Argentine jazz keyboardist Martin “Musa” Musaubach has built a pretty good life for himself in Taipei over the past three and a half years. Every morning, he wakes up early, practices for four hours, then either sets out to rehearse in his studio or work on arrangements. On weekends, he’s busy backing pop artists, singing at weddings, gigging with indie bands, or, if he’s lucky, playing some of his own music at small, intimate bars. He’s also working on his latest album.
“I now find myself more in need of the morning quietness than of the night’s hustle,” Musaubach tells the Taipei Times.
True to his early-bird nature, starting tomorrow, Musaubach will be teaching a three-month-long free music course at Taipei Artist Village Cafe (藝術村餐坊) every Saturday from 10am to 12:30pm. The course, which will focus on music harmony and appreciation, is open to students of all levels and is conducted informally. Genres explored include pop, rock, jazz, tango, Latin, Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian music.
Photo Courtesy of Martin Musaubach
“We will do a helluva lot of singing,” Musaubach says.
There will be basic lessons on rhythms and beats. Emphasis will be placed on listening to music and understanding the deeper meaning behind the lyrics and composition.
“I don’t expect to start a school,” Musaubach says. “This is just to motivate people who love music and to get them more connected to it.”
Photo Courtesy of Martin Musaubach
FROM PERIPHERY TO CENTER
Musaubach was inspired to start the courses in part by the free songwriting classes held at the Dharma Drum Mountain, a Buddhist charitable foundation. He liked the idea of making music accessible to those who may not have the financial resources, yet he wanted it to be free of religious ideology.
Moreover, being self-educated, Musaubach felt it necessary to instill in music lovers not just the technical skills, but also the critical thinking that comes with it. For him, seeing a painting or reading poetry is not just a passive process, but an active analytical one which enables us to exercise untapped parts of our brains.
“In many developed societies, art in general and music in particular, are considered a mere ornament of life,” Musaubach says. “It’s as if we could live without learning how to appreciate beauty and more importantly, to have our own idea of what beauty is.”
He adds that it’s equally important for people to realize that music affects our mood, whether we are aware of it or not.
“It’s like there’s a language being used that your subconscious mind understands perfectly, but you are not aware that it’s being spoken,” Musaubach says.
The dearth of popular music schools in Taiwan was another driving factor for this endeavor. Those not interested in classical music would usually have to spend a fortune studying abroad in Europe or the US.
Finally, Musaubach says the music course aims “to give a chance to old people who think their time has passed, or young people who think they have ‘no talent.’”
CHANNELING OUR INNER ARTIST
For Musaubach, the world is not divided between creative types and others — if there’s passion and dedication, then there’s hope for learning how to sing, strum a guitar or paint a masterpiece.
“I don’t endorse the division between artists and the rest of the people,” he says. “We all are creative types, but maybe we haven’t done anything artistic since childhood.”
In other words, music is a way to tap into our innate childlike curiosity. As Musaubach says, every time he learns something new — music related or not — a huge smile immediately creeps across his face.
“I feel like a kid who discovered a new toy,” he adds. “Actually, that’s what I feel about making a living with music.”
This idea that creativity is simply resting within all of us waiting to be awakened is precisely what Musaubach wishes to impart to his students.
In response to whether the arts in Taiwan are becoming too commercialized, Musaubach says people should start with helping each other on a smaller scale, sharing art and building a community without the need of external support. Of course, it would be nice to receive more funding from the government but at the end of the day, self-supporting communities, he says, “have a tendency to grow and end up pushing the powers to support them.”
Big ideas aside, Musaubach simply hopes that tomorrow’s free music course will bring the same sense of awe and joy to his students as it did to him while growing up.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist