Beitou District (北投), famed for its hot springs, is doubling as host to a musical feast this weekend. The Taiwan Moon Lute Folk Music Festival (台灣月琴民謠祭) comprises concerts tomorrow and Sunday at the Beitou Hot Springs Museum by a slew of the country’s top folk musicians.
The new festival began earlier this month with a series of lectures by folk virtuosos, who demonstrated the two-string instrument’s widespread use in Taiwanese music.
Iconic musician Chen Ming-chang (陳明章), who organized the event, said the moon lute, or yueqin (月琴), is a representative instrument of Hoklo music and commonly used in a variety of genres: Gezai opera (歌仔戲); Hengchun folk music (恆春調); nanguan (南管); beiguan (北管); chia-ko (車鼓); and liam kua (唸歌), a Taiwanese performance art form that interweaves talking and singing.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Moon Lute Folk Music Association
“The yueqin is to Taiwan as the samisen is to Japan, or morin khuur to Mongolia,” Chen said, referring to stringed instruments from those countries. “It represents our culture’s most classical characteristics. I hope one day people will come to Taiwan to see yueqin or liam kua shows, just like we go to see samisen or kabuki shows when visiting Japan.”
Tomorrow evening there will be an open jam session with renowned musicians, including Chen and Lin Sheng-xiang (林生祥), that is open to anybody who wants to show off his or her yueqin skills.
Chen said the instrument generates a distinctive sound that is somewhat similar to that of blues music. Because of its simplicity, the yueqin’s timbre is more fluid and flexible than that of more elaborately designed Chinese instruments.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Moon Lute Folk Music Association
“After Zheng Chenggong (鄭成功, better known as Koxinga) and his gang came to Taiwan, it was unlikely that they would go back to China just to buy a musical instrument. They were poor and could only use what was available at hand. They put together some wood planks, and now you have this simple tool that can produce amazingly complex music,” said Chen, who has taught yueqin to some 200 students in Beitou over the past two years.
On Sunday, octogenarian folk legends including Chu Ting-chun (朱丁順), under whom Chen has studied yueqin and Hengchun folk tunes, as well as Yang Hsiu-ching (楊秀卿) and Wang Yu-chuan (王玉川), both of whom are highly revered liam kua virtuosos, will perform.
Hailing from Yunlin County, the Wu Tien-lo (吳天羅) family’s Hsuyang Chia-ko Troupe (旭陽車鼓劇團) will show Taipei audiences the art of chia-ko, a type of grassroots operatic theater that combines song, dance, spoken dialogue and drama.
All of the festival performances will take place on the lawn outside the museum’s main building.
Aside from the musical performances, an exhibition of hand-painted moon lutes will run through Oct. 2 inside the museum, which was built in 1913 during the Japanese colonial era and designated as a heritage site in 1997. It is located a short, pleasant walk from Xinbeitou MRT Station (新北投捷運站).
Before the recall election drowned out other news, CNN last month became the latest in a long line of media organs to report on abuses of migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing fleet. After a brief flare of interest, the news media moved on. The migrant worker issues, however, did not. CNN’s stinging title, “Taiwan is held up as a bastion of liberal values. But migrant workers report abuse, injury and death in its fishing industry,” was widely quoted, including by the Fisheries Agency in its response. It obviously hurt. The Fisheries Agency was not slow to convey a classic government
Not long into Mistress Dispeller, a quietly jaw-dropping new documentary from director Elizabeth Lo, the film’s eponymous character lays out her thesis for ridding marriages of troublesome extra lovers. “When someone becomes a mistress,” she says, “it’s because they feel they don’t deserve complete love. She’s the one who needs our help the most.” Wang Zhenxi, a mistress dispeller based in north-central China’s Henan province, is one of a growing number of self-styled professionals who earn a living by intervening in people’s marriages — to “dispel” them of intruders. “I was looking for a love story set in China,” says Lo,
It was on his honeymoon in Kuala Lumpur, looking out of his hotel window at the silvery points of the world’s tallest twin skyscrapers, that Frank decided it was time to become taller. He had recently confessed to his new wife how much his height had bothered him since he was a teenager. As a man dedicated to self-improvement, Frank wanted to take action. He picked up the phone, called a clinic in Turkey that specializes in leg lengthening surgery — and made a booking. “I had a lot of second thoughts — at the end of the day, someone’s going
In the next few months tough decisions will need to be made by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and their pan-blue allies in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It will reveal just how real their alliance is with actual power at stake. Party founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) faced these tough questions, which we explored in part one of this series, “Ko Wen-je, the KMT’s prickly ally,” (Aug. 16, page 12). Ko was open to cooperation, but on his terms. He openly fretted about being “swallowed up” by the KMT, and was keenly aware of the experience of the People’s First Party