Li Dan

    debra_lidan@163.com

    IN 1975, Yang Xian held a concert at the Zhongshan Hall in Taipei that opened the curtain on the Chinese ballad movement. Forty years later, 68 Taiwan pop stars, including Jonathan Lee, Tayu Lo, Chyi Yu and Michelle Pan, staged sold-out concerts over three nights June 5 to 7 at the Taipei Arena to celebrate the beginning of Taiwan’s homegrown music. The show toured through several cities in Taiwan.

    A shorter version of that concert will make its debut on the Chinese mainland at the Shenzhen Bay Sports Center on Nov. 19. For more than three hours, you will be able to hear the songs that defined a generation.

    “We’ll have nearly 30 singers, including Chyi, Pan as well as younger singers like Cheer Chen and Weibird Wei, give performances,” said Zhang Gui-ming, former Universal Music Taiwan general manager and the producer of the concert.

    The concert promises performances of familiar songs popular both in Taiwan and on the Chinese mainland in the 1980s and 1990s. A LED screen will show the lyrics so that people can sing along if they want.

    “Before 1975, young people in Taiwan listened to Teresa Teng and English pop songs, but Yang Xian’s concert ignited their passion to write and sing their own songs,” recalled Tao Xiao-qing, a then popular radio emcee who played original songs on her program and fanned the craze in Taiwan for ballads. Tao will co-host the concert in Shenzhen with her son Ma Shifang, who is a writer and broadcaster.

    “Taiwan ballads were all the rage for five years before pop music stole its thunder,” Tao said.

    However, many of the big names of pop music, who were once members of the ballad camp, still showed the ballad movement’s influence. “Tayu Lo’s ‘Nostalgia Four Rhyme,’ which has lyrics were based on Yu Guang-zhong’s poem, as well as his ‘Bellagio’ addressed loneliness and nostalgia, the most common theme of ballads. Jonathan Lee has a style that perfectly blends ballads with pop music,” Tao said.

    For young audiences, the concert will be a night of discovering the infant years of Taiwan’s pop music.

    They will hear two different versions of “Nostalgia Four Rhyme,” one by Tayu Lo and an earlier version by Johnny Yin, which is more ballad than pop.

    The concert is part of a season of shows arranged by the Shenzhen Performance Company this year.

    Time: 7:30 p.m., Nov. 19

    Venue: Shenzhen Bay Sports Center

    Tickets: 280-1,680 yuan

    Hotline: 8211-3333, 8284-1666