Beyond Neo-Traditional: A Non-Linear Triangular Model for Studying Folk Music Revival in Postcolonial Taiwan

Abstract

Taiwanese folk music has endured and been influenced by Japanese colonialism (1895-1945), the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang dictatorship (1947-1991), and US cultural diplomacy (1956-1971) in the twentieth century. After Democratization at the beginning of the twenty-first century, musicians with diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds resisted the multilateral colonialism by revitalizing folk music to underscore Taiwan’s cultural sovereignty. As numerous novel genres of neotraditional folk music emerged, Taiwanese ethnomusicological scholarship investigated such musical transformation by emphasizing the authenticity of the traditional aspect within the novel genres. Such a theoretical approach underplays the musicians’ creative agency and the perpetuation of multilateral colonialisms in Taiwanese folk music revitalization. Embarking on understanding musical tradition and transformation from a non-linear framework, this presentation draws on Leo Ching’s (2001) model of the identity triangulation Peter Jackson’s (2019) idea of multiple hegemonies to explore a novel theoretical model that emphasizes negotiations with the multilateral colonialism within Taiwan’s folk music revitalization. My case study focuses on the musical agency of two Hakka Taiwanese folk revivalist groups: Sangouda (active between 1995 and 2007) and its second generation, Sangoudahousheng (2008-present). As the discourse and materialization of a novel musical concept, “Hakka blues,” originated from Sangouda’s strategic cross-cultural comparison between African American blues and Hakka Taiwanese sango, musical Americanism is essential for this folk music revitalization, as it facilitates envisioning the development of Hakka popular music. The case study exemplifies the revivalist musicians’ strategic employment of American music and negotiations with the western colonialism while expressing Taiwan’s cultural sovereignty.