‘We are Indigenous people, not primitive people.’: the role of popular music in Indigenous language revitalization in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

Indigenous languages in Taiwan are experiencing various degrees of language endangerment. Reversing language shift, however, faces difficulties due to the minority status of the languages. This study identifies two Indigenous singer-songwriters who released popular music sung in their endangered Indigenous languages as micro-level language planning actors and investigates their language activism. Drawing on the framework of strategies in language activism, this study analyses their grass-root initiatives in language activism by examining their public discourse about their ideologies and actions. This study finds that through strategic creating and representing, the musicians aimed to encourage Indigenous youth to use their ethnic language, develop their confidence through popular music, and shift the image of Indigenous languages from traditional, inferior, and underprivileged to international, modern, and confident. Moreover, this study found that, unlike previous studies, the Taiwanese musicians employed various connecting strategies to create a sustainable virtuous cycle to motivate Indigenous people to revitalize their languages. Furthermore, their strategies consider language ecology and aim to connect non-Indigenous Taiwanese with their initiatives to create a friendly societal environment for the Indigenous people. The findings contribute to the development of a repertoire of strategies in language activism and have practical implications for Indigenous language revitalization.

KEYWORDS:

• Language revitalization
• micro-level language planning
• language activism
• Indigenous languages
• popular music

Introduction

‘Many people can’t speak Korean or Japanese, but they can still be K-pop or J-pop fans. So, why not be an Indigenous-pop fan? Don’t you think our language sounds like French, quite elegant-sounding?’ (by Suming Rupi, a Taiwanese Indigenous singer-songwriter)

Indigenous language revitalization has become an important agenda for language planning and policy worldwide. While language planning was traditionally viewed as a top-down, government-led activity, there was a growing recognition of the importance of a bottom-up, community-led approach in language planning (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996). There was also a shift towards evaluating language policy and planning in the language ecology text. Language ecology studies the interaction between different languages and is concerned with the effects of speakers’ sociological and psychological environments (Haugen, 1972). The ecology metaphor implies that languages are like living species – they evolve, grow, live, and die within the environment. Themes like language evolution, language environment, and language endangerment thus emerged from language ecology (Hornberger, 2002). Although theorizing the ecology metaphor might risk ‘dehumanizing’ languages (Willans & Jukes, 2017), an ecological approach to language planning and policy allows researchers to approach the issue holistically and focuses on the dynamic relationship between speakers, social contexts, and languages. Ultimately it seeks to examine how language policies interact at multiple levels of social organization and whether language policies promote equitable multilingualism (Hornberger & Hult, 2008). As a result, more and more studies have shifted from examining macro-level planning to micro-level language planning (Baldauf & Richard, 2006) as language planning activities need to account for needs specific to the local context (Hogan-Brun, 2010; Liddicoat & Baldauf, 2008). Common contexts for local agencies include local implementation or contestation of macro-level policy, local initiatives in the absence of macro-level policy, and creating new opportunities for multilingual development (Liddicoat & Taylor-Leech, 2014).

One domain of micro-level language planning that has emerged in the past two decades is popular music. Songs have long been used by language activists consciously and politically. For example, the Nova Cançó movement sought to normalize Catalan in the 50s, and waiata-ā-ringa (modern-day action songs) were used to promote Te Reo Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand (Ortiz, 2021, pp. 276–277). Since the twenty-first century, Indigenous singers singing in their languages have been observed to positively impact the regeneration of the minority Indigenous languages. Combining hip hop or rock with the Indigenous languages was a powerful way to facilitate language learning (Fonseca-Mora & Gant, 2016) and helped speakers overcome insecurity and empower Indigenous people, as observed in Finland (Moriarty & Pietikäinen, 2011) and Latin America (Barrett, 2016; Cru, 2017; Farfán & Cru, 2020). Popular culture spaces are thus considered important domains of language activism (De Korne, 2021, pp. 165–187).

