Moving across the boundaries

The varied and extensive sounds of the accordion will be resonating through the capital this weekend, when the fourth Migration Music Festival (流浪之歌音樂節) brings together several of the world's most innovative purveyors of the squeezebox for a series of concerts at Taipei's Da'an Forest Park (大安森林公園).

Organized by local indie record label, Trees Music and Art (大大樹世界音 樂文化協會), and co-sponsored by the Taipei City Government's Department of Cultural Affairs, the festival is one of the nation's most diverse celebrations of world music. Over the past four years the festival has showcased groups and individual musicians from Japan, Iran, Macedonia and Mongolia as well as Taiwan, and has featured a feast of genres ranging from Czech gypsy music to Taiwanese Hakka vibes.

When the festival first took place in 2001 it saw performers wowing crowds in both Taipei and Kaohsiung. The challenges of staging a dual city festival, however, proved too much for the minor folk-based indie label, which relies on public donations, government sponsorship and volunteer work to run the event.

For cost and logistical reasons organizers scaled the event down in 2003 and now the annual Migration Music Festival is a three-day affair and only takes place in Taipei. While this may not endear southern-based music fans to Trees Music's cause, it certainly hasn't stymied the event's growth in Taipei.

The Migration Music Festival has proven hugely popular with music fans of all ages over the years and last year saw record crowds numbering in the region of between 4,000 and 5,000 swamping Da'an Forest Park in order to catch non-mainstream groups from Norway, Romania and Poland in the act.

"We try to make it feel like more of an educational event rather than a commercial one, which means we're pretty much at liberty to invite whoever we want to perform," said Trees Music's Chung She-fong (鍾適芳). "I think this is one of the main reasons that, unlike regular rock festivals, the Migration Music Festival is able to attract such diverse

audiences and has remained hugely popular with people of all ages."

To keep the festival fresh and to ensure that it maintains its appeal organizers opt for a different theme each year. While previous Migration Music Festivals have touched on everything from activism in music to migrant musical genres, this year's festival is less about the role music plays in breaking down political and geographical boundaries, and instead focuses solely on the varied musical repertoires of one particular instrument -- the accordion.

"We found that people in Taiwan associated the accordion with either nakashi or romantic visions of Paris' Left Bank. We wanted to show them that the instrument is very versatile and can be used to create very varied styles of music," Chung said. "Innovative accordion music is very different from the stereotypical sound and we wanted to introduce these ideas to Taiwan."

A total of five innovative international accordion-based acts representing France, Hungary, Poland, Uruguay and Finland will perform and hold workshops this weekend. Each act has its own unique and non-conventional way of presenting squeezebox music.

The festival begins tonight with a performance on the Uruguayan bandoneon -- an accordion-like instrument employed by Tango musicians in Argentina -- by Luis Di Matteo. Although mainly used by tango acts in South America, Di Matteo brings the sound of the bandoneon to new and exciting levels that are far removed from tradition and incorporates heavy doses of electronica and more mainstream classical sounds.