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Wild Goose-Folk Song by Li Tai-Hsiang (雁-李泰祥)

I.    Lyrics (translated from Chinese)

We are still alive, still alive,
Still must fly in this endless sky.
The sky line is always in the far front,
Tantalizing us quietly.
We live and pursue it constantly.
With the feel that we are approaching it,
But looking up, we are still far away from the sky.
It is still the sky that our ancestors had flew in, extensive and empty.
Just like the never changed exhortation to us.
Or just like ancestor’s wing above the wind,
To continue a will and lands in a never ended nightmare.

Lyrics written by Bai Qiu (白萩)

我們仍然活著 仍然活著
仍然要飛行 在無邊際的天空
地平線長久在遠處
退縮地引逗著我們
活著不斷地追逐
感覺他已接近
而抬眼還是那麼遠離天空
還是我們祖先飛過的天空 廣大虛無
如一句不變的叮嚀 我們
還是如祖先的翅膀而鼓在風上
繼續著一個意志 陷入一個不完的魘夢

Audio
Chi Yu and Li Tai-Hsiang (齊豫、李泰祥)

 

II.    About this Song

Theme of the work:
The music integrates styles of Jazz & Blues and rock music; in the work, you can hear the piano syntax combines blues and rock music. A great quantity of percussion instrument like glockenspiels is used, so the music has strong pulsing. And the vocal part is also expressed by sonorous tone color. As for the bass guitar used in the song, it is expected to give people a feel that life is heavy and has a lot of pressure, but we should still actively look for direction and targets for our lives.

Summary/Story:
The first sound of the music is a gun shot; it implicates that people work hard for lives and continue to reproduce life. And wild goose in the lyrics implies people should learn wild goose’s spirit, which is working hard to live, and keeping trying to fly for existence.

III.    Manuscript

Handwritten notes (first draft) of “Wild Goose in A minor”
(1974)   
Handwritten notes (page 1) of “Wild Goose in C minor”
(1974)   
Handwritten notes (page 2) of “Wild Goose in C minor”
(1974)

          
IV.    Music Score

PDF: http://lth.e-lib.nctu.edu.tw/data/pdf/Goose.pdf
MIDI: http://lth.e-lib.nctu.edu.tw/en/data/midi/Goose.mid


To view the story of Li Tai-Hsiang, please go to Li Tai-Hsiang, the Native Musician of Taiwan.

Text and images are provided by The Native Musician of Taiwan-Tai-Hsiang Li Digital Archive, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan