The history of popular music in Taiwan

The Evolution of Taipei’s Music Industry: Cluster and Network Dynamics in the Innovation Practices of the Music Industry

“…Although music industries were sanctioned by the content regulations, local music creativity and place identity were not destroyed under these strict regulations. A bottom–up campus movement, 3 mobilised by an organised college-based community network, dramatically challenged the imitation-oriented path of Taipei’s music industry (Yang, 1994). The purposive actions of the social movement critically increased reflexive music discourses, known as ‘sing our song’ and ‘where is our song’, which became increasingly widespread among the public through various media channels.…”

A Historical Review of Popular Music and Social Change in Taiwan

“…This "return", particularly in universities and intellectual magazines, publicly renounced foreign-influenced modernist work and advocated native literature. For the same reason, universities and colleges in Taiwan renounced Western popular songs and began writing their own "campus" or "folk" songs 10 (see Guy, 2002a;Yang, 1994;Yeh, 2000;Zeng, 1998). One of the 132 • Ho Wai-Chung (ii) Western-Chinese mixture -adding classical and romantic stylistic features of Western music to traditional Chinese music, for example, melodies of Chinese origin, pentatonic scale, free harmony, etcetera; (iii) Western contemporary -from the impressionism of Debussy and other twentieth century composition techniques, for example, atonality, 12-tone series, new harmonies, etcetera; (iv) traditional Chinese -using traditional Chinese melodies, simple harmony; and (v) modern folk -using traditional Chinese music materials, with composition techniques of the West.…”

“…However, there is no study of how Taiwan's popular music has been shaped by transnational circuits of the global economy and the issue of Chinese nationalism in the struggle for power in the state. Though there are publications focused on the social context of Taiwan's popular songs (see for example Yang, 1994;Yang, 2002;Zeng, 1998), they do not provide a detailed explanation of the specific ways in which music has been systematically embedded within Taiwan's political history. The history of Taiwan's popular music needs to be examined in relation to its social development and state ideology, to explain the identity of Taiwan's popular music in its historical context.…”