Between Concert Hall and Museum
An exploration of how Taiwanese Indigenous musicians use performance and cultural institutions to negotiate identity, memory, and belonging in the modern world.
About The Book
Table of Contents
About The Author
How do music, performance spaces, and cultural memory shape the identities of Indigenous communities in a rapidly modernizing world?
Between Concert Hall and Museum: Musics and Identities of Taiwanese Indigenous People by Chun-bin Chen explores the dynamic relationship between Indigenous musical traditions and contemporary cultural institutions in Taiwan.
Through vivid musical stories set in Taiwan’s National Concert Hall, Indigenous villages, and the National Museum of Prehistory, the book examines how Indigenous musicians navigate spaces that symbolize modernity, heritage, and cultural preservation. Drawing on performances, village rituals, museum exhibitions, and the Festival of Austronesian Cultures, Chen reveals how music becomes a powerful medium through which Taiwanese Indigenous people reconnect with their past while negotiating their place in the present.
The book also reflects on the idea of a uniquely Indigenous form of diaspora, where feelings of displacement can occur even within one’s homeland. By highlighting musical performance as a pathway to cultural continuity and belonging, this work offers a compelling perspective on indigeneity, identity, and cultural resilience in contemporary society.
Ideal for students and scholars in Asian studies, ethnomusicology, world music, anthropology, and cultural studies interested in Indigenous identities and musical traditions.
How do music, performance spaces, and cultural memory shape the identities of Indigenous communities in a rapidly modernizing world?
Between Concert Hall and Museum: Musics and Identities of Taiwanese Indigenous People by Chun-bin Chen explores the dynamic relationship between Indigenous musical traditions and contemporary cultural institutions in Taiwan.
Through vivid musical stories set in Taiwan’s National Concert Hall, Indigenous villages, and the National Museum of Prehistory, the book examines how Indigenous musicians navigate spaces that symbolize modernity, heritage, and cultural preservation. Drawing on performances, village rituals, museum exhibitions, and the Festival of Austronesian Cultures, Chen reveals how music becomes a powerful medium through which Taiwanese Indigenous people reconnect with their past while negotiating their place in the present.
The book also reflects on the idea of a uniquely Indigenous form of diaspora, where feelings of displacement can occur even within one’s homeland. By highlighting musical performance as a pathway to cultural continuity and belonging, this work offers a compelling perspective on indigeneity, identity, and cultural resilience in contemporary society.
Ideal for students and scholars in Asian studies, ethnomusicology, world music, anthropology, and cultural studies interested in Indigenous identities and musical traditions.
- Cover
- Half-Title Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- Abstract
- Introduction
- Learning objectives
- 1 Highway Nine musical stories: Making meanings of home through musicking
- Places
- Indigenous musicking and multiple facets of Indigeneity
- 2 Being out of place or making it Indigenous: Indigenous presence in the National Concert Hall
- The musical began
- Dreams come true, unexpectedly
- The performers
- The musical
- Reception and reflections
- Places, identities, and musicking
- 3 Imagining the Austronesian homeland through festivals and museum exhibitions
- Taiwan at the 13th Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture
- The 2002 Festival of Austronesian Cultures
- The NMP, 2002
- The NMP, 2024
- 4 What is home? Musicking in Nanwang Village
- My first Nanwang experiences
- From Puyuma to Nanwang
- Forms of homesickness
- The Pinuyumayan annual ritual
- The mulaliyaban celebration
- 5 Constructing an invisible boys’ house, remaking Papulu Village Indigenous
- Home forever
- Concerts at home
- A night of campus folksong
- Papulu village and its age-set system
- Legacy
- The semimusimuk
- Returning home through performance
- Notes
- Discussion questions
- References
- Related YouTube links
- Index
Chun-bin Chen is Professor of Musicology at Taipei National University of the Arts whose research focuses on music, identity, and Taiwanese Indigenous musical cultures.
