While Beethoven, Barber or Elgar seem distant to the average blue-collar worker, a concert will be held at the National Concert Hall on Sunday tailored for some of Taiwan's unknown heroes.
Every day in Taiwan, an average of five laborers die from work-related diseases or accidents and 20 more become disabled for the rest of their lives.
The concert, Blood and Tears -- A Laborer's Life (
The Taiwan Association for Victims of Occupational Accidents and Diseases (工作傷害受害人協會), the organizer of the concert, attributed much of Taiwan's economic success to the country's hard-working labor force, but lamented the large number of work-related deaths and injuries.
"What's behind thousands of work-related deaths a year is thousands of devastated families who find it hard to swallow their sorrow, confusion and anger," said Yang Kuo-chen (
"They have either lost a hard-working father or a self-supporting sister ... But while the countless nameless heroes have contributed to the country's economy, paying for it with their own lives or health, how many of us can feel sympathy with them or are aware of the serious problems of occupational accidents?" Yang said.
"We always try to help them, but we also realize we need more people willing to help, and willing to make a change," Yang said.
Yang said the National Concert Hall has long been seen as "noble" and "distant" to the laboring class, and Sunday's concert is an attempt to break the cultural "fence" between the classes.
Pieces by Copland, Barber and Elgar are to be performed by the National Concert Symphony Orchestra, and the well-known Symphony Number Three by Beethoven will be played as a tribute to the "nameless" heroes, dead and alive.
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