Aborigines of Taiwan: Anthology of the Vocal Art

You can’t get more evocative of rural village life than song titles such as ‘Making Fun of Abu’ and Airing Rice in the Wind. It’s Taiwan’s aborigines we’re listening to here, or at least ten out of 14 officially recognised groups on the island. To be sure, the musical tracks themselves don’t always live up to the intrigue of their titles. All the same, there is much to savour: individually-distinct old men and women, surfacing for air in between dirge-like exclamations (‘Lullaby’; ‘A Lecture Song’); night insects murmuring against tender laments (‘The Ghostly Song’); sassy and self-conscious youths negotiating deceptively simple vocal leaps (‘Showing Off’). Listeners already familiar with Taiwan will recognise party-trick genres such as the multi-part polyphony of the Amis and the Bunun Pasibutbut people – a slow triangulation of overlapping drones tunnelling from silence into full-volumed vocal splendour. A minor quibble is that the tracks are not newly recorded but put together as a compilation of existing material previously produced by ethnomusicologist Wu Rung-shun for Wind Records. The quality of singing, thus, isn’t always congruent: earlier ethnographic endeavours with the Tsou, Amis and Yami, for one, are more convincing than the younger, schooled and slightly over-rehearsed voices of the Truku. That said, child singers heard in the few rare tracks know how to hold their own in breath-defying chains of shoutsongs and gamesongs (‘Who’s That Knocking’; ‘Counting Song’). For the sheer variety, Anthology remains a treat.