Rural Armed Youth: I see the land and live alongside it

Text and photos / Rural Armed Youth A-Da

"From the Longjing Interchange on National Freeway No. 2, head south and connect to National Freeway No. 1 to continue south. Exit at the Tuku Interchange on the Yunlin System, head toward the East-West Expressway Taixi-Gukeng Line, exit at the Yuanchang Interchange and go straight for 500 m until you reach Provincial Highway 19, then turn left. Follow Provincial Highway 19 straight for about 13 km and you will enter Beigang Township. After you see Zhongzheng Road, turn left and follow Zhongzheng Road all the way to the end, and you will see Beigang Chaotian Temple."

This was the handmade satellite navigation I wrote in my notebook before heading out last year, when I was invited by the Yunlin County Community College to perform spoken-word singing at the temple courtyard of Beigang Chaotian Temple. I looked up the route online, wrote it down and drew a route map by hand, and also noted relevant cultural tourism spots and local specialty snacks. Every time I go out to perform, I do this kind of note-taking. As the performances gradually piled up, I began to realize that from childhood to adulthood I had never been so close to the land of Taiwan, and this also became the biggest factor that drew me to playing in a band and performing.

A-Da's performance route notes, which also record the beautiful local life of Taiwan

Many friends, after listening to Rural Armed Youth's music and reading the lyrics, think I am truly a radical, rebellious, angry young man. But to me, radical is merely a belief and attitude in my heart, and when expressed in life it can be carried out in hundreds of ways.

I also said earlier that the reason that most attracts me to playing in a band and singing is not the communication of these ideas through creation, but that through the process of each performance I come to know the customs and appearances of Taiwan's land, and also come to know the grandpas, grandmas, uncles and aunts of every place. I can even taste the snacks and specialties of each region, and I have also come to understand and visit the industrial features and cultural characteristics of many neighborhood communities. This is much happier and more real than the purely abstract clash of creation.

I often think back to Auntie Hong Xiang's sweet potatoes and watermelons in Wanbao, Erlin's wine and pumpkins, Meinong's white jade radish soup and Brother Qishang's organic rice, Hongya Bookstore's brown rice from Xiuming natural farming, Chiayi turkey rice and rice cake, Minxiong goose, a bowl of braised pork rice for only 25 yuan next to Beigang Chaotian Temple, and the wild vegetables and cold-tossed garlic sprouts of Hualien's Gangkou tribe… and so on. Aren't these already happy and complete enough!

I treat every performance as a trip. Because of this performance process, Rural Armed Youth's music grows stronger and closer to the land. For me, creation needs to be continuously restored, and even tested. Restoration means returning the content and message of the work to the earth. Testing, of course, is not strict scoring by a music teacher or a competition, but practicing through life on the land. The process from creation, restoration to testing can also be called a kind of life, and this life in turn gives deeper energy to the next creation.

The scene of the anti-nuclear movement in Gongliao

In fact, it is just like a farmer, creating fruit from the earth. When the fruit enters the consumer's mouth, and then enters the soil of the earth waiting to decay, it will again become nutrients for the next growth. Nature cycles in the same way. Every step has its own rhythm, and will once again nurture beautiful fruit.

"Throw yourself into the land and see what happens. Don't think too much, just throw yourself in."

This was probably the idea I held to when making the album "Give Me Back the Land" two years ago. I still remember interviewing Professor Liao Benquan of the Department of Real Estate and Built Environment at National Taipei University, and one passage he said inspired me. He said: "It is not that this government and society should educate farmers and rural areas, but rather that the whole society of Taiwan should learn from rural areas and farmers. There are inexhaustible treasures and wisdom here."

At that time I had just released the album "Fuck! Government" not long before, and I was at a moment of re-examining my work and feeling lost and uncertain, even feeling that this album was too slogan-like and too far from the land. So when I heard Teacher Benquan's words at that time, they were full of enormous impact and irony.

So I let myself start from zero, casting aside everything I had learned in school and abandoning any imagination in music creation, directly throwing myself onto the land to see what would happen. Whether what happened was good or bad, it was all nurtured in me by this land, and it was all the most natural wisdom.

I have never felt the countryside was beautiful, because its beauty is often shaped by the city. The beauty of the countryside should come from the most real and most blood-and-flesh aspects of life. These realities are often ugly and unruly, but isn't that nature? Just like the damaged leaves of organic vegetables eaten by caterpillars: although ugly, they are the most natural and also the healthiest. If the countryside is still, to you, the appearance of a beautiful rural scene, then you must throw yourself fiercely onto the land once, and let the land nurture you anew.

The scene of "Join Hands to Protect the Irrigation Canal" in Xizhou

"Rock music should grow from one's own land. It is life and also power, and even more the true cry of every person, thing and matter on the land. No matter how historically important Western rock music is, or how many people yearn for the dreamy era of the 1960s hippies, frankly speaking, what the hell does that have to do with me?"

To me, rock is just that simple and straightforward. Of course everyone can have their own rock music, and this is my own rock music and the root of my creation. I want to create rock music that belongs to Taiwan. I want to use my works to see the underlying appearance of Taiwan, and I want even more to sing the music for every person on the land. This is my rock spirit: to be together with the land and the people's lives, and to use that most real language to sing the most lived and most blood-and-flesh realities.

Rural Armed Youth's creation comes from life, and life comes from the earth. Every creation must be returned to the land, waiting for the rich nutrients that grow after fermentation. No matter what, you cannot keep sitting and watching the world. Living too comfortably will make you unable to see other people's discomfort. No matter what, you just cannot stay in the same place all the time.