Chinese
name: 二本貓
Year of Establishment: 2015
Founder:
Lai Yu-chiao (賴予喬)
UrbanCat,
different from typical Hakka bands, creates fresh and new urban folk songs
based on acoustic guitars integrating with double bass and Jazz drums.
Featuring a female vocal with gentle voice, their debut song “True
Freedom (真正的自由是)” won the first
prize at the 2016 International Hakka Pop Music Festival. Later, they snatched the
top prize in the Taiwan Music Composition and Songwriting Contest. In 2017,
their debut album, "The Golden Age (光亮徬徨的閃耀年紀),"
won the Best Hakka Singer Award and the Best Hakka Album Award at the 28th
Golden Melody Awards.
UrbanCat
is comprised of band leader and lead guitarist Wang Wei (王瑋),
double bassist Cheng Nai-han (鄭乃涵), drummer Pan Wei-han
(潘維瀚) and lead singer Lai Yu-chiao. Wang and Lai first
met at a music event and started playing music together. After bassist Cheng
joined the band, they started to create songs. With the drummer Pan joining the
group later, they formed the band and started to participate in music
competitions.
In
the beginning, the band’s members did not understand the Hakka language. Even
though Lai’s parents are Hakkas, she only started to learn Hakka from her
father after entering the music industry. In order to know more about the Hakka
language and understand the difference between the so-called orthodox Hakka and
the Hakka she learned from her family, she also took one-on-one lessons with a
Hakka teacher at school.
The
music of UrbanCat is not limited to Hakka, nor is it just to sing the special
features of Hakka culture. The band integrates multiple languages and styles to
make their mother tongue more prominent. Combining different languages, they
are able to take their music to different markets, attracting more listeners to
discover the Hakka language. They also incorporate people’s everyday life into
their songs, expounding the subject matters that touch the public’s fragile
heart and affect the audience’s mood.
The
band’s debut album "The Golden Age" covers songs that combine Hakka,
Minnan, English and Mandarin languages. Written and composed by Lai, the album
portrays the ordinary people’s life and conveys their helplessness and
loneliness in a fresh music style that resonates with the masses.
In
2017, the band released its second EP album "Les Yeux Sont Rouges (紅紅)" to convey Lai’s thoughts on
the color red, which represents warmth, romance and joy, through four songs
that express her love for her father. After she decided to embark on a career
of creating Hakka songs, she started to learn Hakka language from her father
and, as a result, began to develop a close relationship with her father. Even
though the theme song of the album doesn't mention her father, it is full of
happiness and warmth that her father has brought to her.