ABSTRACT
From their beginnings as an ethnic music market, Taiwanese Indigenous popular musics have expanded in recent years to engage national and international audiences. In this expansion, they have produced a dual voice, at once entangled with the politics of official multiculturalism on Taiwan but also emerging as a means of refusal. In his promotion of the Amis Music Festival, ‘Atolan ‘Amis singer-songwriter Suming Rupi invites people to learn his language, while warning them not too casually to say they love ‘Atolan. Other ‘Amis musicians, such as Ado Kaliting Pacidal, employ musics as a means of pilgrimage, exploring broad connections to Austronesian peoples across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. However, in their creative work, they often highlight the ways in which these connections emerge from continued collaboration with other Indigenous peoples and across the settler-Indigenous divide, troubling notions of fixed ethnic identities. For this reason, listening to ‘Amis voices might show us ways to think beyond identity, which has often dominated discussions of Taiwanese cultural practices and politics.
