Music played for the deceased using the traditional nanguan (南管) and beiguan (北管) music forms celebrate the philosophy of life, morals and the values of Taiwanese, and therefore should not be discriminated against, an academic said on Saturday.
A video clip uploaded to the Internet on Friday showed a Taichung Municipal Taichung First Senior High School music teacher surnamed Lu (呂) yelling at a group of students for giving a presentation on nanguan and beiguan music, and a “soul guiding” music piece for their report on traditional Chinese instruments.
Soul guiding is a Taiwanese folk custom comprised of rituals and music, said Lin Mao-hsien (林茂賢), chairman of National Taichung University of Education’s Department of Taiwanese Languages and Literature.
Photo: CNA
Although it serves to guide the soul of the deceased along the road to Sukhavati — a pure land in Mahayana Buddhism — the tradition consoles the living and eases their worries, he said.
Soul guiding music embodies the Taiwanese folk beliefs of the immortality of souls, judgment after death and karma, Lin added.
Traditional nanguan and beiguan music has also been included in the 12-year national education curriculum guidelines and designated as part of Taiwan’s intangible cultural heritage, Lin said.
While the two music forms are frequently linked, beiguan is sung in Mandarin Chinese while nanguan is sung in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) in an accent associated with China’s southern Fujian Province, said Wu Su-hsia (吳素霞), a life-long promoter of nanguan.
Beiguan is performed using suonas, gongs and drums, as well as pipas and huqins, while nanguan only involves instruments that were played indoors, such as pipas, sanxians and erxian, she added.
Nanguan has been preserved independently from the music industry, as it is not marketed for profit, but is a kind of casual music for entertainment, Wu said.
“Although nanguan is not a type of performance art, it is a living antique of Taiwanese cultural arts,” she said.
Meanwhile, the school on Saturday said that it would provide counseling to the students involved in the incident with Lu.
However, the students who uploaded the video accused the school of forcing them to take down the video.
They said they hoped the school would investigate the incident and replace Lu.
Lu had not made any public response as of press time last night, while the school said that the incident was still being investigated.
Additional reporting by Ho Tsung-han
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do
RSS