MUSIC: Give peace a dance

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The Taiwan Peace Festival (和平音樂祭), also known as Hoping for Hoping, a play on the Chinese word for peace (heping, 和平), is this year changing its venue, season and music.

In the past, Peace Fest took place at Kunlun Herb Gardens (崑崙藥用植物園) in Taoyuan County, but this year it will move to a location on the scenic east coast near Taroko Gorge in Hualien County. It is being held in the autumn to avoid a repeat of last year’s “mud fest,” the result of holding it in June after a week of torrential rain. And in another departure, the all-night lineup of techno DJs that one attendee referred to as “music for angry robots” has been axed.

Why the changes? Peace Fest got too big and lost much of its original ambiance, said Sean Wratt, who is in charge of public relations for the event. Organizers hope to recapture the original vibe by taking things down a notch, locating the festival in the middle of an Aboriginal community, and slashing start-up costs to make it easier to recoup expenses and have money left over for charity.

“We plan to get back the original feeling we created. It became a big spectacle, lights, big stage ... it didn’t really work,” said Wratt. “Everybody gets dazzled by big lights and sound. If we draw back a little bit, people can get closer [to each other].”

One of the reasons for making the festival bigger was the desire to make more money for charity, said Dave Nichols, the liaison for the new venue at the Sanjhan-Pratan Community (三棧部落) halfway between Taroko Gorge and Hualien City.

But holding a bigger festival costs more money, making it harder to cover costs and donate to worthy causes if the weather turns bad and attendance suffers, as happened last year.

Previously, advertised recipients of Peace Fest philanthropy included Taiwan International Workers Association (台灣國際勞工協會), Compassion International Taiwan, Basic Human Needs and Transasia Sisters, but this year the list has been whittled down to a single group, Adopt-A-Minefield, and possibly to a charity connected to the Taimali Village (太麻里) in Taitung County, which was hit hard by Typhoon Morakot in August.

This year, some of the main beneficiaries of the event will be the residents of the town in which it will be held, down in a little-known grotto at the mouth of a “Mini Taroko.”

“Part of the charity is to benefit the Aboriginal community,” said Christian Kohli, the designer of the festival’s Web site and organizer of the media tent. “People can go buy beer from the five or six stores around town.”

“We have a much smaller budget, so it’s easier to break even and give to charity,” Kohli said. “And even if we just break even, we benefit the community. They’re trying to open themselves up

[to tourism], and we help put them on the map.”

A pristine river passes through the venue, where attendees can swim, hike, camp and enjoy scenery that looks fit for a King Kong movie.

“I found Sanjhan over 20 years ago. Since then, it has always been my favorite place [in Taiwan].” Nichols said. “I’ve never seen bluer waters to swim in.”

Begun in 2003 as an anti-Iraq War protest in front of the American Institute in Taiwan, the protesters turned to partying for peace after undercover police officers distributed fliers telling them foreigners were not allowed to protest and threatened Wratt, an English teacher at the time, with deportation.