Everyday Musical Life among the Indigenous Bunun, Taiwan

Jonathan P.J. Stock, Chou Chiener

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367748487
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000376074
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Musica classica

Everyday Musical Life among the Indigenous Bunun, Taiwan contributes to multidisciplinary research on music in everyday human life by pushing beyond the urbanized Western populations routinely featured in such writing. Based on ethnographic study in Buklavu, a village in southern Taiwan mostly inhabited by the indigenous Bunun, the book explores villagers' contemporaneous musical engagements and pathways, paying heed both to imported music—such as TV theme tunes, karaoke singing, church hymns—and to the transformation of Bunun traditions through school and community interventions and folkloric festivals. The case study underpins a new, widely applicable, theoretical model for the study of music in everyday life in global society which is historically engaged, sensitive to individual and group diversity, cognizant of the interplay of the mundane and the exceptional, and primed to support applied research.

1 Echoes of the Past

Apprehending Indigenous Sound in Taiwan

People imagine, shape, make, remake, discuss, and discard music in specific historical and social contexts and in relation to particular systems of belief, societal or individual needs, and social structures. In the first part of this chapter, I examine historical, anthropological, and sociological accounts of Bunun society for the light they shed on the larger social settings and value systems within which Bunun music has been created, sustained, and developed. While further comparative intuitions could be drawn from studies of other indigenous peoples in Taiwan, my aim is not to synthesize the wider literature on these groups. In fact, there remains significant diversity among these peoples, as recorded by in a recent comparative study by Patrick Savage and Steven Brown:

Although [Taiwan] is a small island, it has some of the highest levels of diversity in the world, not only musically but also in other domains, such as linguistics and genetics. While these populations, like indigenous peoples in most parts of the world, have been greatly affected by colonialism and globalization, most have managed to preserve substantial amounts of their musical, linguistic, and genetic heritages even as they have adapted to changing lifestyles.

(Savage and Brown 2014:133)

In the second section of the chapter, I appraise key trends in existing scholarly work on the music of the Bunun. This allows me to sketch in the primary genres, instruments, and contexts for Bunun music making, historically and today. In order to keep the account proportionate to the broader aims of the book, I focus only on selected examples from a much larger body of research that collectively epitomize the wider trends in a century or so of studies on Bunun music.

Bunun Society

Pre-History and Early Colonial History

There are few formal sources on the Bunun before the last hundred or so years, and, as noted in this book’s Introduction, competing theories remain as to when the ancestors of today’s indigenous peoples settled on Taiwan. Archaeologists have found human remains on the island dating to at least 18,000 BCE, when Taiwan was still linked by land to what is now the Chinese coast. But the Bunun’s ancestors may equally have been considerably later arrivals, and, if so, they may have come to their present home either from mainland East Asia or by island hopping through Southeast Asia by way of (what is now) Indonesia and the Philippines. By around 3000 BCE, there was a highly developed Neolithic culture all around Taiwan, and evidence remains of Iron Age settlements from around 500 CE. According to Tsang Cheng-Hwa, these latter people typically lived near the sea and by rivers. They fished, planted cereals, and hunted, and some sites reveal evidence of trade in bronze and copper artefacts from as far away as Tang Dynasty China (Tsang 2000:154). Han migration may have begun at this time, too, although it appears to have been small in scale. Meanwhile, members of the indigenous communities engaged in frequent conflict with one another. Men practiced headhunting as a means of displaying their prowess (Shepherd 1993:50).

Little in Bunun oral tradition sheds further detailed light on the history of this lengthy period. In many tales, people were originally just like any other animal, with no particular culture. Species boundaries were fluid: humans could be born from insects, snakes, or stones, and unfortunate occurrences resulted in cross-species transformations of several kinds (Fox 2012:51). In a legend found in varying forms over much of East Asia, the Bunun tell of a time when there were two suns in the world, and it was unbearably hot. A hunter used his bow to shoot down one of the suns, relieving the heat. The defeated sun transformed itself into a moon and taught the Bunun the importance of observing rites (lus-an) and taboos (samu) based on a lunar calendar. This is what finally differentiated them from other animals (Yeh 2002:15; see further Sayama and Ōnishi 1923).

