By VINCENT CIVITILLO
Features Editor
Those hoping for an
alternative to Rider’s Spring concert will be obliged on Monday, April 8
when world-renowned pop/folk singer Magdalen Hsu-Li performs at 7 p.m. in the
SC Theater.
“Rider’s
Gender Studies Program has been working to get Magdalen to Rider for almost a
year and we are excited and lucky to be a part of her current national
tour,” said Marilyn Quinn, Rider’s bibliographic control librarian
and event coordinator. “She has a mission to use her music to express her
ideas of tolerance about diverse groups, so she was really appealing to
us.”
The Asian-American
musician, painter, poet and speaker grew up in Martinsville, Va., a member of
one of the rural town’s only Chinese families. The challenge of growing
up different in a Southern town was only compounded for Hsu-Li by her bisexual
orientation.
The artist, whose
debut album, Muscle and Bone,
was released in 1997 under the Chickpop Records label, has since produced two
albums: Evolution (1999) and
Fire (2001).
Her latest effort,
Fire, is a relaxing 12-track pop/folk album sounding much like something one
would expect to hear at a late-night café performance. The light beats
are intended to bring out the lyrics, which are derived directly from her own
experiences with pain and oppression.
In the first track
“Redefinition,” she sings, “I’ve been a torment to my
mother and father / Loser, reject, dutiful daughter. / Brutalized and
terrorized and ostracized by some / I’ve been raped and frightened to my
knees / A good little girl who wants to please.”
The title track is
Hsu-Li’s story of finding inner peace through love. She sings, “The
saving grace I found inside a stranger’s kiss / Your fire is like no
other fire / To open me in such a way / It warms me and heals what was broken /
And makes me whole again.”
The combination of
the singer’s dream-like vocals with the piano and violin based
instrumentals creates what is prevalent throughout the entire album—a
soothing, mellow melody to present her message without the use of heavy music
to drown out the lyrics.
“Mother”
expresses the artist’s anger towards her upbringing and her hatred of the
stereotypical views her parents tried to instill in her. She sings, “My
mother once said black men will rape you / Don’t drive home with them and
don’t let them date you / I’m here to tell you that my mind is my
own / I have plans to reshape every facet and bone.”
The final untitled
“hidden” track ends the album on a high-energy pace as Hsu-Li
expresses her rage about racial injustice. She screams, “I grew up in the
South / That’s what made me this way. / I grew up in the South /
Prejudice everyday. / There’s a chink in your armor / There’s a
chink in your life.”
However, although
the underlining message of the song is powerful and fits easily with the rest
of her album, the sound of the song, loud and annoying, seems to ruin the
perfect harmony the artist spent 11 tracks building towards.
Fire is an honest emotional trip into the heart of
discrimination and pain; a relaxing folk record by a songwriter who has used an
inspiring 65-minute flowing collection of songs to tell a story of the
injustice that made her who she was and her redemption to the healthier person
she is today.