1st Edition

Resounding Taiwan Musical Reverberations Across a Vibrant Island

Edited By Nancy Guy Copyright 2022

    This book vibrantly demonstrates how the study of music allows for identification and interpretation of the forces that form Taiwanese society, from politics and policy to reactions to and assertions of such policies. 

    Contributors to this edited volume explore how music shapes life — and life shapes music — in Taiwan, focusing on subjects ranging from musical life under Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945) through to the contemporary creations of Indigenous musicians, popular music performance and production, Christian religious music, traditional ritual music and theatre, conceptions about sound and noise, and garbage truck music's role in reducing household waste. The volume’s twelve chapters present diverse approaches to their sounding subjects, some deeply rooted in the methods and concerns explored by Taiwan's first generation of ethnomusicologists. Others employ current social theories.

    Presenting a window into the cultural lives of the residents of this multicultural, politically contested island, Resounding Taiwan will appeal to students and scholars of musicology and ethnomusicology, anthropology and Asian studies more widely.

     

     

    1. Resounding Colonial Taiwan through Historical Recordings: Some Methodological Reflections

    Ying-fen Wang

    2. Voicing Alliance and Refusal in 'Amis Popular Music

    D.J. Hatfield

    3. Highway Nine Musical Stories:

    Musicking of Taiwanese Aborigines at Home and in the National Concert Hall

    Chun-bin Chen

    4. A Quest for Taiwan Guoyue: Taipei Chinese Orchestra and the Making of Taiwanese Musical Identity

    Ming-yen Lee

    5. Experiencing the "Enchanting Golden Triangle" through Music and Dance in a Yunnan Diasporic Community in Taiwan

    Tasaw Hsin-chun Lu

    6. The Making of Hakka Hymns in Postwar Taiwan: Negotiating Identity Conflicts and Contextualizing Christian Practices

    Hsin-Wen Hsu

    7. Voicing Gender in Pak-koán Theater: Social Contexts and Singing Mechanisms

    Ching-huei Lee

    8. What to Preserve and How to Preserve It: Taiwan’s Action Plans for Safeguarding Traditional Performing Arts

    Mei-Chen Chen

    9. Noisy Co-Existence: Contestations of Renao and Zaoyin Amidst Taiwan’s Noise Control System

    Jennifer C. Hsieh

    10. Listening to Taiwan's Musical Garbage Trucks:

    Hearing the Slow Violence of Environmental Degradation

    Nancy Guy

    11. From the Center of Mandopop to Indie Music Capital? The Conception of "Independence" and the Challenges for Taiwanese Musicians

    Chen-Yu Lin

    12. Legacy, Agency, and the Voice(s) of Teresa Teng

    Meredith Schweig

    Biography

    Nancy Guy is a Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego. Her first book, Peking Opera and Politics in Taiwan won the ASCAP Béla Bartók Award for Excellence in Ethnomusicology. Her second book, The Magic of Beverly Sills was named a "Highly Recommended Academic Title" by Choice. Guy's article, "Flowing down Taiwan's Tamsui River: Towards an Ecomusicology of the Environmental Imagination," (2009) is a foundational text in ecomusicology and was awarded the Rulan Chao Pian Publication Prize.