Although studies have suggested that Indigenous popular music has brought positive new energy to Indigenous language revitalization, the focus has mainly been on the Indigenous people. Less attention has been paid to how musicians employ Indigenous popular music to influence non-Indigenous people. In the context of language (re)vitalization of a minority language, an ecological approach suggests that language planning should not ignore the majority language community, as negative attitudes from the majority language community towards a minority language might inhibit minority language use. May (2000) observed that minority language policies often generate opposition from majority language speakers, and he referred to this opposition as ‘the problem of tolerability’. Studies on Māori (Chrisp, 2005; de Bres, 2009; Te Puni Kōkiri, 2018), Mexican American (Evans, 1996) and Tlingit (Dauenhauer & Dauenhauer, 1998) exemplified cases where the majority language speakers would often display a pejorative view against a minority language and oppose the minority language (re)vitalization initiatives. Planning for tolerability thus plays an integral part in language planning and deserves more attention (de Bres, 2008). The goal of sustaining linguistic diversity can be managed through prestige planning (Hornberger & Hult, 2008, p. 283), which promotes the image of a language, so a language is regarded to be desirable (Kaplan et al., 2003, pp. 222–225). Ager (2005) specified the two terms prestige and image: prestige reflects the attitudes people have toward the status of the language; and image reflects the perception of the complex identity of a language community, either by its speaker (internal image) or by others (external image). Although the goals of prestige/image planning are not as concrete as status, corpus and acquisition planning, it is nonetheless essential to the success of all types of language planning (Ager, 2005, p. 20).

Popular music is distributed to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous listeners. It is thus essential to examine how musicians situate their language activism in the language ecology. The issue of Indigenous musicians and non-Indigenous listeners is an intricate one. There is a large body of literature in cultural studies, often done in the context of consumerism, imperialism, and colonialism (Clifford, 1988; Drinnon, 1997; Said, 1993) which examines ethnic music as a cultural commodity. Many cases were negative where Indigenous culture has been commodified and constructed by the dominant culture to satisfy their fascination for the exotic Others – the most famous example being Hawaiian (Schroeder & Borgerson, 1999). When Indigenous music overly romanticizes minority culture, listeners can easily overlook the cultural and political struggles of the Indigenous people (e.g. see Roberson (2001) on Uchinaa (Okinawan) pop). However, as the production and distribution of music become more accessible in the digital age, there is a better chance for Indigenous people to regain their agency in music production (Stobart, 2011), and ethnic music commodification could have a positive impact on identity building and cultural revival for local musicians (Su, 2011).

In the past twenty years, Taiwanese Indigenous popular music has gradually flourished, with many Indigenous musicians experimenting with different genres in combining Indigenous languages with popular music. This study examines the language activism in Indigenous popular music in Taiwan. I discuss the role of popular music in Indigenous language revitalization in Taiwan – viewing the Indigenous musicians as micro-language planners and language activists, what actions do they conduct to revitalize their languages? Specifically, I aim to uncover how musicians promote language revitalization to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Taiwan. How do they situate their endangered languages in a broader context of the language ecosystem of Taiwan?

Indigenous languages in Taiwan

Formosans, the Indigenous people of Taiwan, comprise only 2% of the Taiwanese population. The roughly half-million Indigenous population consists of at least 16 distinct Austronesian (Formosan) linguistic/ethnic groups that the government has officially recognized as of 2014. However, during several decades of Mandarin-only policy (1945–1987) imposed by the Nationalist/Kuomintang (KMT) government, speaking local languages was punished at school (Sandel, 2003), and the Chinese-centered colonial curriculum forced Indigenous people to give up their traditional values to assimilate to the mainstream society (Pawan, 2009, pp. 27–28). The indigenous people were thus ambivalent towards their languages due to the lower socioeconomic value of the Indigenous languages and their struggling Indigenous identity (Tang, 2015). Lack of intergenerational transmission and emigration to the urban areas also contributed to the shift from the Indigenous languages to Mandarin (Zeitoun et al., 2003).

The efforts of reversing language shift started with the liberalization and democratization of Taiwan after Martial Law was lifted in 1987. The Mandarin-only policy was subsequently abolished, and local languages such as Southern-Min (~75%), Hakka (~10%) and Indigenous languages can be used in public domains again. Speaking a local language was no longer stigmatized but instead became a symbol of Taiwanese identity (Mo, 2000). As Taiwan gradually searched for its identity and self-determination in the 90s, Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples, as the embodiment of ‘nativism’ and ‘difference’, have become a symbol of Taiwanization (McIntyre, 2021).

