After her hugely popular appearance at last year's Taipei International World Music Festival (
Born into a family of farmers in the Ordos region of Southwest Inner Mongolia, Urna and her hauntingly atmospheric vocal prowess have traveled the world for almost a decade, enchanting audiences with her repertoire of both traditional and contemporary Mongolian tunes.
Entering the Shanghai Conservatory's Institute of Traditional Chinese Music (
PHOTO COURTESY OF DADA ARTS
She put down the stringed instrument shortly thereafter, however. Having mastered the lute as well as the Mandarin language, she set out on a career as a singer. Her first vocalizing venture was with the Gaoshan Liushui (高山流水樂團) ensemble, China's first and most influential world music troupe.
Urna's solo recording career began in the mid-1990s after she was picked up by German label, KlangRaume. Since releasing her first album, Tal Nutag, in 1995, Urna has seen her three subsequent albums make inroads into music charts around the globe. Her most release being last year's Jamar.
Not allowing her international fame to cloud her musical outlook, Urna makes regular trips back to her homeland to collect songs and stories and tours the steppes searching for elderly folks with whom to exchange musical ideas apropos interpreting and performing age-old Mongolian songs.
Assisting Urna in filling the Taipei venue with a heap of Mongolian color and sound will be her international backing group of Indian national, Ramesh Shotham on percussion, Hungarian Zoltan Lantos on violin and Germany's Maria Reiter on accordion and zither. Tomorrow night's support act will be the nation's favorite politico-folk group, Labor Exchange (
Taipei's Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall (台北國父紀念館) on Saturday, Oct. 12. Tickets cost between NT$300 and NT$1,200 and are available from FNAC and ACER ticketing outlets nationwide.
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
At Computex 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) urged the government to subsidize AI. “All schools in Taiwan must integrate AI into their curricula,” he declared. A few months earlier, he said, “If I were a student today, I’d immediately start using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini Pro and Grok to learn, write and accelerate my thinking.” Huang sees the AI-bullet train leaving the station. And as one of its drivers, he’s worried about youth not getting on board — bad for their careers, and bad for his workforce. As a semiconductor supply-chain powerhouse and AI hub wannabe, Taiwan is seeing
Jade Mountain (玉山) — Taiwan’s highest peak — is the ultimate goal for those attempting a through-hike of the Mountains to Sea National Greenway (山海圳國家綠道), and that’s precisely where we’re headed in this final installment of a quartet of articles covering the Greenway. Picking up the trail at the Tsou tribal villages of Dabang and Tefuye, it’s worth stocking up on provisions before setting off, since — aside from the scant offerings available on the mountain’s Dongpu Lodge (東埔山莊) and Paiyun Lodge’s (排雲山莊) meal service — there’s nowhere to get food from here on out. TEFUYE HISTORIC TRAIL The journey recommences with
RSS