Tradition in Motion-The Status and Identity of Amateur Beiguan Opera and Music Communities [Zidi] in Modern Taiwanese Society

Traditional beiguan opera (and its music) has been performed for over three hundred years in Taiwanese society. It is still performed to this day. During this time, the music’s character and its eco-system have been in constant change, due to its multi-cultural and hybrid nature. Its development has also been influenced over time by environmental effects. The identities of beiguan communities have altered under the influences of shifting social and governmental pressures. Several questions are apparent: how can traditional modes of performance sustain their original values and identities while society moves into modernity? How can the beiguan subculture remain relevant, by finding new niches within the shifting cultural landscape? This thesis examines the formation of beiguan culture long before 1960 and compares it with beiguan’s contemporary situation in order to investigate changes in performance and community identities. Comparison will be presented in the form of fieldwork and theoretical analyses. We will focus on several beiguan communities selected from folk groups (both professional troupes and amateur clubs) and their related government organisations (such as the education system), in order to trace the trajectories of phenomena connected with these changes. Possibilities for culture conservation in the future will also be suggested. The approach outlined in this thesis may be used to survey the development of traditional beiguan music. What kind of changes could be accepted by people within the process of transition, from emphasising the authentic and traditional to a more innovative outlook? How do people position themselves on the dynamic continuum between tradition and innovation? In what position do we find traditional music after it has been affected by globalisation? Answering these questions will help us explore and discover different potential methods for maintaining beiguan’s cultural heritage. By reviewing policymaking and cross-disciplinary collaboration, a new range of values may present itself, as well as a new sense of belonging, to enhance the development of the identity of the beiguan community

New Advances in Formosan Linguistics

The present volume is a festschrift in honour of Lillian M. Huang, who, in a very few years, became a leading figure in Formosan linguistics after she obtained her PhD degree in 1987. Over the past twenty-eight years, she has been involved in important groundwork, in both academia and indigenous language policies in Taiwan, as we will show below (sections 3 and 4). She has been engaged in the development of both through her pre-eminent role in projects relating to typological studies on Formosan languages in the early 1990s, and on language teaching materials and proficiency tests since the late 1990s and early 2000s. Lillian may retire in a few years. Before she does, we thought it would be most appropriate to honour her by putting together papers by a number of scholars and students who have benefitted from or have been in contact with her in one way or another (e.g. through collaborative work, teaching, supervising, advising etc.). The idea of such a volume was conceived by Elizabeth Zeitoun in the autumn of 2009. Further plans were initially worked out with Stacy F. Teng, soon joined by Joy J. Wu. The three editors have been close to Lillian since the early and mid 1990s. Of the three, Zeitoun, who has been working with her on diverse projects for over twenty years, is her closest collaborator on the academic level. Both Wu and Teng were Lillian’s MA supervisees. Through her fieldwork courses, she introduced Wu to Amis and Teng to Puyuma, languages on which they are still working. The title of the present volume, New advances in Formosan linguistics, reflects our pursuit of publishing cutting-edge, provocative, and thoughtful papers that explore new directions and perspectives on Formosan languages and linguistics. It is worth noticing that this is the first collected volume on Formosan languages that has not issued from a workshop or a conference—the papers included in this volume are thus varied in terms of topic coverage—and the first that specifically deals with (and covers nearly all) the Formosan languages, a grouping understood in its broader context, that is, including Yami, a Batanic (Philippine) language spoken on Orchid Island under the political jurisdiction of Taiwan. (Note: first three paragraphs of foreward)