Hung Yi-feng—a modern Taiwanese travelling troubadour

“How could you leave my side when I love you and yearn for you so much….”  Many people will be familiar with these  emotion-packed lyrics from  “The person I yearn for,” one of Hung’s best known songs. Hung Yi-feng was a milestone figure in the world of Taiwanese popular music, his career spanning the era of travelling singers, radio, vinyl records and Taiwanese literary films, his works giving us a glimpse at the cultural phenomena, aesthetic shifts and changing times behind the music.

Hung Yi-feng was born in 1927 in Tainan, and his birth name was Hung Wen-ming. He was a street portrait artist until he was 19 years old, his performing experience limited to participating a few times in singing events at today’s Zhongshan Hall. When he was 19 his elder brother, Hung De-cheng, formed a singing group that performed on the banks of the Danshui River.To promote their songs the group printed song books drawn by Hung Yi-feng. This was the start of a singing career that was to last more than 60 years.

Hung was a self-taught musician. He started as a travelling singer, then performed on radio, gradually making a name for himself. In 1959, Hung was taken to Japan to perform by a Japanese Overseas Chinese, Cai Dong-hua, and performed in the Japan Theater in Tokyo, becoming the first Taiwanese singer to try to make a name for his/her self in Japan in the postwar period.

After Hung recorded a number of bestselling records for Asia Records in 1960, the music business’s “era of Hung Yi-feng” began. His popularity also led him to make Taiwanese literary films such as “Lasting feelings”, “When will we meet again”, “Hope you are happy” and “Tears of a singing star”; the most popular promotional method of the time—stars would make personal appearance when their films were shown—was also used, attracting large audiences, and Hung entered the most successful period of his career. When his eldest son Hung Rong-Hung was just one year old his father discovered his musical talent and began to actively train him, taking the child on stage with him and writing songs for him.

After Hung recorded a number of bestselling records for Asia Records in 1960, the music business’s “era of Hung Yi-feng” began.

Hung Yi-feng had a wide vocal range, was highly creative, his songs merging elements from Japanese songs, European and North American music and Taiwanese folk songs, his songs had realistic lyrics and his voice was powerful, the potent combination allowing him to carve out a new road for Taiwanese song.Hung sang a large number of songs and it is remarkable at a time when it was fashionable for Japanese songs to be sung in Taiwanese that he actually wrote over 100 original songs.This shows that being “crowned” “Formosa’s king of song” was not just the result of his singing ability, his musical creativity and his insistence on passing on Taiwanese songs were also reasons.Most research relating to Hung Yi-feng at present focuses on his songs, however, Shi Ji-sheng has taken the perspective of a sociologist as his starting point, believing that collecting information about Taiwanese songs will be of substantial help to research into social changes, the history of the style of Taiwanese songs and music localization.He believes that this is one of the values of making digital archives.

The basic line-up of Asia Records stars at the time (Hung is second from the left, Cai Jun-lin is seventh from left)

Singing all over Taiwan, piecing together a life with footsteps

Hung began life as a travelling singer in 1944, performing in numerous places in Taiwan, north and south. As well as singing popular songs of the time, he also performed songs he composed himself;when radio became popular, he performed at radio stations across Taiwan with bands he formed such as Heavenly Sounds and Little Phoenix.

Hung and manuscripts taken at home sometime 2000-2005

As a child Hung lived in Wanhua, Taipei, later moving from place to place in search of opportunities to perform. From 1944 to 1947 he performed at outdoor music halls  in Ximending and on the banks of the Danshui River. 1953-1956 he began to play live on radio at stations from north to south Taiwan and performed advertising songs at product promotional events.1957-1960 Hung recorded around 50 vinyl records, at the time living in Sanchong which was a center for vinyl record making, and also went to Japan to perform; The next decade or so was the golden period of Hung’s career and he starred in a number of films as well as redoubling his efforts to become  star in Japan, travelling between Taiwan and Japan to perform. However, all singers, composers of Taiwanese songs and the companies that made the records had the rug pulled from under them when the government effectively banned the broadcast of Taiwanese songs on TV and radio when the Broadcasting Law was promulgated in 1976! Hung had no choice but to gradually focus his efforts on the Japanese market.

Hung was a  self-taught musician and used his spare time to practice even when he was old