ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to sketch out a historical trajectory of Taiwanese popular music, organized around key moments and manifestations of nativism. To profile is to sketch with a perspective. The local popular-music industries have been in decline since the 2000s due to globalization and digitization, China’s growing importance in Mandarin popular music, and the fragmented domestic market long shared by Anglo-American, Japanese, and Korean popular music. The coming of Anglo-American pop-chart music meant that the spread of Anglo-American music in postwar Taiwan was largely a by-product of the US military imperialism. Certain historical moments, events, and incidents of popular-music practices will be narrated and examined for the ways they engage with and transform cultural nativism. The Armed Forces Network in Taiwan played various genres of the US popular music, which prompted several local radio stations in Taipei to begin playing American popular music.
