Music is not a thing at all but an activity, something that people do

—Christopher Small, Musicking

Through the Maoist decades after the 1949 Communist takeover, while the society of mainland China was constantly beset by a succession of iconoclastic traumas, the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan was considered a bastion for the maintenance of traditional Chinese culture.

What I suspect hasn’t always been clarified is that Taiwan cannot embody that culture as a whole: naturally, its heritage largely reflects the traditions of the particular regions from which they were descended on the southeastern mainland—and it was that, until the 1980s, which was the only peep-hole through which we could view the enormity of Chinese culture. *

But then, as “reform and opening” swept the PRC, ritual and other folk performance activity—that outsiders could only assume to have been extinguished there after the Communist takeover of 1949—began reviving on a vast scale, along with an array of central and regional scholars keen to resume fieldwork and research. And at the forefront of discoveries was the region of south Fujian, just across the strait from Taiwan (see e.g. C.K. Wang, Kristofer Schipper, Ken Dean, John Lagerwey). As fieldwork expanded to other parts of the southeast (see Daoist ritual in south China), it soon became clear that there was a vast repository of local traditions of ritual and expressive culture to document all over China (see The resilience of tradition)—if not eclipsing the reputation of Taiwan’s heritage, then at least putting it into perspective. The research of Taiwanese scholars was now able to inspire fieldwork on the mainland.

Still, the main genres of Taiwan have rather little bearing on the kind of ritual traditions that were coming to light in the north Chinese countryside, or even in east-central China; indeed, they only represent a small selection from the diverse range of genres around Fujian, as becomes clear by consulting the volumes of the monumental Anthology (for now, see here, with a further post to follow).

I also think of the transformation of Tibetan studies. After 1950, exile communities (led by TIPA in Dharamsala—see e.g. Zlos-gar, 1986) had been considered as the sole heirs to the culture of Tibet; but by the 1990s scholars began shifting towards the mature ethnographic assessment of its vicissitudes under the Chinese yoke (under Recent posts on Tibet, see e.g. Labrang 1). In her wise article “Easier in exile?, Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy ponders the different challenges of doing fieldwork among Tibetans in Lhasa and Dharamsala (see The enchanting world of Tibetan opera).

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Taiwan
Besides the small minority of aboriginal groups (c2%), the main populations of Taiwan are Hoklo (Holo, c70%), Hokkien speakers originating from the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou regions of south Fujian; and Hakka (c15%), descended from the mainland regions of east Guangdong and west Fujian (click here and here for the expressive cultures of both groups). Refugees from elsewhere in China fleeing to Taiwan in the 1940s also brought some staged vocal genres with them.

With Taiwanese society subject to far fewer traumatic social upheavals than on the mainland, cultural forms were certainly better maintained there. But as in any modern society, there are no “living fossils”: besides the island’s complex colonial legacy, performers and patrons have to negotiate the incursions of modernity and popular media (see Society and soundscape, notably the work of Bruno Nettl).

Since the clampdown in the PRC under Xi Jinping, perspectives regarding the mainland and Taiwan are modifying (see The Queen Mother of the West); having myself been busy studying the maintenance of local ritual cultures in the PRC, it’s high time for me to re-assess my approach. So as sometimes happens on this blog (e.g. Precious scrolls, and even A jazz medley), this basic overview of music–ritual traditions is as much for my benefit as yours…

Surveys
In English, starting points include articles in The New Grove Dictionary of music and musicians, The Garland encyclopedia of world music (Wang Ying-fen pp.423–9, Hsu Tsang-houei pp.523–9), Wang Ying-fen in The Rough Guide to world music, Europe, Asia & Pacific (3rd edition, 2009), and even wiki.

At the forefront of studies of traditional music in Taiwan was Hsu Tsang-houei 許常惠 (1929–2001), who gravitated from WAM-style composition to fieldwork on folk traditions. ** Among his surveys are Taiwan yinyue shi chugao 台灣音樂史初稿 (1991, I think) and (with Cheng Shui-cheng) Musique de Taiwan (1992). See also Lü Ch’ui-k’uan 呂錘寬, Taiwan chuantong yinyue gailun 台灣傳統音樂概論 (2005, 2007), in two volumes on vocal and instrumental music.

Genres
Among the most popular topics are nanguan and Daoist ritual—both, since the 1980s, informed by fieldwork on either side of the strait. Amateur nanguan 南管 music societies, performing exquisite chamber ballads for calendrical and life-cycle ceremonies, have long been deeply embedded in community life (see this post). Nanguan is the subject of much research, both in Fujian and Taiwan. Wang Ying-fen has published extensively on the Taiwan scene in both Chinese and English—I particularly admire her articles on the risks inherent in state promotion of nanguan (such as this), worthy contributions to studies of the thorny issue of heritage.