Insights into more recent Bunun history are provided by records from the period when Taiwan was claimed by the Dutch, beginning in 1624, a phase which represents the first attempt to govern the island as a whole. By now, traders in port settlements on Taiwan had built networks that extended to both China and Japan, and these routes developed even more strongly following a Chinese ban on direct trade with Japan after a Japanese attack on Korea in the late sixteenth century. Produce from Taiwan, including deer skins, coal, and sulphur, was already part of these international exchanges (ibid.:57) and the Dutch were anxious to share the profits. Few in number, they based themselves primarily around what is now the city of Tainan, in southwestern Taiwan, an area not immediately contiguous with zones known to have been occupied by Bunun but one mentioned in some ancestral tales (Fang 2016:75). As the Dutch gradually expanded their influence across the island, they encouraged Han migration from China, and several significant changes ensued. The indigenous peoples treated farming as a task for women and older men only, whereas the Han farmed intensively, producing a surplus that could be traded and taxed (Brown 2004:38–9). Noting their disdain for agricultural labour, the Dutch hired indigenous men to hunt for deer skins, desired by the Dutch for international trade, and set taxes on hunting rights. Stocks of lowland deer dwindled, so some indigenous communities followed their prey to the more remote mountain regions; citing oral history sources, Steven Martin suggests that the Bunun may only have adopted a mountain habitat at this time (2006:62; see also Yang 2001:30), and several other sources mention Bunun moves over the following century south and east away from the Nantou area of central Taiwan (for example, Gils 2009:17). This same period also saw the arrival of Christian missionaries, with Protestant ministers active in Dutch-held areas and Catholic priests among those inhabiting a short-lived Spanish settlement in Taiwan’s north (1626–42). Several elderly Bunun shared in interview a tale in which their ancestors inhabited the Western plains and acquired writing from the Dutch before being forced into the central mountain ranges by encroaching Han migrants. It is clear from many accounts that the Dutch sustained their rule through exploiting divisions between rival indigenous peoples and Han migrants; these conflicts encouraged some indigenous groups to migrate further into the mountains during the seventeenth century. One villager claimed partial Dutch ancestry to explain his unusually high-bridged nose.

A Dutch estimate of the island’s population in 1650 gave indigenous peoples as numbering between 64,000 and 68,000, with around 15,000 Han Chinese also on Taiwan (ibid.:37, 39). By 1661, the Dutch had been supplanted by Chinese loyal to the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), which had already lost much of China to invading Manchu armies from the north. Within a further generation, the Manchus, now styling themselves the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), had defeated the remaining Ming loyalists, and their forces in turn established control over much of Taiwan. A Chinese admiral named Shi Lang reported that there were by this time around 100,000 Han on Taiwan, including military personnel. Half were ordered to return to the mainland and the island put into an official “quarantine”: the Qing government wished to forestall any potential for development of a sizable rebellious faction on the island (ibid.:44) and reduce its own military and administrative costs (Shepherd 1993:137–8). As Shi Lang’s report suggests, indigenous peoples became a minority population during the latter part of the seventeenth century, even while those in the mountains typically retained autonomy from the Han settlers. Despite the authorities’ efforts, migration from nearby parts of China continued throughout the next two centuries.

In a categorization that pre-echoes Lévi-Strauss, the Qing authorities described the indigenous populations in Taiwan as either raw or cooked. The distinction turned not on the culinary preferences of each culture group but on Qing officers’ perception of the impact of Han culture upon each such group. The Bunun were one of the “raw” groups with few overt signs of sinicization. Later, Taiwan’s indigenous peoples were divided by the Qing into plains and mountain categories, the former typically being those who were in regular contact with Han settlers and authorities. Colonial authorities varied in their stance on these indigenous inhabitants. Periods of direct suppression and exploitation alternated with phases when benefits were offered to those willing to assimilate. Due to such measures, many in the plains groups took up Han names to evade the disadvantages of indigenous identity under colonial Manchu rule (West 2009). Meanwhile, and throughout the whole period of Qing governance, much of the land in central and Eastern Taiwan remained fully under the control of indigenous populations, although the rise of an international market for camphor (used in medicine), an early plastic named celluloid, and smokeless gunpowder in the late nineteenth century encouraged Han traders and settlers to contest and clear forest areas, which could then be replaced by tea plantations or other cash crops, a process that displaced indigenous peoples from their habitual hunting grounds and gardens (Munsterhjelm 2002). Groups of Bunun themselves also migrated throughout the nineteenth century as population expansion led offshoot groups to seek new territories to the south, east, and southwest (Wu 1993:23–6).