Macro language planning to promote Indigenous languages has been carried out since the 90s. Regarding corpus and acquisition planning, the government started to sponsor the codification of Indigenous languages, issued standardized orthographic systems, and developed educational materials for Indigenous languages (Lin et al., 2019). Local language education started as an elective in primary schools in 1993 and was officially incorporated into the primary and junior high school curriculum in 2001. There are dozens of government-funded Indigenous language immersion kindergartens available. An Indigenous TV station was also established in 2005, which has helped promote these minority languages (Wu & Lau, 2019, p. 160). As for status planning, the ‘Indigenous Language Development Act’ promulgated in 2017 specified the details of promoting Indigenous language use and language maintenance. In 2018 the ‘Development of National Languages Act’ officially identified the Indigenous languages as national languages.

However, the implementation of macro language planning faces many challenges. The local language curriculum only has contact hours of less than one hour per week, and there was a lack of proper teaching resources due to a great degree of ethnolinguistic diversity (Chen, 2006; Dupré, 2014, 2019). Also, as the government simultaneously promotes internationalization, intending to become a Bilingual Nation by 2030, English education has been perceived with higher status and has received more resources, which inhibits the development of local language education (Ferrer & Lin, 2021; Hsu, 2021).

Currently, all the Formosan languages are considered in danger by UNESCO: eight were considered ‘vulnerable’, with the rest being either ‘endangered’ or ‘extinct’ (Moseley, 2010). The lack of Indigenous language use is generally associated with younger age, smaller ethnic groups, higher education levels, intermarriage and emigration to the urban area (Liu, 2017). The 2018 Indigenous Education report (Council of Indigenous Peoples, 2019) found that only 5.8% of the Indigenous seventh-graders considered themselves fluent in speaking. Moreover, the survey also found that while the youngsters hold a positive attitude towards their Indigenous languages and cultures, 81.2% reported that they seldom use their ethnic languages due to inconvenience or low proficiency. The main obstacles for youngsters not learning the language are social-economic issues, institutional racism in urban schools, and lack of economic utility (McNaught, 2021). The situation for the Indigenous language revitalization remains grim (Chao, 2014).

Music has been an indispensable part of the Indigenous cultures in Taiwan. People sing during religious rituals, celebrations, work and leisure time. Traditional Indigenous music was of interest to ethnomusicologists and has been documented for research since the Japanese colonial period. However, under martial law by the KMT government, Indigenous music was intentionally ignored (Lu, 2003). The Indigenous singers at that time sang in Mandarin to appeal to the mainstream market (Huang, 2011), with many even deliberately downplaying their ethnicity (Hsu, 2009, p. 36).

Coinciding with the Taiwanization in the 90s, the attitude towards Indigenous music reached a turning point when the melodies of an Amis drinking song were (controversially) incorporated into the theme song for the advertisement of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, U.S.A. The worldwide visibility has made the Amis singer who originally sang the melody, Difang (Kuo, Ying-nan 郭英男), the pride of Taiwan. Consequently, Taiwanese Indigenous music started to receive public recognition and saw growth in music production (Tan, 2008, p. 222). The same year, the Mandopop superstar A-Mei (Chang, Hui-mei 張惠妹) released her first Mandarin album. Although A-Mei sang in Mandarin, she was the first mainstream pop singer who was open about her Indigenous ethnicity and even incorporated Indigenous music elements in her debut single ‘Sister’ (姐妹). A-Mei’s success has encouraged the Taiwanese music industry to release more popular music albums featuring Indigenous singers, ranging from (1) mainstream pop songs sung in Mandarin produced by major labels; to (2) indie music that embraces the hybridity of languages, genres and cultures to express the singers’ identities; and (3) traditional folk songs sung in Indigenous languages that were marketed as World music (Hsu, 2009). Recently, as the music industry moved from CDs to digital media, Indigenous musicians have shifted to social media to perform music, as well as use the space to define their Indigenous identities across urban and rural communities and reach out to non-Indigenous audiences (Lin, 2021).

Framework and methods

To analyze the musicians’ micro language planning activities, I adopt De Korne’s (2021) framework in categorizing various strategies in engaging in language activism. Under this framework, De Korne conceptualizes language activism as a social project that advocates for linguistic equality and aims to describe how each strategy is contextualized in its specific language ecology. In her framework, language activism strategies are organized in their actions, goals, and characteristics (De Korne, 2021, pp. 17–22). In terms of actions, a strategy can be representing, connecting, and/or creating. These actions are targeted with the goals of resources, events, spaces/structure, people/identities, and communication practices. The characteristics of the strategies allow us to describe language activism that varies in terms of its location, timeframe, visibility/mobility, socio-historical orientation, diversity orientation, and participation. For example, De Korne (2021, pp. 184–187) identified several major language activism strategies used in popular culture initiatives by Isthmus Zapotec activists in Mexico. One of the key strategies is creating events (e.g. concerts) and spaces/structures (e.g. recurrent events, social media pages). The activists were also representing people/identity through their artistic creations, and representing communication practices by promoting norms of multilingual communications. In terms of their characteristics, their language activism strategies in popular culture exhibit a range of locations (e.g. drawing from both global and local identities) and socio-historical orientation (e.g. relating the past to the present). As popular culture, it was also highly visible and openly participated, with a rapid timeframe, particularly in their online communities.

