EAPC 1 (1) pp. 155–161 Intellect Limited 2015 East Asian Journal of Popular Culture Volume 1 Number 1 © 2015 Intellect Ltd Field Report. English language. doi: 10.1386/eapc.1.1.155_1 FIELD REPoRt Benjamin Hlavaty the taiwan yueqin Folk music Festival aBstract Keywords The yueqin is a traditional stringed instrument found in East Asian and South yueqin East Asian countries. Taiwan yueqins come in various shapes with different timbres Chen Ming-chang and numbers of strings. The Taiwan yueqin minyao xiehui / Taiwan Yueqin Folk nativism Music Association, a group run by Taiwan pop-folk music icon Chen Ming-chang, Taiwan Folk Music annually holds Taiwan yueqin minyao ji / Taiwan Yueqin Folk Music Festival, a Hengchun music festival promoting yueqin songs sung in Taiyu, the language that while is not popularization the official language of what is still known as the Republic of China, is the native ethnonationalism language of the Hoklo ethnic majority. Since 2012, the festival has been held held indoors in the Beitou Hot Springs Museum, a building that was constructed during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945). Also since 2012, the festival is not purely performed by Hoklo Taiwanese. Having been introduced to an aspiring student of shamisen master Kazuo Shibutani by his own student in 2009, Chen Ming-chang now invites Shibutani and his troupe to Taiwan to perform alongside him. Note: Chinese terms are given in the Mandarin transliteration system hanyu pinyin and Han characters. Hoklo folk song titles are given in the Hoklo writing system Peh-ōe-jī and Han characters if available. Proper names are given in Mandarin unless they were used in Hoklo during this event. 155 EAPC_1.1_Hlavaty_155-161.indd 155 10/11/14 8:19:45 AM Benjamin Hlavaty 1. Beitou is the As the months grow cooler in Taiwan, the Beitou1 Hot Springs Museum northernmost part hosts the Taiwan yueqin minyao ji / Taiwan Yueqin Folk Music Festival. The of Taipei City proper, known for its hot yueqin (月琴), literally meaning ‘moon lute’ or ‘moon guitar’, is a traditional springs, natural beauty stringed instrument found in East Asian and South East Asian countries. and vibrant local culture. Taiwan yueqins come in various shapes with different timbres and numbers of strings. The yueqin generally promoted by the Taiwan yueqin minyao xiehui / 2. Minnanhua originated in Fujian, China, where Taiwan Yueqin Folk Music Association, a group run by Taiwan pop-folk music the ancestors of the icon Chen Ming-chang, has a round hollow wooden body with two strings majority of Taiwanese tuned with large tuning pegs and a fretted neck arranged diatonically; the frets had come from. are high enough that the strings can be easily bent to semitones on the lower 3. Popular thinking and frets, though the octaves on traditional Taiwan yueqins are far from pure. The politics categorize Taiwan people into strings are often plucked with picks of various cuts and resilience, fingers or one of four ethnic the thumbnail. Virtually ignored as a base instrument before, it gained some groups, being Hoklo respect when Taiwan ethno-musicologist Hsu Chang-hui brought Chen Da locals, Hakka locals, mainlanders and to public attention during Taiwan’s nativist movement in the late 1960s and aborigines. 1970s, and the latter’s beggar past and near blindness propelled him as a nativist symbol to intellectuals and activists. Chen Da remains as the arche- typical musician of Hengchun Folk, and the yueqin he was seen playing is the type that Chen Ming-chang’s numerous students in Beitou carry. In 2008, the successful local film Haijiao qihao / Cape No. 7 rekindled public interest in the instrument that Chen Ming-chang has worked to make a musical totem of Taiwan nativist identity. The festival started in 2011 as an outdoor event purely run and performed by Taiwan locals singing in Hoklo, otherwise known as Minnahua2 that is the native language of the Hoklo ethnic majority3. This language is commonly referred to as Taiyu / Taiwanese, though the singular official language of Taiwan has been Mandarin Chinese since Kuomintang (KMT) takeover in 1945. With the success of 2011, the Beitou Hot Springs Museum moved the 2012 festival indoors with the audience gathering in front of the stage in the main tatami room, and taking place on all weekends during the month of September. The building was constructed during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945), and remnants of early twentieth-century Taiwan have been preserved in what has become promoted as an important part of Taiwan’s cultural heritage. This time around, however, the festival is not purely performed by Hoklo Taiwanese. Having been introduced to an aspiring student of