.jpg "Siàu-lú Khah-lah")
(Photo courtesy of HPCF)
They believe the use of the Roman alphabet can better express the phonetics of Taiwan’s native languages, and so the band’s Chinese name is directly romanized from Taiwanese Minnan to be written as Siàu-lú Khah-lah. Siàu-lú (girl) is intended to convey a youthful, delicate and sunny personality, while Khah-lah (karaoke) – a type of universal mass entertainment in Taiwan – conveys a resolve to “accompany everyone.” Musically, Siàu-lú Khah-lah uses the rock music style popular with young people to cast off stereotypes about sad Taiwanese ballads or Hakka folk songs, creating more possibilities for writing songs in native tongues. Lead singer Bóng Tì-ka says, “We like Hong Kong singer Wong Ka Kui (黃家駒) and the Hakka singer Ayugo Huang (黃連煜), they both are pioneers in mother tongue compositions. Wong Ka Kui’s Beyond was Hong Kong’s first band to compose in Cantonese, which is very significant and symbolic.”
The band at first wrote songs in Taiwanese and only later tried to compose in Hakka. Bóng shared that he previously took part in KKBOX’s Future Star Project and had the opportunity to co-write songs in Hakka with Ayugo Huang. In the composition process, Ayugo Huang commented that the young band’s Hakka lyrics were too “Mandarinized” – there were a lot of sentences expressed using Mandarin syntax, not realizing that the two languages do not share exactly the same grammar. Bóng Tì-ka thus discovered that his Hakka needed some improvement and so sought to gain a deeper knowledge of the language from other musicians and literary works, while also asking older Hakka people to teach him more authentic vocabulary.
Through Siàu-lú Khah-lah, Bóng Tì-ka wants to create a Hakka style for today’s generation, and often asks how the Hakka language can be enriched. How to bring a whole new feeling to the listener while still retaining the Hakka character? For him, trying to express things in new words that still conform to the logic of the Hakka language is something very enjoyable.
In 2019, Siàu-lú Khah-lah’s song “Hiˋ ngiˇ idˋ pienˋ mag tienˇ” (Promise You a Wheatfield) won first prize at the Hakka Pop Music Awards. The spirit of the composition came from “The Catcher in the Rye” by the American novelist JD Salinger. Taking this story from Western literature as its blueprint, the song describes a young person struggling in the big metropolis. Bóng Tì-ka said this song talks about Hakka people in the big city, where their Hakka identity often becomes hidden. He said that, in truth, Hakka songs do not have to be written about the countryside, but they must be written using the logic of the Hakka language in order to be a faithful record.
At the 2021 Golden Melody Awards, Siàu-lú Khah-lah’s album Khah-lah Thien-thoì (Karaoke Radio) was nominated for Best Hakka Language Album and Album of the Year – a massive affirmation for the band. Siàu-lú Khah-lah’s ideal is to promote native languages in the hope that through music the younger generation can relearn their mother tongues.