Japanese Colonial Period

Following an unsuccessful military conflict intended to restrain Japanese intervention in Korea, the Qing were obliged to cede Taiwan and other lands to Japan in 1895. Occupying first Chinese settlements mostly on the Western side of Taiwan, the Japanese then extended their control gradually to the East, a process that typically involved lengthy periods of armed conflict with indigenous groups unwilling to give up their land or self-determination, among them the Bunun. It appears that “Bunun” (and variant spellings like “Vunun”) first became used as an ethnic categorization by Japanese researchers around 1898 (Fang 2016:38, 40). Sources from this period identify five subdivisions of Bunun, each with its own dialect, the Isbukun, Takibakha, Takbanuaz, Takituduh, and Takivatan; a sixth, the Takipulan, was apparently absorbed by the others around 50 years ago, although some sources suggest that they merged into the Tsou Indigenous People instead. Individuals were members of a patrilineal clan system, which embraced aspects such as access to hunting grounds and obligations in blood feuds and now functions more simply as a surname (Huang 1995:66–8). Most Bunun in the Taitung area, which includes Buklavu, are part of the Isbukun group (Martin 2006:61).

Japanese occupation ushered in a slew of social changes and an age in which systematic study of Taiwan’s indigenous culture began. For example, Japanese anthropologist Torii Ryūzō (1870–1953), a pioneer of photographic fieldwork, collected many images of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples in fieldwork in the late 1890s and 1900s in hope of discovering clues on Japanese racial ancestry. Critics have noted that his photographs often depict subjects in postures that met Torii’s preconceptions of savage primitive men and passive native women. A representative image by Torii, widely accessible online, is his photo serial number 7474, which shows 16 Bunun of various ages. Here, the men stare into the lens with uncompromising gazes. A centrally placed man fingers the handle of his machete. A small child glares downward at the camera, as if judging the photographer a disappointment.¹ For our purposes, Torii’s photograph is further revealing insofar as it already shows direct evidence of culture contact. Two women hold umbrellas, and those on the right wear Chinese dresses over their indigenous clothing.

Even as researchers turned to cultural matters, they most typically focused on subjects that preceded the period of Japanese colonization. Typical might be Yokoo Hirosuke’s study of the Bunun calendar (Yokoo 1937). The Bunun did not have a written language, but, in one family at least, they recorded the lunar calendar by inscribing geometrical symbols onto a line, one for each day, with a small number of overarching lines showing longer phases. Additional pictograms showed the timing of the most essential taboos, rites, and key agricultural and hunting periods (Figure 1.1).²

Other studies noted details of social organization: with the clear exception of gender inequality in a patriarchal society, early twentieth-century Bunun were typically egalitarian in outlook, except during periods of direct conflict or during headhunting missions. Standing in society was based on achievement rather than lineage, and, particularly in the more sparsely populated southern areas, men could lead their families away to establish a new settlement should they disagree with whoever was currently asserting authority. Or, they could stay and make a bid for local influence by sponsoring rites that included the distribution of meat (see further Huang 1995). Steven Martin comments further on the ethics of sharing meat in Bunun society:

Figure 1.1Embroidered version of a historical Bunun calendar decorating a Buklavu hut reconstructed as part of a local cultural regenera...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Note on Authorship
• Acknowledgements
• Ethical Permissions and Naming Practices
• Note on Languages and Guide to Pronunciation
• Introduction
• 1 Echoes of the Past: Apprehending Indigenous Sound in Taiwan
• 2 Toward New Perspectives on Music in Everyday Life
• 3 Music in the Moment, or One Day in Buklavu
• 4 Sunday Mornings, Friday Nights: Music at Significant Weekly Occasions
• 5 Elaborating the Everyday: Music in the Annual Ear-Shooting Festival
• Conclusions
• Glossaries
• References
• Index