shamisen master Kazuo Shibutani by his own student in 2009, Chen Ming-chang invited Shibutani and his troupe to Taiwan to perform alongside him for the first time. The backstage of the 2012 festival showcases a large installation artwork of twelve yueqins that are arranged upright in a circle in a design similar to the numerical placement on a clock (see Figure 1). Chen had hired artist and musician Kao Hsien-chih to paint the yueqins that were to decorate the stage. One could say that the 2012 festival was the beginning of the painted yueqin fad, as previous embellishment of the instrument was generally limited to signatures in black marker from teachers and classmates. The 2012 and 2013 festivals were both titled ‘Beh thiann bîn-iâu lâi Pak-tâu’ / ‘If you want to hear folk songs, come to Beitou’, a variation on ‘Beh thiann bîn-iâu lâi goan-tau’ / ‘If you want to hear folk songs, come to my place’ for the 2007 solo album by Chu Ting-shun. Sung by Chu at the inaugural festival in 2011, the piece employs the minor key and a choral ‘ho-hai-ya’ chant as an affirmation of aboriginal ancestry that has been commonly accepted by nativist Taiwanese since the previous decade. Chu was set to perform during the 2012 festival on 28 September, but was unable to do so due to health issues. Chu 156 EAPC_1.1_Hlavaty_155-161.indd 156 10/11/14 8:19:45 AM the taiwan Yueqin Folk Music Festival Figure 1: Chen Ming-chang (left) performing a duet with shamisen master Kazuo Shibutani (right) at the second Taiwan Yueqin Folk Music Festival in 2012. (Photo courtesy of the Taiwan Yueqin Folk Music Association.) passed away a few months later on 26 December at the age of 84, having only 4. H. Bangka / Ch. Wanhua is one of the oldest been recognized as a national treasure in his twilight years. In 2000, Taiwan neighbourhoods in ethno-musicologist Wu Rung-Shun published Chu’s recordings and called downtown Taipei. him ‘the master of Hengchun Folk’ (linear notes, p. 29 [author’s translation]). The largest event of these seven September weekend days took place on 29 September 2012, when musicians who had performed on all weekends before were gathered together, along with amateur musicians, for a day-long event. Performances varied from strictly traditional to newly contemporized. Aside from Chu, two other elderly yueqin masters were invited to perform, thus allowing the audience to hear the authentic roots of this music. Yang Hsiu-ching, born in 1934, offers listeners a performance of authentic liām- kua, a Taiwan folk style with spoken and often improvised lyrics that tell a familiar, and sometimes macabre, story, such as the ghost of a woman gain- ing vengeance on an unfaithful husband, accompanied by picked single-string melodies. She and Bangka4-based liām-kua master Wang Yu-chuan, who was born in 1923, had also performed at the 2011 festival. One group of musicians who had been performing folk music well before the yueqin revival propelled by Chen is the Xuyang minsu chhia-kóo xituan / Rising Sun chhia-kóo Folk Troupe, a traditional group made up of two men and one woman. The men play the three-stringed yueqin and the daguangxian, the latter being a two-stringed low-pitched traditional bowed instrument in the huqin family, while the woman, wearing flowing Chinese dress and scarf, gracefully sings and dances the nanguan song ‘Khoànn teng goân-siau’ / ‘Lantern Festival’5 in the H. chhia-kóo / Ch. chegu style. 157 EAPC_1.1_Hlavaty_155-161.indd 157 10/11/14 8:21:11 AM Benjamin Hlavaty 5. The Lantern Festival Chhia-kóo is a type of musical theatrical performance that spread in the falls on the fifteenth of the first lunar month, central and southern coastal areas of Taiwan from Zhangzhou and Quanzhou marking the end of the in Fujian, China. Lunar New Year. Troupes of yueqin students at various levels performed both folk and 6. Green is the traditional popular songs. At risk of leaving out many honourable mentions, the majority colour of the DPP, of this field report discusses a handful of noteworthy performances. Oo-niau whilst blue is that of - the KMT. nî-tai / The Age of the Black Cat is a troupe made up of seven middle-aged women identically outfitted in black and gold and who play both folk and 7. Termed as such by Yoshihisa Amae in this popular songs. While most of the songs they play are done in the traditional issue, the ethnic fault monophony in which many of these yueqin folk songs are performed, the lines dividing Taiwan troupe ends their appearance with a performance of Chen Ming-chang’s hit society are most apparent in politics. ballad ‘I sī lán-ê pó-pòe’ / ‘She’s Our Darling’, the women having been taught by Chen to play the firsts and fifths of the chords on a two-stringed yueqin.