In this study, I analyzed the language activism of two Taiwanese Indigenous singer-songwriters: Abao (Aljenljeng Tjaluvie; of Paiwan) and Suming (Suming Rupi; of Amis). They were chosen because as indie musicians, they were considered by the mainstream music critics two of the most influential musicians that brought Indigenous languages to the mainstream popular music in Taiwan. Suming’s all-Amis album in 2010 was the first Indigenous language album that attempted to crossover with electronic and hip-hop; Abao combined the Paiwan language with electronic, R&B, soul and different genres. Both singers have been recognized by the Taiwanese Grammy, Golden Melody Award (GMA) and made headlines: Suming was awarded for ‘song of the year’ in 2016, and it was the first time in 27 years that a song sung in an Indigenous language was awarded in that category; In 2020, Abao became an instant sensation after she brought home multiple major awards in cross-language categories for her Paiwan album ‘Kinakaian’ (Mother tongue).

This study collected the two musicians’ published interviews and occurrences in public media to analyze their public discourses on their language activism. The public discourse was chosen to capture their activism because it is accessible and presented to the public in Taiwan. The public discourse was collected through data scraping through Google keyword search of their names plus keywords such as 專訪 ‘interview’ or 族語 ‘Indigenous languages’. The search output was scraped until the content became irrelevant. In addition, the social media pages (e.g. Facebook) of the musicians and their affiliated organizations were also tracked during 2021 because it was also an important platform for the musicians to promote their activities to ensure the discourse collected was as comprehensive as possible. After the initial screening to remove irrelevant content, I identified 32 exclusive interviews of Suming and 45 of Abao. These interviews were published in magazines, alternative media, online news, or as Podcasts or YouTube videos between 2010–2021. Aside from the interviews, 120 entries of press releases of the events they participated in and the promotional materials of their creative outputs were identified as they include passages of their (language) ideologies and descriptions of their initiatives. The data were collected, numbered, and transcribed if needed. The table below summarizes the different types of data sources used in this study:

Table

Sources	Content
Alternative Media, Magazines	Published interviews of the singers
Podcasts, YouTube	Streamed audio/video interviews featuring the singers
Online News	Published news articles on events or news related to the singers
Music albums	Promotional materials on their released albums

After the data collection, the data analysis aimed to identify patterns that emerged from the dataset. Following the six phases of thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), I first familiarized myself with the data, then generated initial codes and searched for the themes. The musicians’ language ideologies and their activities/initiatives were coded, and the codes were clustered into potential themes. The themes were reviewed, refined, and then further renamed until each theme was clearly defined to proceed to produce the report. I identified four main themes that describe (1) their motivation to sing in Indigenous languages, (2) their planning effort for Indigenous Taiwanese, (3) their planning efforts for non-Indigenous Taiwanese, and (4) their effort in creating a better social environment for the Indigenous people. In the following section, I will first present the four themes that emerged from the dataset and then analyse how these themes fit in the conceptual framework of language activism.

Theme 1: Motivations to sing in the Indigenous languages

Both Suming and Abao experienced the Mandarin-only policy in their childhood in the 80s. Suming grew up in a rural Amis community with Amis as his home language. However, as Amis was banned in school, he started to speak Mandarin at home, and his family also started to speak Mandarin to him. Suming began to recognize the importance of Indigenous languages when he moved to the Southern part of Taiwan for military service in his 20s and was bullied for not speaking Southern Min. He recalled how his awareness was developed through contact with Southern Min speakers (Excerpt 1).

Excerpt 1

當時就會想他們為什麼這麼順理成章說台語？部落的人為什麼要偷偷摸摸說族語？

[I started to wonder how come they can speak Southern Min like it’s supposed to be. Meanwhile, in the villages, we tried to hide ourselves speaking Indigenous languages.] (Interview of Suming, No. 21, from Fountain 2018/12/19).

