True Feelings From the Bosom of Nature

The songs of the Ami, like those of all Taiwanese aborigines, are regarded as an important ethnic music resource. In particular, the origins of Taiwan's aborigines are thought to be connected to a great migration of their Austronesian ancestors, and these songs have great importance for understanding the social organization and culture of the people of the Austronesian language group.

"Misahafai" is one of the main events of the Harvest Festival in Malan. As dawn breaks, the younger men of the tribe ride around the village and signal the start of the festival with their loud cries. Then it is time for everyone to stop work, make ready millet wine, and let the festivities begin.

Ami songs have strong melodies and marvelous harmonies, making them even more infectious than the songs of Taiwan's other aboriginal peoples. They impart a happy and passionate feeling, like the friendly Ami themselves, who keep their doors open to welcome passersby.

With the focus on Difag and Igay, people have overlooked their co-singers (and friends since childhood): Panay, Afan and Kacaw. If it weren't for the harmonies of these "behind-the-scenes" heroes-if the "Song of Joy" had been performed only with lead vocals by Difag and the high part by Igay-then it would have lacked the call and response so characteristic of Ami singing.

Surprising, beautiful Malan

They were all born and raised in the Malan area of Taitung. The Ami, the largest of Taiwan's nine indigenous mountain tribes with a population of about 130,000, live on the east coast of Taiwan, from Hualien to Taitung. Anthropologists divide them into several sub-tribes. The Ami of Malan, like those of Peinan and the Hengchun Peninsula, are Southern Ami, distinguished from the Northern Ami of Hualien, and the Central Ami who live in the Hsiukuluan River Valley. These groups not only have different Harvest Festival traditions, they even have different dialects and wear different traditional clothing and jewelry.

The Ami were the first and most deeply sinicized of Taiwan's mountain aborigines. Situated in Taitung City, Malan looks virtually indistinguishable from a Han Chinese neighborhood. "Early on, when travel to Taitung was difficult, the easiest way for Han Chinese to get there was through Malan," says Lifok Dongi, director of the ROC's National Culture and Arts Foundation, who is himself an Ami. He points out that this is why Malan singing was the first to be recommended by scholars and become widely known.

In 1943, the Japanese scholar Takatoma Kurosawa wrote his masterly study The Music of Taiwan's Mountain Tribes and made recordings of aboriginal music, including songs by residents of Malan. Then in 1978, when Hsu Tsang-houei and other musicologists were collecting aboriginal music all across the province, much of the Ami music they collected was from Malan.

In his journal, Hsu Tsang-houei wrote with great perception of his happy surprise at first hearing Difag and Igay:

"During the afternoon we recorded mostly polyphonic free counterpoint music, and how they could improvise and sing-it was enough to make you want to jump for joy! I bet polyphonic music was like this . . . in its early period in the West. The singers, Difag and Igay, who are husband and wife, are the best of the bunch. Their technique is at a professional level."

Not singing stars!

Hsu Tsang-houei's praise was a turning point. Since then many people interested in Ami music have come to Malan to hear this husband and wife sing. Needless to say, Difag and his back-up singers are the most accomplished of the area's singing troupes. But this doesn't mean that Difag and company are the only singers in Malan. In fact there are many similar singing groups-it's just that no one knows about them.

The Ami are a very tightly knit tribe. In July or August they gather for the Harvest Festival (comparable to the Han Chinese New Year's Festival) and dance all night to celebrate their coming together. Then there are the age grades of the Southern Ami, and boys join their group in the first grade when they are about 15. Each grade has different functions to play in tribal activities, and different powers and duties. From these you can see how much the Ami stress solidarity and communalism.

Likewise, the Ami have few opportunities for individual artistic performances, including few songs for a solo singer. For them, singing is almost always a group activity. And unlike what most people imagine, they can't just casually find a singing partner. On the contrary, they find it very hard to sing with strangers, becoming singing partners only with people who are close to them in their work or lives. In Difag's singing group, for instance, they are all relations of some degree, sisters or husband and wife. If Difag were to try to sing with someone else, it wouldn't necessarily work out.

All to express feeling

For the Ami, singing is a part of everyday life. Tilling the fields, planting rice, picking betel nuts, husking rice, celebrating a wedding or birthday, going off to serve in the army or to fish at sea, returning from far away, and illness: all are the stuff of song. When the Harvest Festival rolls around, everyone gets together, and no matter whether they are solemnly rehearsing ceremonial songs, or singing happily after the ceremonies are over, for the Ami the point of singing isn't to hear an individual perform or show off but rather to express feelings between people.

Strictly speaking, the aborigines of Taiwan have no word for "music" in their vocabularies, only a word for "song." And in the case of the Ami, most of their songs don't have any lyrics. Rather "because of differences in time and place, the sounds they intone take on different meanings," says Lifok Dongi.

