Capturing the Old Tunes of the Truku

Pi Teyru Ukah is a musician and hunter of the Truku (Taroko) indigenous people. Wielding a hunter’s machete, he cuts some branches and then fashions them into a Y-shaped prop in under five minutes. He uses it to prop up a stone slab. Thus he creates a hunting trap, in whose gap he places a chunk of yam or insect bait to attract a ­rodent or Taiwan bamboo partridge.

“This is a miniature trap,” Pi Teyru explains. “But let me tell you a true story told by a tribal elder.” During the Japanese era, 20 Japanese soldiers on a mission to capture Truku warriors came to the mountains around Taroko Gorge, he recounts. Along the way they grew thirsty and hungry. They came upon a traditional Truku dwelling. To their surprise, inside they found water and sweet potatoes, and even cooked meat. After the group entered the house, someone bumped into something that triggered the trap. Instantly the house collapsed, and everyone inside died. Hence, a traditional slab house can be turned into a large trap using the same principles as Pi Teyru’s little hunting trap. You just need a very large slab on the roof.

Tattoos adorn Pi Teyru’s forehead and chin, and as he solemnly describes his ancestors’ wisdom, those listening can’t help but shudder, recreating in their minds’ eyes the scene of that old house collapsing.

Going home and gathering old songs

Pi Teyru used to work as a lifeguard in Taipei. ­His three older brothers had died young, leaving him as his ­mother’s only living son. In 1994 he decided to return home to Hualien County’s Xiulin Township.

Pi Teyru’s wife, Hsueh Kuo Fang, majored in ­piano and composition, and in 1996 the two of them began to collect old tunes. They reworked and recorded them, creating the albums Taroko Legends and Eastward Ho! Both albums were selected for entry in the Midem music fest­ival in Cannes, France, and in Taiwan one earned a Best ­Lyrics award at the Golden Melody Awards for Tradi­tional Arts and Music.

What motivated them to continually search for old tunes for more than 20 years? Though married to a Truku tribesman, Hsueh is ethnically Han. In her low, husky voice, she gets right to the point: “I’m not out for fame or fortune. I just want to fight against injustice and understand the truth.”

“Our interviews with elders left me with many questions, and I wanted to keep pursuing them,” she explains. For instance, when the couple went to interview persons who were clearly designated by officialdom as Atayal, the elders continually described themselves as “Truku.” They were distant relatives of a tribe several dozen miles away in Wanrong Township, but their close neighbors all belonged to different tribes.

In fact, although the Atayal, the Truku and the Seediq shared the customs of facial tattoos and headhunting, the three tribes lived in different areas. It wasn’t until 2004 that the government officially recognized the Truku and Seediq peoples as separate from the Atayal.

On the albums Taroko Legends and Eastward Ho!, old tunes are given new arrangements.

Restoring a history after forced migration

To understand the history of the Truku people’s migra­tions, Hsueh read academic research papers and docu­ments at the Academia Sinica, checking her findings there against the fieldwork she and her husband had done interviewing elders.

Sometime around the 16th century, the tribal community in Truku Truwan (in what is now Hezuo Village in Nan­tou’s Ren’ai Township), climbed across Mt. Qilai and moved to the area around the Liwu, Mugua and Sanzhan rivers in Hualien, where they established new settlements.

During the era of Japanese colonial rule, the Truku resisted Japanese incursions into their homeland. The Weili Incident occurred in 1906, when tribesmen beheaded 25 Japanese soldiers. That was followed by the Cikasuan Incident of 1908 and the Truku War of 1914. Many Truku communities were then forced to move and resettle. After the Wushe Incident involving the Seediq people of Nantou in 1930, the Japanese strengthened their control over the Truku, and in 1938 they forced the entire tribe to come down from the mountains and live in the lowlands. The ROC government would later adopt forced tribal migration policies of their own.

Pi Teyru Ukah and other performers from the play From Time Immemorial relax during a publicity photo shoot. (courtesy of Kdusan Music Studio)

Free in the mountain forests

For Pi Teyru, the process of interviewing tribal elders was also one of examining his roots. He saw the passing away of elders with tattoos and the loss of traditional culture. In 2007 he decided to cut back on his work as a lifeguard and return to his hometown as a “cultural hunter.”

In 2009 Pi Teyru decided to get facial tattoos (patasan in Truku) based on his status as a cultural hunter. Putting tribal markings on his face was a moving and prideful step toward expressing his cultural identity.

As a hunter in the forest, Pi Teyru has always traveled alone. He once climbed nine ridgelines and spent three days in the high mountains before returning to his residence at an altitude of 2000 meters. “For me, the tribal ancestral lands are a paradise, a wonderland.”

Collecting old tribal songs led the musically trained Hsueh Kuo Fang to look into the migrations of the Truku and their life stories.

Ancient tunes, cultural revival

In 2004, borrowing the name of the local community, Pi Teyru established the Kdusan Music Studio, which released the collections Taroko Legends and Eastward Ho! in quick succession. They include tunes such as “Seeking Souls,” originally meant to console the spirits of the dead on headhunting expeditions. Low pitched and ethereal, it is played by Pi Teyru on a “headhunting flute” (utu pegagu).

The flutes used in headhunting ceremonies had been thought lost to history, but after six years of searching, Pi Teyru and Hsueh finally discovered a real-life example of a Truku headhunting flute in the National Taiwan University Museum of Anthropology. Pi Teyru tried and tried again to make one himself. After more than 100 failed attempts, he finally succeeded. Once again “Headhunting” and “Seeking Souls” could be heard with the appropriate instrument, as he breathed new life into these old tunes.

In 2012, while Pi Teyru was taking part in an artist-­in-residence program, he published two dances set to music: “Hunting Souls” and “Dancing Mountain Mists.” For five straight years, he also participated in the “Small Island Big Song” tour of Europe, introducing the culture of the Truku to foreign audiences.

In the documentary Forests of Taroko, produced by Taroko National Park, Pi Teyru discusses the wisdom of traditional Truku culture, describing how his people lived in harmony with the forest. The film won a Platinum Remi at the WorldFest-­Houston International Film Festival in 2020.

Pi Teyru Ukah’s daughter Tuman Pi Teyru, a student at National Dong Hwa University, has been immersed in this cultural milieu from a young age. In August of 2021 she had a role in the stage play From Time Immemorial, which portrays the Truku people’s eastern migration. The performances helped the tribe members taking part to understand their people’s history and wisdom, and boosted their self-confidence by strengthening their sense of ethnic identity. As culture is passed down, it continues to live among future generations, as expressed in the lyrics to the old chant “Ceremo­nial Song for the Gods” that Pi Teyru performs: “I am a child of the Truku. I fear no challenges because I remember the teachings of my ancestors. I have never forgotten them.”            

Pi Teyru interviews Tadaw Mona, an elder of the Truku community of Huhus. (courtesy of Kdusan Music Studio)

Pi Teyru took part in an international arts festival in Vanuatu, where he engaged in cultural exchange and shared Truku trap setting techniques with other indigenous peoples. (courtesy of Small Island Big Song)

Pi Teyru (center) posed for this souvenir photo with tourists who visited his studio on a cultural tour of his village. (courtesy of Kdusan Music Studio)