Temple fairs, with vibrant processions, remain a major part of life in Taiwan. Regional traditions of Daoist ritual (for the north, click here) are the focus of generations of Taiwanese and foreign scholars. For the former, alongside many distinguished scholars, Lü Ch’ui-k’uan 呂錘寬 has paid notable attention to ritual soundscape (e.g. Daojiao yishi yu yinyue 道教儀式與音樂, 1994). Another major theme in ritual studies is the worship of the female deity Mazu, widespread both in Taiwan and around the southeastern coast of the mainland.

The composite genre of beiguan 北管 (good wiki page here, with links) is again performed mainly for calendrical and life-cycle ceremonies, largely by occupational groups; while closely related to vocal drama, it’s best known for its loud outdoor shawm-and-percussion bands. Here’s a short documentary about the master Qiu Huorong 邱火榮 (b.1937):

Most flexible of popular operatic forms is gua-a-hi (gezai xi 歌仔戲). And more popular in Taiwan than shadow puppets and marionettes, glove-puppetry (budai xi 布袋戲) has adapted to changing times; the former tradition was transmitted by masters such as Li Tianlu 李天祿 (1910–98), whose early life is evoked in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 1993 film The puppetmaster.

Narrative-singing is best known through Chen Da 陳達 (1905–81) on the Hengchun peninsula. He was “discovered” in 1967 by Hsu Tsang-houei and Shih Wei-liang 史惟亮 as part of their fieldwork for the Folk-song Collection movement, forerunner of several state-sponsored organs in Taiwan. Here’s Shih Wei-liang’s recording from 1971:

In the north of the island, the blind female singer Yang Xiuqing 楊秀卿 (b.1934) is also renowned.

(As in the PRC, please excuse me if I fall into the old Songlines trap of giving undue attention to “star performers”—whereas in-depth ethnography soon uncovers the myriad unsung bearers of tradition, such as Vincent Goossaert’s “ordinary Daoists”, or rank-and-file members of festive groups.)

Like beiguan, the Hakka bayin 八音 ensemble is dominated by shawms and percussion. Here’s the CD Taiwan: mountain songs and bayin instrumental music (Inedit, 2006; as playlist):

As in mainland China, the vocal polyphony of minority peoples (notably Amis, Bunun, Tsou, Paiwan, Rukai—around 2% of Taiwan’s population) has attracted much attention, with many recordings issued of aboriginal singing, such as Polyphonies vocales des Aborigènes de Taiwan (Inedit, 1989):

and Taiwan: music of the Aboriginal tribes (Jecklin, 1991) (playlist):

As in mainland China, while such traditions struggle to remain relevant in a modernising society, national cultural bodies have adopted particular genres as symbols of identity. Expressive culture has made a major component in the rapprochement between the PRC and overseas Chinese communities. Wind Records in Taipei issued a succession of CDs of mainland genres in conjunction with the Music Research Institute in Beijing, notably an important series of archive recordings (folk-song, narrative-singing, opera, and instrumental music, as well as minority polyphony), and of the qin zither. The journal Minsu quyi, with its detailed studies (mostly in Chinese) on ritual, theatre, and folklore, also expanded its scope from Taiwan to the mainland.

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Growing political tensions encourage us to pay renewed attention to Taiwan, and to support beleaguered democracy. While it’s fruitful to study the genres introduced above on both sides of the strait, the island remains a conducive environment for both performance and research. Now I’m keen to see someone with fieldwork experience in both societies, such as C.K. Wang, Wang Ying-fen, Ken Dean, or Adam Yuet Chau, expounding the different trajectories of the diverse traditions there, and the challenges that they face.

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* Now, none of these comparisons quite work, but…
While it’d be far too parochial to imagine the Isle of Wight as a refuge from a radical government in mainland UK, perhaps we might visualise Cuba becoming a liberal sanctuary from a Gilead-style fundamentalist north America (see The handmaid’s tale)—or even Sicily as the sole isolated outpost for tradition while mainland Europe languishes in the grip of authoritarian regimes.

In chapter 10 of In search of the folk Daoists of north China I made a similarly rash comparison, seeking to incorporate north China into our overview of Daoist ritual (cf. this post, again):

It is rather as if our knowledge of Christianity in the whole of Europe were based almost entirely on Sicily and Puglia, with the odd footnote on the Vatican and Westminster Abbey. We may like what we find in those places, perhaps considering it more exalted, mystical, and ancient—but that is another issue.

Without at all playing into the greasy hands of PRC propaganda, one might consider Taiwan (culturally, not politically, since it is clearly an independent nation! Cf. China has always been part of…) as just one among over thirty provinces of China, all of whose forms of expressive culture are dominated by long-established local folk traditions while also featuring some “national” genres and styles from other regions.

** If Yang Yinliu wasn’t the Chinese Bartók, then Hsu Tsang-houei wasn’t the Taiwanese Yang Yinliu (whereas Bill Evans was the Bill Evans of jazz).