Ming Li-kuo also points out whereas Han Chinese might find that a song without lyrics hard to imagine, holding that lyrics are needed for it to have meaning, "for the Ami, a tribe without writing, the lack of lyrics gives it more inner meaning." He points out that the "hei hai, hei hai" in the Harvest Festival's response singing is not meaningless. It represents a spirit of coming together and a willingness to obey.

Song without a name

The Ami call the tune that was used for the Olympic promotional video "Balafang," which means visiting friends and shouting for joy. It is in fact a song that the Ami sing when they are at leisure: If they are boozing it's "The Drinking Song," when they are calling on friends, it's "The Song of Joy" or "The Song of Reunion." The name of the song is "created by the need to adapt to Han Chinese thinking," says Lifok Dongi, who jokes that from the Han perspective it is in fact a song without a name.

What's interesting is that today the most familiar Ami songs-such as working songs, rice-husking songs, mowing songs, and love songs-have been similarly forced into categories. The Harvest Festival songs and the songs used to call for rain and appease evil spirits are sung at specific times and places, lest they break taboos. But for other Ami songs, there is generally speaking a great deal of freedom regarding both length and singing style, and different singing groups have different ways of singing them.

What is considered most important in Ami singing is vocal mastery based on practical experience, with physical feelings and shared emotions as the starting point, and a basic quality of harmony. The surrounding environment is also an important influential factor. Igay, who sings so often amid the mountains and lush greenery of her Malan home, says that there their voices and melodies flow from an inexhaustible wellhead, and they can sing enough to fill "a big truck -an 18-wheeler at that." But in the cramped spaces and noisy environment of the city, the big truck suddenly shrinks to the size of "a little matchbox."

Many concepts from Ami song really are different from the definition of "singing" in modern urban life. To understand the music of the Ami or any other indigenous people, says Ming Li-kuo, "you first have to 'let go'-you have to rid yourself of certain habits of today's consumer society," including concepts such as "composer" or "vocalist," which are simply not appropriate.

Voice games

Most Han Chinese conceive of the Ami as a single, integral ethnic group, but in fact there are great differences of character between the music of Ami tribal communities in different locations. Although the Ami are few in number compared with the Han, they still show diversity, and musicologists distinguish different characteristics and different techniques in Ami songs from different geographical areas. For instance, "Balafang" ("Song of Joy") which has been the center of recent attention, is sung in a style popular in the Southern Ami community centered on Malan: a complex and precise polyphony.

Polyphony is a form of musical expression in which multiple voices sing together or consecutively, with different tonal intervals and at different pitches. In "call-and-response" singing, one or more people first sing a passage, then others continue, or the others sing in counterpoint with the lead singer. Just as in choral singing, Southern Ami singing's special character lies in the down-to-earth, unembellished musicality expressed in the harmonic beauty of its polyphony and its call-and-response style.

According to Ming Li-kuo's understanding, the Ami's highly distinctive call-and-response singing in fact clearly reflects the family and social relationships within the tribal group. For instance, at harvest festivals, the singing cannot be led by young boys who have not yet entered an age-grade group, nor by members of the youngest age-grade, who are usually called upon to run errands and do odd jobs, and are expected to follow whatever instructions they may be given by members of older age-grades. The singing is usually led by someone from a more senior age-grade, unless they tire and have to rest. As they sing they will directly improvise words to which members of younger age-grades are expected to respond. Lead singers are also generally people of some social standing within the local tribal community. To lead the singing one must not only have a good singing voice: prestige within the tribe is also very important.

Many Ami songs have a long history. But although the basic structure of the songs has not changed over time, lead singers often add innovations of their own. The relationship between the leader and the respondents is one of "game-playing and mutual counterbalance," says Ming Li-kuo. Especially at harvest festivals, if the leader does not sing well, people will not sing along. But if he or she does sing well, everyone will respond with loud whoops or energetic dance movements.

The same is true of the leisure songs, which are sung while not working. When everyone is singing together just for enjoyment, if the lead singer can't hit a high note, everyone will adjust and change the scale of their singing. "They all play a kind of vocal structural game," describes Ming Li-kuo. In traditional Ami society, male and female roles were very strictly separated, with the men working outside and the women attending to the household. But in this kind of leisure singing, everyone could bend these rules.

A feeling of roundness

To understand Ami songs takes a willingness to experience things for oneself. You have to "live" them yourself to get a real feel for their meaning. For instance, one will not understand harvest festival songs just by listening to them. You have to sing along to feel their collective power.