His experience reflects that Indigenous languages were not only oppressed as non-standard languages but also discriminated against by the majority Han Chinese. Unlike Suming, Abao grew up away from the Indigenous community as her parents relocated to a city for job opportunities. Her parents did not speak Paiwan to her because they worried she might be discriminated. Therefore, although she could understand spoken Paiwan, she did not speak well, which caused her great anxiety. Abao’s experience reflects a common challenge in language maintenance for urban Indigenous people, which consists of almost half of the Indigenous population. The socioeconomic pressure heavily influenced their parents’ family language policy.

Their experience enabled them to understand the difficulty of revitalizing the language on the ground. Abao experienced and observed a lack of Indigenous language use that results in language loss. She acknowledged the difficult situation and believed that pressure to revitalize languages should not be put on the Indigenous people, as shown in Excerpt 2.

Excerpt 2

當這個東西它使用率不高的時候，被淘汰是非常自然的，沒有對或錯。

[When something doesn’t get used, it’s natural that it will be eliminated. There is nothing right or wrong about it.] (Interview or Abao, No. 66, from Commonwealth Magazine Video, 2020/5/7).

She understood why Indigenous parents would shift to Mandarin (or even English). However, having been in the same situation, Abao believed that Indigenous youth wish to connect to their culture but struggle to find a way. The responsibility of passing down the cultural legacy can also be daunting for youth. She thought Indigenous youth needed to find their motivation to learn the Indigenous language, and music could be a ‘relaxing’ way to approach it.

Both Abao and Suming tried to reconnect to their language and culture by chatting with the elderlies in the communities and learning traditional songs from them whenever they had a chance. They also viewed writing songs in their mother tongue as a way to learn it – they received linguistic help from their parents when they wrote the lyrics. Abao referred to her albums as her ‘Paiwan language workbook’ in many interviews. They were also open about the fact that combining Indigenous language with popular music was a conscious choice to attract Indigenous youngsters. In Suming’s first Amis album, he incorporated electronic dance music (EDM) in several songs, even though it was not his style. He combined EDM with Amis because he saw how K-pop had motivated the teenagers in his community to study Korean. The Amis EDM turned out to be a great success and became extremely popular among the teenagers in Amis communities, and the songs were performed in their harvest festivals. Abao also had the same sentiment on how dance music can attract young people. She saw the kindergarten kids in the community quickly pick up English lyrics before they could speak their ethnic language. She wondered whether they would have a different perspective on their ethnic language if these songs were in an Indigenous language – which motivated her to create popular music with Paiwan lyrics. Her work was also well-received in the Indigenous communities, even by the education system: her song ‘1–10’ which incorporates Paiwan numbers was promoted by the Ministry of Education and used by teachers in classrooms. Since then, she has had school requests asking her to write more songs. In summary, both musicians experienced and understood the struggles of Indigenous language maintenance and found music to be a good way to reconnect to their culture. Therefore, they intentionally used popular music to make the Indigenous language more accessible in young Indigenous people’s daily life.

Theme 2: Prestige planning for indigenous Taiwanese

Aside from bringing Indigenous languages into the life of Indigenous youth, Indigenous popular music also helps develop their confidence. As a minority, Indigenous Taiwanese have been discriminated against by settlers for a long time. Abao pointed out that, as a result, the older generation was deeply insecure, so they tended to hide their identity. Having been accepted by mainstream society, Abao and Suming both acknowledged the importance for Indigenous youth to find their confidence in Indigenous culture and languages through music, as illustrated in Excerpts 3 and 4.

Excerpt 3

讓他們知道自己的可能性，不然他們會一直以為原民文化就是次等的。

[(I) need to show (young people) their possibilities. Otherwise, they will keep thinking that Indigenous people are inferior.] (Interview of Abao, No. 50, from The Reporter 2021/1/7).

Excerpt 4

如果現在的部落青年，以說母語為榮、以唱母語歌為傲，部落的發展就值得期待。

[If the young people in the Indigenous communities now are proud of speaking and singing in their Indigenous languages, the future of the communities would be promising.] (Interview of Suming, No. 22, from Fountain 2017/11/7)

Furthermore, they both have initiatives that encourage the Indigenous community to sing and create music. Since 2008, Suming has been organizing an educational initiative in his community, ‘Atolan (Dulan 都蘭). He taught the children traditional skills, artistry and music. He then organized concerts in ‘Atolan that featured him and the youngsters, and the revenue generated was used to fund future educational activities. The concept was later extended into creating the Amis Music Festival that involved the whole ‘Atolan community. Suming did this to encourage the young people to stay in the community, as he explained in Excerpt 5.

