing contests in high school, he competed in the Minnan category. It was in 1999 that Wing Lo entered the world of Mandopop with the group Y.I.Y.O. When the group disbanded in 2004, Lo released his first solo album and became a Mandarin language singer-songwriter.
(Photo: CNA)
In 2013, he composed a song in the Hakka for the first time, called “Play Yourself (演好自己).” Wing said, “My mom hoped that I would write a Hakka song for her to listen to, so I’d always had this in my heart.” But Lo didn’t know that this song he wrote to make his mother happy would be chosen by the Hakka Affairs Council as the theme song for its annual commercial. This motivated him to continue writing songs using Hakka. In 2015, Lo went on to release an album in Hakka, “A Ha Moment! (驚喜時刻).” That year, he also won Best Singer (Hakka) at the 27th Golden Melody Awards.
In 2020, Wing Lo put out his second record in his mother tongue, “When Sun Rises (當太陽升起時).” With this album he also realized his dream of more than a decade before. In 2007, Lo heard the album “Sleep Through the Static” by his idol, Jack Johnson. He learned that this album was made at a solar-powered studio called Mango Tree that Johnson himself built in Hawaii. This was something Lo found deeply fascinating and it inspired him to rent a solar-powered homestay in his hometown of Meinong. With Meinong’s sunlight generating the electricity, he created the first ever Hakka-language record produced 100% with solar power. Lo said, “I wanted to go back to nature and be a wild child, to leave the temperature there in the music, and have the most primal feeling of Hakka culture in the singing.”
At the 32nd Golden Melody Awards, “When Sun Rises” was nominated in three categories: Best Hakka Album, Album of the Year and Best Singer (Hakka). Lo in the end took home the Best Singer award, the second time he had been crowned the king of Hakka pop song.
Wing Lo’s compositions stick close to human society and the land, singing of ordinary life under the sun, and are very infectious. Listening to his songs creates curiosity towards the Hakka – you can’t help wanting to sing songs in Hakka along with him.
Lo once held a concert at Meinong’s Longdu Elementary School, where many students, parents and teachers said that because of him they had started listening to Hakka music and being more aware of the culture of their own land. Some students also said they wanted to do Hakka music like Lo when they grew up. He also did a tour of 10 speaking and singing events at schools. Very few of the students who came to hear him were Hakka. Everyone not only changed their views regarding him and about Hakka, but many also individually expressed the wish to learn Hakka. These responses have spurred Wing Lo on greatly. He says, “I want to bring Hakka songs into people’s lives. It’s only when music enters people’s lives that we find resonance and then we can keep on singing.”