地球是一顆很孤單的星球

來自美國加州的聖荷西水星報
在2007.01.20的娛樂版中
特別介紹了來自台灣的HIPHOP團體--拷秋勤
並且以"Taiwanese Rappers Build Worldwide Audience"作為標題

採訪的記者Marian Liu，是一位美裔台灣人
專門負責娛樂新聞方面的報導
之前曾以專訪過MOS DEF等國外的HIPHOP歌手
不久前還更以電話專訪了KRS-ONE


12月時她便以一封[would love to interview you]的E-MAIL與我們聯繫
之後便來到台灣，採訪我們的表演
並在1/20的報導中介紹了拷秋勤
與各位支持拷秋勤的朋友們一起分享拷秋勤的喜悅
觀看原文


你也可以看看這位作者的BLOG
有一些片段可以觀賞
Marian Liu的BLOG
也給他留言打氣
謝謝他支持台灣的音樂


以下為報導原文


Mercury News Jan. 20, 2007 Online Phenoms
Report By Marian Liu


Taiwanese Rappers Build Worldwide Audience


In a dingy underground club where hipsters congregate, there are rappers getting
ready to lay down some rhymes. They're surrounded by walls of stylized graffiti
and dressed in the hip-hop staples: baggy clothes and the classic New York
Yankees baseball cap.


But this isn't New York, or even the United States. It's Taipei, Taiwan. Above the
club, appropriately named Underworld, is a night market selling such local
delicacies as stinky tofu and spicy fried chicken patties. Below in the club is the
rap crew Kou Chou Ching.


Although Kou Chou Ching has no budget to tour outside Taiwan -- four out of five
members are college students -- the rappers have an international following,
powered by the Web and their use of MySpace. Fans across the world have been
listening to the band, pronouncing the group's name with different accents. An
Americanized pronunciation is ``cow-cho-ching.''


The name refers to agriculture and the autumn harvest. That's appropriate for a
band that takes a seed -- hip-hop -- from foreign roots and plants it locally.


``Hip-hop is an African-American culture (whose) artists sample their parents'
music . . . a lot of jazz and funk,'' says Kou Chou Ching rapper Fish Lin, speaking
in Mandarin.


``But we are Taiwanese, and we can't copy everything African-American,'' adds Lin,
who takes inspiration from his father's collection of Taiwanese folk records.
``Though we are playing hip-hop, we are sampling our own.''


Kou Chou Ching's music and look represent the globalization of hip-hop. The group's
members rap in three dialects -- Mandarin, Taiwanese and Hakka. And their lyrics
focus on Taiwanese politics.


Their influences are based in a lot of early East Coast hip-hop: Wu-Tang Clan,
Public Enemy, Nas, Common and Dilated Peoples. Part of their inspiration is
RZA, DJ Premier and 9th Wonder -- harder beats with socially conscious and
highly political elements.


Their music mixes not only the usual record scratches, plus the blings and bloops
taken from random songs and video games, but also Taiwanese music. Kou Chou
Ching features two rappers, a DJ and two traditional oboe players.


``There are differences and similarities but the two types of music work together
quite well,'' says Lin, 27. ``A lot of other countries do the same with their hip-hop.
In Japan and Korea, their local hip-hop also mixes in their local music as samples.''


Kou Chou Ching first got together in ``Eminem 8 Mile'' style, says Kou Chou Ching's
other rapper, Fan Chiang, also speaking in Mandarin. After starting in the freestyle
rap circuit, Lin and Chiang moved into music production and started sampling
traditional Taiwanese music and opera.


``In Taiwan, (traditional) music is harder to find,'' says Chiang, 27, ``because people
don't have the patience to listen to it anymore. Many will sell (recordings) to
secondhand stores, who won't take it seriously. So we have to look at eBay and
Yahoo.''


Many of the hip-hop bands in Taiwan are more derivative of the ones in America and
don't sample traditional music, Chiang says.


``Much of the younger generation feel that traditional music is old and lame,'' Lin
says. ``They would rather listen to rock, hip-hop or electronica. We hope to use
the popular hip-hop and add the traditional to teach the younger generation the value
of their traditional music.''


Chiang adds, ``For our parents and grandparents, these songs were hits in their day,
but to us, they're traditional, so we're making them `re-hits.' We're making the songs
contemporary again.''

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