Excerpt 5

部落很需要年輕人的。像我一樣很早就外出的年輕人，通常不會想再回去，外出的年輕人心裏卻沒有歸屬感……我想讓這些孩子覺得都蘭部落很棒，我們原住民真的很棒，所以我想着或許可以利用自己身上的一點點光環，讓部落的孩子好奇我在做什麼，未來可以是什麼樣子。

[The Indigenous community really needs young people. Many people who left when they were young, like me, didn’t want to come back, but they also didn’t have a sense of belonging anywhere … I want to make these kids feel that our ‘Atolan community is great. Being Indigenous is great. So, I thought I could use the small popularity that I have and make kids curious about what I do and see what the future can look like.] (Interview of Suming, No. 30, from Initium Media 2015/12/10)

Similarly, whenever Abao had performance opportunities, she tried to bring youngsters in her community to perform with her to experience the performance stage. These opportunities motivated the youngsters to practice Indigenous music and showed them future possibilities. Abao and Suming viewed these performances as a way for youngsters to develop confidence in their languages.

Aside from the community-based projects, Abao initiated a non-profit project called ‘Nanguac’ that goes to communities, records Indigenous music and publishes them online. The project of documenting traditional music later turned into a music producing company – Nanguac released an album in 2021 featuring a group of talented amateur Indigenous singer-songwriters. Abao also regularly holds songwriting workshops to teach young Indigenous musicians music production techniques, so there can be more Indigenous musicians in the industry. She encouraged the Indigenous musicians to write in their ethnic language regardless of their proficiency level – she has demonstrated that this is an excellent way to learn and use the language. Moreover, Abao believed that if more musicians worked on Indigenous pop, it could become a well-recognized genre in Taiwan. Although Indigenous languages are recognized as national languages, the reality is that they are rarely heard in Taiwan. Abao’s ambition is to have Indigenous languages in the music playlist of everyone in Taiwan, so they exist in everyone’s life. In the past, when Indigenous culture and language were showcased in mainstream media, it was usually presented with the majority speaker’s perspectives or stereotypes. Excerpt 6 is a comment from Abao which emphasizes the importance of agency for Indigenous people to present the languages in their narratives.

Excerpt 6

他就不需要去唱國語，不需要去做一些彆扭的事，上一些彆扭的通告，他可以講自己的故事。

[One won’t have to sing in Mandarin, do awkward things or go to awkward variety shows. One can tell their own stories.] (Interview of Abao, No. 76, from GQ Taiwan, 2020/12/3).

To sum up, Abao and Suming’s language activism extended from individual-level music performance to the community level. In terms of acquisition planning, their goal was to encourage other Indigenous people to write and sing in their languages. Moreover, singing and performing in their Indigenous language also helps develop the prestige of the Indigenous language.

Theme 3: Image planning for non-Indigenous audience

Suming and Abao believed their music was a good way for non-Indigenous people to get to know their culture and language. By presenting the Indigenous languages with popular music genres, they hoped to create new images for the languages. Three sub-themes emerged from their discourse.

Like a foreign language

Suming and Abao wanted to create a ‘western’ image for their languages. Suming told listeners not to worry about being unable to understand Amis with a playful message (Excerpt 7).

Excerpt 7

當作在聽法國專輯嘛，反正都聽不懂，重點是好聽嘛。

[Pretend that you’re listening to a French album; you don’t understand that either. The point is that it sounds nice.] (Promotional material of Suming’s first Amis album)

Excerpt 8

原民音樂不一定只能走世界音樂、文化遺產這種路線，也可以編曲混音得很大器、很流行、很攻佔夜店及排行榜。

[Indigenous music doesn’t have to be (represented as) world music or cultural heritage. With arrangement and remix, it can be very hip and trendy, taking over nightclubs and billboards.] (Interview of Abao, No. 63, from Marie Claire Taiwan, 2020/9/4).