But listeners who have the time to assume the role of a detached observer will also gain some insights. "It makes me think of the curvature of the moon and of the mountains. It's like looking at a Chinese landscape painting-their singing is full of rounded, curving things like that," says popular music composer Chen Ming-chang. He believes that the angles which people accustomed to living in cities see all around them are those of skyscrapers and other such buildings, so the music they make is often in digital style and feels full of square shapes. But aboriginal music is different: its melodies and harmonic beauty constantly remind one of nature.

Whether they are work songs, leisure songs or even the ritual songs of the harvest festival, Ami songs always give one a sense of comfort and beauty, making one feel how verdant the mountains are, how beautiful the rice fields and how long the seashore. Even the "Headhunting Song," which is so full of fighting spirit, might sound to some people like a lullaby. This isn't a joke-it was a reply once given by a student in class to the late musicologist Lu Ping-chuan.

Is this the special quality handed down from a fishing and hunting culture? Ming Li-kuo says that while studying and surveying aboriginal music, he has often felt there is a difference between farming culture and fishing and hunting culture. Farmers have the concept of storing things up and planning their cultivation, and are vulnerable to invasion, occupation, material privation and poverty. But this is not so for the hunting and fishing lifestyle, for nature forgives everything and gives birth to everything-"harmony" is its basic nature.

An example very "close to life" is that when Ming first visited the aboriginal settlements, he was very puzzled as to why nobody there grew vegetables. It was only later that it dawned on him that for the aboriginals, vegetables already grew of their own accord-there was no such thing as "growing" them. The inexhaustible supply of wild vegetables supplied by nature were the best vegetables one could wish for. Perhaps only a view of nature rooted in the depths of one's culture can give birth to such relaxed and uncombative singing?

Honest emotion within the ordinary

Even with something as apparently ordinary as human relationships, if one has not really understood them through one's own experience, one cannot fully appreciate the feeling of contact with the Ami.

On one mid-July day, Difag said to the guests from the city that if one was talking about his singing, one couldn't leave out his brother Laway, who used to partner him. Laway was now sick in bed, so apart from "lonely Difag" there were no other males among the group of singers.

Difag insisted that the visitors should not overlook Laway, and hoped that as many of us as possible could visit him. When everyone arrived at Laway's home, after a few words of greeting Difag and the others started reminiscing in their own tongue about their visit to France. They recounted the many gaffes committed by Difag and Laway, such as pouring a dozen or so bottles of perfume over themselves all at once. They told how they went without lunch to save money to buy a cow, and how a Bunun singer on the trip bought a pair of shoes that were too tight and ended up getting on the plane back to Taiwan barefoot. Finally, they remembered how "worst of all, those warmhearted French girls kept 'biting' us on the necks with their lips." At mention of this, some of those present were almost overcome with laughter.

Finally they sang the "Song of Joy," and another song which we were told was the favorite of Difag, Laway and their three sworn brothers. As the song lingered in the air, the singers' eyes flashed with tears.

What moving singing, born of nature and human affection!

p.17

Difag's house sees a constant stream of visitors from the city. Talking late into the night, although one cannot do without an interpreter, one still feels the warm and welcoming atmosphere. Millet wine and betel nuts are indispensable accompaniments which add spice to the conversation.

( map drawn by Lee Su-ling)

p.18

"Misahafai" is one of the main events of the Harvest Festival in Malan. As dawn breaks, the younger men of the tribe ride around the village and signal the start of the festival with their loud cries. Then it is time for everyone to stop work, make ready millet wine, and let the festivities begin.

p.21

The appetizing pork prepared for

the Harvest Festival is waiting for

the tribe members to eat together.

The Ami's singing is rooted in life,

and expresses

the feeling of

community.

The fishing festival ushers in the climax of the Harvest Festival. The traditional fishing and hunting way of life gave birth to the Ami's unhurried singing style.

Human relationships within the tribe are very simple and natural. This intimate scene was "performed" at visitors' request.

p.22

The inroads of modernization are very obvious in the tribal villages. Pictured here is Tungho in northern Taitung County.

p.24

Difag and Laway played together since childhood, and also "collaborated" in pranks such as filching fruit.

p.25

\Difag and Igay have to tend their betel-leaf plantation every day.

With so many visitors, they say,

it's hard to get

the farming

chores done.

The appetizing pork prepared for the Harvest Festival is waiting for the tribe members to eat together. The Ami's singing is rooted in life, and expresses the feeling of community.

The fishing festival ushers in the climax of the Harvest Festival. The traditional fishing and hunting way of life gave birth to the Ami's unhurried singing style.

Human relationships within the tribe are very simple and natural. This intimate scene was "performed" at visitors' request.

The inroads of modernization are very obvious in the tribal villages. Pictured here is Tungho in northern Taitung County.

Difag and Laway played together since childhood, and also "collaborated" in pranks such as filching fruit.

Difag and Igay have to tend their betel-leaf plantation every day. With so many visitors, they say, it's hard to get the farming chores done.