MEmento·MORI

There are many more people before and after that sorrow. Some are leaving, some are waiting for someone who will not come back, and some have already died but still can’t let go of things from when they were alive. By the second half of the album, another language sounds, and the memories of other families are brought in. The album is very short, but the relationships it holds are complicated.

I like that Collage (珂拉琪) doesn’t sing these subjects in a very proper way. The guitar can be flamboyant, the drums can be so dense they are almost unreasonable, and the voice of Natsuko (夏子), clear a moment ago, can press out a fierce growl the next. You can hear the influence of Japanese rock in the melodies, while the lyrics carry the distinct feel of Hokkien, Amis, and Japanese. On a first listen, even before you have worked out the story, it is easy to be pulled in by this sound.

But listen a bit longer and language is no longer just a difference in timbre. Questions slowly appear: who is saying goodbye in which language, and why a family’s memory keeps several languages at once. Natsuko said in an interview that at her grandmother’s farewell ceremony, she didn’t know how to open her mouth because she was not familiar with her people’s language. Thinking of that, listening to these songs again, it is hard to see the mixing of languages as merely a pretty style.

这该死的拘执佮爱 begins from a thought that is very hard to let go of. The song rushes forward, the diction of the voice is tight, and the melody has a drive that doesn’t want to stop. The person setting out seems to already know things will be difficult, and still can’t persuade themselves to stay. The love and stubbornness in the title are tangled together, and by ear there is no clear line between them. Why loving a person, or a place, sometimes pushes people toward a choice they can’t turn back from is the question the opening left me with.

葬予规路火烌犹在 brings in the consequences. Loss begins to enter the home, and guns, scattering, and funeral matters give the resolve of the previous song a cost. The pressure of the drums here is especially clear, dense, orderly, with almost no room to negotiate. The voice is still singing forward, and the flow of the melody exists together with the force of the rhythm, so it is easy to feel that an individual’s strength is in fact very limited.

Listening to these songs against the memory of Taiwan’s White Terror, you can indeed hear people taken away, families forced into silence, and descendants who never get an answer. However, the creative triggers Hunter Wang (王家权) mentioned also include the social unrest of 2019. These songs keep a space that goes beyond any specific event. For me, knowing the historical background helps me understand the fear in them, but there is no need to find a single true prototype for every character.

万千花蕊慈母悲哀, placed third, finally puts the person who waits at the center. The drums and guitar before it have already pushed the emotion very tight, but the melody of this song is especially easy to remember. Natsuko’s voice is bright, the ends of lines drag a little, and the longer she sings, the more you can hear that stubbornness of not receiving a reply for so long. The song doesn’t make the waiting easy just because it sounds good.

I think the cruelest thing about it is that it lets people keep believing they can still wait for someone. With the story at this point, the listener may have already guessed the ending, but the person in the song is still repeating the same wish. To outsiders, death is a fact that can be explained; to those close, admitting it means they can no longer hope in the same way. She isn’t ready yet.

Buddhist imagery gives this hope somewhere to be cast. The gods should hear, compassion should be able to look after those who suffer, but the more urgent the singing gets, the more obvious it is that the response never appeared in reality. The “loving mother” in the title adds another layer of connection to the private loss, the mother’s grief and the mercy of gods and Buddhas stand close together, and no one could easily lead a person out of parting.

I like that the sorrow isn’t handled as weak here. The melody moves fast, the voice has drive, and a person who waits can be stubborn and angry too, and can refuse to accept when others tell her to let go. This connects it to the first song again. The one who is leaving has their own persistence, the one who stays has theirs, and it is hard for either to decide for the other.

伤心地狱芳花引魂 next moves the viewpoint to after death. The religious scene here is more complete, and the growl and heavy guitar have a clear dramatic function. The voices of gods and ghosts come in, creating a big contrast with the clear voice, like different characters taking turns to speak. I especially like that it doesn’t keep letting the fiercest sound stand for the threat. Some forces that sound frightening may also be protecting the dead.

There is a very simple wish in the imagination of this song. They already suffered so much while alive, and for this last stretch of road, someone at least should look after them. The gods, the guiding of the way, and the scene of farewell give the death that couldn’t be dealt with before a place to be set down for now. The music is still fierce, but the emotion is wider than plain anger. After this song, thinking back to the waiting in the third one, you can feel the concern on both sides drawing nearer to each other.

MALIYANG changes the breathing of the whole album. The melody in triple time has a turning feeling, the bells and percussion make the sound bright, and Natsuko switches between Japanese and Amis. But this song was written after she attended her grandmother’s funeral, and inside that brightness there is a sorrow of not being able to speak. A person still remembers the name and the voice, and by the time they really want to say something more, the other person is no longer there.

It also makes me think that language loss sometimes happens very quietly. You speak a little less in daily life, then a little less after leaving home, and only on the day you especially need to speak do you find you can no longer find the right words. This distance is hard to explain with just one person’s neglect, and education, migration, and the status of different languages all leave their influence. MALIYANG doesn’t unfold into a history lesson, and a relative’s absence has already brought these questions down onto one person.

The historical source of TALACOWA is clearer. According to the band’s song notes, in 1945 a group of young Amis men in Taichung left their barracks and crossed the Central Mountain Range on foot, returning to Hualien and Taitung. They did not want to be drawn into someone else’s war. Natsuko later learned from her father that her own grandfather was among them.

Knowing this background, listening again to the calls and responses and the rhythm in the song, you feel the movements of the body become very concrete. Someone leads the singing, other voices join in, the drums carry a sense of urgency, and the melody keeps unfolding outward. The song gives these people a direction of their own. Facing conscription, an empire, and war, a person still wants to go home, and this wish is simple enough and strong enough.

I care about the complexity it leaves behind. People in a colonial relationship don’t necessarily have only one kind of feeling, and the education they received, the people they knew, and the things they once believed can all really exist. But understanding this doesn’t require them to keep giving their lives for an empire. The refusal in the song gives the people their own judgment. History is no longer only about who ruled whom, it also includes a certain night when someone decided to leave the ranks.

’ADINGO widens the viewpoint further. Shadows, souls, and the brevity of human life are bound up with one another; when the voice parts overlap, the earlier tension of being in a hurry to arrive somewhere gradually loosens. I like that it lets the melody keep flowing and doesn’t suddenly turn into a solemn summary. Knowing that everyone will die doesn’t necessarily dissolve hostility, but at least it lets people divided into different camps show again how similarly fragile they are.

The farewell of TORATORAW is lighter. The acoustic guitar and springy rhythm make you feel again the possibility of being together, and the song title itself is the Amis word for goodbye. By this point, the earlier violence and death are still remembered very clearly, so this lightness doesn’t seem cheap. It is as if the living are finally allowed to sit together, finish telling the things of the past, and then each decide where to go next.

The final Outro is very short, like the echo left after a performance ends. The title reminds people to remember death, yet the whole album spent a lot of effort letting those who have already left keep a voice. This also helps me understand why it keeps so many specific languages. How a person calls out to relatives, how they ask the gods for help, how they say goodbye to others, none of it can be fully replaced by another way of saying it.

After listening to the whole thing, I want to know how the people in TALACOWA got home, and I also think of the words in MALIYANG that couldn’t be said. Those names and languages were originally far from me, and now at least they won’t easily slip past my ears.