In an interview, Abao also compared Indigenous languages to English and French as she hoped they could be learned by majority speakers like a foreign language so that the languages could be used more. Abao also made a point to emphasize that combining the western music genres with Paiwan was an artistic choice: her intended music concept is to showcase ‘rhythm’, and the polysyllabic Paiwan is more compatible compared to Mandarin. Abao and Suming asked their listeners to treat the unfamiliar Indigenous languages as international languages with modern and elegant connotations, such as French. As Excerpt 8 further demonstrates, they intended to create a hip and posh foreign image for Formosan languages.

Contemporary image

While Suming and Abao had great respect for musicians who work on preserving traditional songs, they both felt strongly that their music should present their current lifestyle. For Abao’s albums, her songs were about aspects of contemporary Indigenous day-to-day life that she observed, such as chatting with family, community grocery stores, different Paiwan food and cross-culture relationships. She would incorporate traditional elements or concepts in her music, but she wanted people to leisurely listen to music and get to know their contemporary life.

Suming also emphasized the importance of bringing Indigenous culture to the present. Often non-Indigenous people still think Indigenous people live a traditional lifestyle in which they fish and hunt every day. Many do not realize that Indigenous people are simply like everyone else who goes online and play video games.

Excerpt 9

母語的傳唱通常都是用民謠，要不然就是傳統歌謠，我只是想要讓母語的東西年輕化，我一直告訴自己部落的弟弟妹妹，我們雖然是原住民，但我們不是原始人，我們是活在當下。我怕大家會有很多既有的刻板印象，我們要活出我們活在當下的樣子。

[Indigenous languages are usually transmitted through folk songs or traditional songs. What I want to do is to make Indigenous languages younger. I’ve always told the youth in my community: We are Indigenous people, not primitive people. We live in the present moment. I’m worried that people would have many stereotypes about us, so we must show that we live in the present.] (Interview of Suming, quoted by Chiu (2011))

Excerpt 10

文化一定要能活在當下，否則只會走入博物館，難逃凋零的命運。

[Culture needs to live in the present moment. Otherwise, it will just enter the museum and die] (Interview of Suming, no. 22, from Fountain, 2017/12/7).

As Excerpts 9 and 10 illustrated, Suming was concerned that culture and language would only be embraced in traditional activities. He advocated using modern technology to record, interpret and revitalize traditional culture because he believed that culture and language need to be embraced in everyday life to survive.

We are not helpless

Both musicians hoped their music could present a brighter image of Indigenous people. Suming tried to present himself and the Indigenous life in his music without much sorrow, even though he was frustrated with social inequality (Excerpt 11). He believed a positive image could attract more people to listen to Indigenous music. Abao also said their generation no longer wants to present themselves with pathos. They tried to break out of the stereotype that Indigenous Taiwanese are oppressed. They wanted to show that the new generation is confident in themselves. Abao also did not want people to listen to her music because she was Indigenous (Excerpt 12).

Excerpt 11

以前的歌怎麼寫都好多惆悵喔，原住民的音樂好像都很無奈，沒有別的路，但我明明很常回家啊。

[The (Indigenous) songs before were always melancholy. It seems that Indigenous music is all about being helpless and having no way to go, but actually, I go home quite often.] (Interview of Suming, No. 32, from Taiwan Panorama, March 2014).

Excerpt 12

我個人不大喜歡有人聽我的音樂是因為這個文化包袱，對我來講那跟補助和加分是一樣的。

[personally, I don’t like it when people listen to my music because of the cultural responsibilities. For me, it’s like extra credits or a subsidy.] (Interview of Abao, No. 77, from Podcast Ganguan yitiaotong Ep. 37, 2020/10/2)

In a post-award interview, Abao also emphasized that she was awarded the album of the year because her music was good, not because she sang in an Indigenous language. She does not want the majority speakers to listen to Indigenous music because they feel bad for their history of oppression. The government has been criticized for giving Indigenous students extra credits for college entrance exams if they pass the Indigenous language proficiency test. Although this policy was meant to encourage Indigenous students to learn their ethnic languages, the link between language use and affirmative action strengthened the helpless image of the Indigenous languages and people. Abao and Suming intended to alter the vulnerable image and present Indigenous languages with a confident image.

Theme 4: Creating a better social environment for the Indigenous Taiwanese

The last theme from the data is that both Suming and Abao believed that language vitality could not be separated from cultural and ethnic issues. An important aspect of the planning through their music is to develop mutual understanding between different ethnicities in Taiwan, so that there will be a healthy environment for Indigenous cultures, languages and identities to flourish. Excerpt 13 by Abao can illustrate their hope.

