Beyond "Innocence": Amis Aboriginal Song in Taiwan as an Ecosystem by Shzr Ee Tan (review)

The Amis people, of Austronesian descent, are one of Taiwan's 16 officially recognized indigenous groups. Very little scholarly work has been published in English on Taiwan aboriginal music; publications in Chinese have been uneven in quality. Beyond "Innocence" is especially welcome because of its comprehensive nature and because it allows an international readership to access information about this rich musical culture.

As the title of the book indicates, Tan proposes that Amis song be best understood as an ecosystem. Aiming to eschew the limits of linear analysis, she crafts her study to illuminate the crisscrossing, multidimensional network of the complex relationships involved in Amis musical creativity and, by extension, to that of Taiwan aboriginal song generally. She does this over six chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction begins with an overview of the infamous "Return to Innocence" case in which the voice of Amis singer Difang was sampled in the megahit released by the European New Age pop group Enigma in 1993. The musical and social repercussions of "Return to Innocence" led Tan to investigate what Difang was singing, how the song would have been sung in the village context, and if his performance was representative of aboriginal song culture as a whole. This case (which was Tan's original inspiration for taking up the study of Amis music) led her to frame Amis musical culture as an ecosystem comprising "different interacting dimensions of traditional and contemporary singing activity" (7).

Chapter 1 sets up the study by giving a brief overview of mentions of aboriginal music activities in Chinese written records from the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 CE) to Qing governance in the eighteenth century. Beginning with the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945) through to the early 2000s, this overview focuses on the documentation of aboriginal musical culture (primarily photographs and sound recordings) by anthropologists and music scholars and their resultant publications. The remainder of the chapter introduces Amis society, social units, ethnic identity, and Tan's primary field site, the village of Fafokod (or Tunghe in Mandarin) in the southeastern county of Taitung. Tan recalls the story of her introduction to village life. Here, and throughout the book, she demonstrates the closeness of her relationships with those whose musical activities she took pains to collect and analyze. Through her actions, and importantly, her sensitivity in matters related to terminology and naming, Tan demonstrates her respect for her interlocutors. Sadly, this level of regard has not always been practiced by Han Chinese ethnomusicologists, some of whom, for example, have advanced their careers through publications of ill-gotten field recordings of aboriginal music.

In chapter 2, the scholarly reason for Tan's close attention to language and terminology becomes clear. There is no official Amis term for "music," though Chinese and Japanese words for music are often applied to some forms of music making. There is, however, an Amis term, ladhiw, applied to a specific type of vocal activity. Through analysis of word usage, interviews, observation of numerous social situations in which singing is present, and melodic analyses, Tan aims to unpack and identify ladhiw. Though ladhiw and "music" sometimes intertwine in Amis creative practice, and may even be present within the same song, ladhiw has certain characteristics, such as its spontaneous nature and its being strongly connected to natural phenomena and the physical environment.

Chapter 3 is dedicated to music in ritual. The annual harvest festivals of aboriginal groups are known to both foreign and local tourists in Taiwan, who sometimes join in the festivities. Variations in the ceremonies of different Amis villages are noted; however, detailed discussion, which is richly informed by Tan's interlocutors' descriptions and emic analyses, takes the ritual practice in Fafokod as its focus. Half of this chapter is devoted to the music of Christian religious...