Vicki Huang

Vicki Huang stands between two turntables with a telephone-style headphone pressed to one ear. One hand reaches toward the record on her left.

Huang is a Kaohsiung-based Taiwanese-American musician, DJ and vinyl storyteller. She collects older Taiwanese records, digitizes music that can be difficult to hear elsewhere, plays it for listeners, and makes new downtempo and electronic arrangements from the songs she follows. Her work moves through releases, radio, guided listening sessions, touring and 鹽埕區長 Salt District Mayor, the audiovisual label and living archive she founded.

Huang plays the records beside one another so that changes in language, arrangement, technology and performance can be heard.

Her 2025 release 《安平追想曲》 / Anping Reminiscence begins from a song written by 許石 Hsu Shih, the composer closely associated with Tainan's popular music history. In an artist account of the project, Huang traces the song through radio drama, recordings by different singers, Mandarin and Japanese versions, film, and a later interpretation by Mong Tong. She digitized selected records from the Salt District Mayor collection, brought them into a guided listening session at OH! ROOM and made a diggin' Taiwanese folk programme for Toha Radio. Her own release returns the melody as downtempo dub.

That movement between finding, listening and making runs through 《臺南府城 1624》, Huang's larger group of electronic reworkings of Taiwanese-language songs connected to Tainan. She has named music by Hsu Shih, Wen Hsia, Wu Jin-huai and Hong Yi-feng within the project. Her maternal family's relationship to Tainan and Anping gives Huang a route into particular songs, records and places.

Huang moved to Taiwan in 2023. She planned a musical journey through the Teng Yu-hsien Taiwan Music Culture Memorial Hall, Wen Hsia Story Museum, Hsu Shih Music Library, Wenting Phonograph Museum and Hengchun's relationship to the folk singer and yueqin player Chen Da. Record shops, performances, collectors, musicians and conversations also became part of the route.

Two NTS programmes make that public work immediately audible. A June 2025 mix gathers early Taiwanese instrumental synth recordings digitized by Huang from vinyl. Traditional songs return through drum machines, analog synthesizers and electric organs before the track list reaches Huang's own Anping Reminiscence. In July 2026, Huang and Angie QQ returned with a second programme of Taiwanese synth folk from the 1970s, including 《心酸酸》、《台北上午零時》、《補破網》 and 《六月茉莉》.

Huang is now preparing 高潮 Hi Tide, a hi-fi listening room and teahouse in Kaohsiung's Salt District. She describes a place where records, cinema, tea and Taiwanese culture can be encountered at an unhurried pace. Her work is already available through the records she releases and the listening rooms, radio archives and turntables through which she keeps putting them back into circulation.