Wei Bin Chen Chen, Wei Bin (Composer)
Wei Bin Chen is a lyricist and composer of Taiwanese-language songs. After founding the performing group “Tian Ko Si Taiwan Music Workshop” (典歌詩台灣音樂坊) in 2015, Chen has devoted energy to music activities such as publishing scores, children’s education, and performances in rural communities.
Originally a dentist with a doctorate in molecular biology, Chen lived in Japan for more than thirty years. Alongside medical practice, Chen felt that few Taiwanese-language songs were being written, and that their lyrics, constrained by geographical and historical factors, still had much room to grow. Chen therefore took up the pen, hoping to create Taiwanese-language songs that could stand on equal footing with songs in other languages.
In 2007, while still living in Japan, Chen held a first concert in Taiwan, “Songs of a Broken Layer: Taiwanese Songs – A Black-and-White Rainbow” (斷層的台語歌集-黑白的彩虹), a showcase of Chen’s compositions. From the CD recorded for it, “Tung Blossom Waltz” (桐花圓舞曲) was nominated for Best Lyricist in the Traditional and Art Music category of the 19th Golden Melody Awards. Another work on the same CD, “The Muddy Waters of the Zhuoshui River” (濁水溪溪水濁), became a Yunlin movement at the invitation of Yunlin County.
In 2012 Chen ended life in Japan and returned to Taiwan to continue writing Taiwanese-language songs. After three years of preparation, Chen began presenting a new series of works every three years from 2016. The first series, “Healing Hearts, Stolen Joys” (醫心盜樂), set out to “sail the boat of literature into the sea of music”; the second, in 2019, was “Song of the Land” (大地之歌), eighteen songs portraying eighteen cities of Taiwan; and the 2022 series “Life’s True Feelings” (人生真情) moved from love of the land to reflections on life.
Chen holds firm convictions about both lyric writing and composition. In lyrics, the aim is to recover the elegant Taiwanese-language lyricism that existed in Taiwanese society a century ago; in composition, the aim is to follow in the footsteps of Taiwanese composers over the past hundred years in moving beyond the pentatonic scale, so that Taiwanese-language songs can be both rooted locally and international, both popular and artistic.
On the local side, efforts to reach young people have been especially meaningful. In 2020 Owlsing Publishing included “Tung Blossom Waltz” and “Blessing” (祝福) for listening and singing in a high school music textbook, and in 2021 Hanlin Publishing included “Tung Blossom Waltz” as a song to learn in a junior high school arts textbook. In 2020 Chen also proposed the Taiwanese-language children’s song program “Our Songs” (咱的歌) to PTS Taigi and was responsible for its music production.
Internationally, in 2018 “Moon on the Water” (水面月影) was published in its Taiwanese-language version by Walton Music, one of the largest choral publishers in the United States—the first time a contemporary Taiwanese-language song has been published in the US.