[TheNewsLens] Report from the 2016 Amis Music Festival

中文

Organized jointly by Amis singer Suming Rupi (舒米恩)  and the various age sets in Dulan tribal village, the Amis Music Festival has just entered its third edition on the 5th of this month. Yet it has already become a huge event in the hosting locale, which is also Suming’s hometown in Taitung’s Dulan tribal village.

A count by the Music Festival team shows more than 3,000 people joined the festival this year, making it the largest crowd ever. Aside from Dulan residents, the event site also gathered participants from tribal villages in Hualien, Taitung, and other counties and cities, as well as tourists of different nationalities from all around Taiwan to come and join the festivities. In addition, this year’s Music Festival has invited the Tokeshi Youth Association (渡慶次青年會) from Yomitan-son (讀谷村) of Okinawa (沖繩), Japan, to take part in the performance and engage in cultural exchanges with people in the tribal village. Many local residents wear ornate traditional clothing, singing and dancing, as in a grand carnival. Everyone in the village, from the bottom up, have been mobilizing for the event.  Besides those participating in the performance, local Amis people of each age set move to and fro in the venue to assist in tasks including setting up stalls, festival site coordination and sanitation management. The event is not just about presenting local Amis people and tribal village cultures to those from outside the village. To the tribal village, it is more an important occasion for strengthening connections between each other.

A flag designed by the Music Festival team for the tribal village and the event not only appears at the venue but has also received quite a huge response from Dulan residents, making it visible everywhere in the village resident's homes and shops. According to the team, the fuchsia color of the flag represents the ancestors, the white color is the skyline, and the blue color symbolizes the ocean. As for the black color eight-pointed star, it is the Amis cross-stitch totem pattern. To soften the sharpness of the star points, round circles inspired by the ball-shaped decorations on the women's skirts were then added to the star. In Suming’s recent cultural exchange tour abroad, he also carried the flag with him, displaying and taking photos with the flag everywhere he went.

As in the past, the venue for the Music Festival was chosen to be in the campus of Dulan Junior High School, setting up two stages, one in the sports field and one in the stadium playfully called the “Dulan Arena (都蘭小巨蛋).” Performance programs include traditional dance, singing and instrumental performance, as well as modern dance, drama, along with Mafana, Outlet Drift (漂流出口), Rock Ina (搖滾媽媽) and several other bands, fusing the old and the new to give the elderly and the young local Amis people an opportunity to perform for the audience. Suming himself served many a time as host and performer of the program to help warm up the event’s atmosphere. He even sang the song “Aka pisawad (不要放棄)” with pianist Huang Yu-Hsiang (黃裕翔), touching the hearts of full house audiences in the "Arena (小巨蛋)." Aside from the performances, there are also dozens of booths on site set up by village residents, selling meat barbecue, various types of rice food, tea drinks, alcoholic beverage, and a variety of handmade wares, woven goods, clothing and accessories.

One of this year's program highlight is the Tokeshi Youth Association (渡慶次青年會) from Yomitan-son (讀谷村) of Okinawa (沖繩), Japan. Performing a dance meant to remind ancestral souls not to linger in the mortal world, the dance is accompanied by orderly drum beats; with the performers finally inviting audiences to join in the fun. According to Youth Association President Oshiro Seiji (大城誠二), perhaps because the dance is performed in Taiwan for the first time, response from the audience is more enthusiastic than expected, and their attitude towards them is also very welcoming. President Oshiro (大城) also shared his on-site observation. He thinks the Amis traditional clothing has more ornate use of color than those in Okinawa; and although the cultures of the two places are not exactly the same, “The intentions to pass on and maintain the traditions are the same,“ he said.

Unlike in the past, however, this year’s Amis Music Festival has gain the strong support of Dulan Junior High School school authorities, with the number of people mobilized and scale of the event the largest ever. Having been working in the school for nearly 13 years, the school’s Principal Zhuo Shi-hong (卓世宏) said that he does not really know Dulan Junior High School alumni, Suming, prior to organizing this event. On September 2015, Suming paid a visit to the school to discuss about mutual cooperation. Principal Zhuo then sees that organizing the Music Festival is sustainable and will have a positive impact on the economy and cultural development of the tribal village. Furthermore, he believes teachers and students involved in the process can also learn about planning and coordinating large-scale events, which is a good opportunity for strengthening relationships between each other; and thus have decided to include this event in the school's teaching plan. This move has also gained the support of the children and parents.

Dulan tribal village, located in the east coast of Taiwan, about 20 kilometers north of Taitung City, belongs to Taitung County’s Donghe Township. In recent years, due to its favorable conditions for surfing, it has attracted foreign tourists to travel here to surf. Hotels and restaurants have increased with the growth of tourists and, on the streets, you can even find menu with English written on them. As the largest Indigenous tribal village in Taiwan's southeastern coast, with close relationships between its residents and a growing sense of identity, Dulan has become the cultural center of coastline Amis Indigenous population.

Principal Zhuo said that hosting the Music Festival has indeed attracted a lot of people, with accommodations in the village fully booked in advance for that weekend. Although many residents welcome the influx of tourists, the tribal village culture is more conservative with regards to clothing, and many people worried that tourists who came here to surf and enjoy the natural beauty of the area usually love to wear bikinis or are shirtless, which may have impact on how they educate their children. A few days ago, local residents even launched a "Don't Forget Your Clothes" campaign, putting up posters everywhere requesting out-of-town visitors to respect the feelings of the residents.

As for the Amis Music Festival, local residents of various age sets who have talked with the editor of this website all have given it a positive review, and have expressed they will continue to do all they can to assist and support the hosting of this event in the future.

Report: TheNewsLens, 2016/11/10, Arts & Culture

Title: [Photo Report] Report from the Amis Music Festival 

Article: Shih Yuan (闕士淵)

Original source URL: https://www.thenewslens.com/article/53735