Type and Feature

1. ‘Su Hsiang Ki' music score

Thinking of” is the most representative Hengchun folk song. When talking about Hengchun folk songs, people always use it as an example.

It has many features:

•  The lyric is not fixed: singer can sing whatever he likes in 7 words, 4 sentences form.

•  The tune is not fixed: because the lyric is not fixed.

•  The rhythm is not fixed: singer can express sadness or happiness with different rhythm.

•  Use ‘ah' sound to help singing the lyrics.

•  Use pronoun , function words or lining words for compensation before or after a sentence.

•  Fixed interjection ‘ai yo uei' after the 2 nd , 3 rd , 4 th sentence,. (many people in Hengchun sings ‘yo uei' today).

•  It makes people who can't read sing like the poet. It makes people who don't know musical notes sing like the performer.

Anyway, the lyrics of ‘thinking of ‘ is extemporaneous, so at the beginning of the song, singers will sing ‘su ah hsiang ah ki' (‘Thinking of' in Chinese) to smoothly cut into the subjects they wants to sing. ‘Ah' sounds are used to help them transit or prolong their singing. And those pronoun or lining words are used for compensation before or after a sentence. This structure is very suitable for people to take turns to sing, when people get together, after one takes the lead, the others can follow.

The original ‘Thinking of' was spread orally only. It diverged after people wrote it down. It is estimated that there are about 50 different version of this folk song. They have a same basic tune but added with different lyrics and varied in rhythm. But they still keep the original flavor. This is the unique, lovely feature of Hengchun folk song.

Since all the different versions spread around the same, there should be no bias in any specific version. But recently, people seem to favor the one that Mr. Chen Da sang. It was mostly because that Mr. Chen Da was uncovered as native treasure in musicology and exposed a lot in public media. Especially after his singing was use by the famous modern dancers, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan , in a performance in 1978, dance " The Legacy'', about the immigration of our ancestor.

In fact, Mr. Chen Da was also very familiar with many other tunes of Hengchun folk songs. He played moon guitar and chose proper tune according to the subject he wanted to sing and sang extemporaneously. He could even conjoin two different tunes together and sang them as one piece.