(Photo credit: 山狗大後生樂團 )

In 1997, Hakka singer Yen Chi-wen (顏志文) released a rarely seen all Hakka composition album "Who's Singing Hakka Mountain Songs There?". It stirred up a discussion in the mainstream music market, and caused a lot of reverberations and reactions in Hakka communities. It also led to the subsequent development of Hakka music, which had originally been silent in the music scene in Taiwan. At the same time, Yen also established the San-geu-tai Band, which opened the way for Hakka new music and launched the Hakka Renaissance in modern times.

"San-geu-tai" means a lizard in the Hakka language, and usually refers to a wood climbing lizard (Taiwan japalure) commonly seen in the Hakka mountains.

After graduating from the Fine Arts Department of Taiwan Normal University, Yen went to Berklee College of Music in the United States, where he majored in Commercial Arranging. In his creative career, "crossing borders" seems to have become a normal state for him, although it was not always deliberate. During a period of 10 years, apart from producing four albums of his solo creations, he produced several collaborative works. These include "Cradle of Heart (心的搖籃)," an instrumental album of traditional Hakka folk songs adapted to classical music, which he worked with classical musicians to create. He also teamed up with national treasure Hakka folk song master Lin Gui-shui (林貴水) to produce the album "A Dialogue Between Generations (時空對話).” As a result, San-geu-tai Band built itself a reputation for being a diverse band in music circles.

In 2008, Yen recruited a group of young rookies and set up a new group that succeeded the old San-geu-tai band, calling it the New San-geu-tai Band. Its lead singer Rita Lin has a high-quality voice and a keen sense of rhythm, and she is also able to perform in a wide range of music types. Other members are mostly good jazz performers who have performed for many years, including bassist Cheng Kai-fan (鄭凱帆) and drummer Chen Ren-zhao (陳仁昭). The music created by the band is highly accepted by the masses and resonates with a wide age range of audiences, regardless of the traditional tunes or contemporary genre that emphasizes uniqueness.


(Photo credit: 山狗大後生樂團 )

In 2014, the band released the album "Under Eaves (簷頭下)", which traces the origin of Hakka music - traditional folk music, but it was sung in the popular modern style, with refined and elegant tunes and lyrics, and was based on the structure of the band. The album allowed the songs of life often played under the roof of families to send forth shining messages in unprecedented way to the broader society. This album is not just a traditional album dressed in new clothes, or an overwhelming modernity that advertises subversion. The rich melody and language of traditional folk songs are still clear and easily distinguishable in the album, becoming even richer and more diversified in the juxtaposition of the modern music style.

In 2015, the New San-geu-tai Band used the close relationship between blues and Hakka music as the main theme for its music creation. It performed with National Dong Hwa University’s jazz band, using the "Blues-Hakka" music discourse as the theme of its performances, and gave seminars to the students. In 2016, the band invited jazz saxophonist Chang Kun-de (張坤德) to be its music director to continue to create under the Blues-Hakka theme. It also started a cross-border cooperation with jazz bands and jazz players. All in all, it completed six college campus tours that year.

In 2018, the band released its newest album "Good Morning, Dawu Mountain (早安，大武山)", which was developed with the theme of the southern Liudui Hakka imagery. Among the Hakka communities in Taiwan, Liudui – which refers to six Hakka settlements in Pingtung County and Kaohsiung City - has always maintained a simple and diligent lifestyle and a deep feeling for the land, with many moving stories. The director of the band, Yen Chi-wen, returned to his hometown in southern Taiwan in the past two years, stepping on the land he had been away from for a long time and writing songs that are closest to life in the south. Lin, the lead singer of the band, meanwhile created a new generation of Hakka music based on her own growth experiences and from her perspective as a Hakka woman from the cities.

After being shortlisted for the Golden Melody Award many times, the New San-geu-tai Band continues to experiment with more diverse creations, demonstrating the vitality of the new generation of Hakka music. Many fans are looking forward to their creations of infinite possibilities in the future.