Excerpt 13

藉由這張專輯，希望你們可以多多了解少數人的生活，不只是原住民，還有很多少數。希望在這個作品裡面，可以讓你們窺探他們的生活，不用到強迫自己熱愛，起碼可以去接觸。從聆聽的過程當中，在音樂裡面我們可以對話，希望我們能夠多一點理解，少一點誤解。

[I hope you can understand the life of minority people through this album … I hope the work can give you a glance at their life. You don’t need to force yourself to love it, but at least try to get to know it. By listening to music, we can have a dialogue. I hope to foster more understanding and less misconception.] (Abao’s acceptance speech for 2020 GMA ‘Album of the year’)

Abao understood that the goal for the majority to understand Indigenous people cannot be easily achieved, but it needs to start somewhere. Around the same time as the GMA award, an Indigenous teen show host attended the TV award ceremony wearing the traditional Tao attire of a loincloth and a collarless vest. The media later made fun of his buttocks which reflected the disrespect from the majority Han Chinese. Abao believes that a lot of discrimination was not necessarily hostile but rather stemmed from ignorance. She further explained her view as illustrated in Excerpt 14.

Excerpt 14

其實我做母語音樂，有部分也是因為這個。我想要讓大家有一個可以討論的地方、有一個詢問的人。「說這句話原住民的感覺怎麼樣？會不會冒犯到什麼的？」因為你還是希望別人去談論你的文化，我覺得有談論才有了解，如果連談都不談，就會被邊緣，除非你很喜歡被邊緣。

[One of the reasons why I work on Indigenous music is to create a space to communicate. For example, (you can ask,) ‘What would Indigenous people feel if someone said this? Is that offensive?’ You need people to talk about your culture. I think that understanding comes with discussion. Without discussion, one will be marginalized – you don’t want to be marginalized] (Interview of Abao, No. 76, from GQ Taiwan, 2020/12/3)

Suming also viewed his music as a means to communicate with non-Indigenous people. He hoped his music could make them understand the social issues that Indigenous people face. Suming’s community had been fighting against developers and the local government who planned to develop a resort through Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) on their traditional territory. Several of Suming’s songs were inspired by this issue to raise listeners’ awareness. That was also one of the reasons that he held the Amis Music Festival. He wanted to bring non-Indigenous people to his community and familiarize them with Indigenous culture and land. He hoped that they would further care about Indigenous people’s social situation as they had an emotional connection to the community through the experience. This can be illustrated by a slogan that quotes Suming’s words (Excerpt 15).

Excerpt 15

有認識，才會有喜歡。有喜歡，才會有認同。

[You need to know it to like it; you need to like it to identify with it.] (Slogan used by ‘Atolan Style)

Excerpt 16

文化是整個生活，每一件事情是被扣在一起的，不可能土地賣掉了語言還留著。

[Culture encompasses all aspects of life. All aspects are related to each other. It’s impossible for our language to survive if our land is taken [emphasis added].] (Interview of Suming, No. 31, from The Reporter 2015/12/)

Since 2020, the Amis Music Festival has developed into a community-based social enterprise (‘Atolan Style; 都蘭國) that regularly organizes concerts, farmer’s markets, exhibitions, seminars, workshops, and guided tours. The headquarters of ‘Atolan Style is also used as a study space for local children to have Amis lessons. As Suming said in an interview, land, culture, and language are all interrelated (Excerpt 16). The community work in ‘Atolan exemplified their efforts to preserve the culture, the land and the language as a whole with community empowerment. As in the case of the ‘Atolan community, on the one hand, the government wanted the Amis people to revitalize their language; on the other hand, they tried to exploit their traditional territory. However, as voiced by Suming, one cannot only revitalize language without considering other aspects of the cultures.

The musicians’ strategies in language activism

The findings above depicted Abao and Suming’s language activism and their positionality. Based on De Korne’s framework, their initiatives in language activism can be analyzed as follows. Firstly, the result shows that the musicians exhibit various actions in creating communication practices and resources. Not only did they create communication practices by writing new songs in their Indigenous languages, but the songs they made were also used in the schools or communities as a resource in education and community domains. Their concerts, music workshops and performances can be considered events they created. Furthermore, they both created spaces/structures to continue the language activism – Suming created yearly festivals in his community and further developed the musical event into a community organization ‘Atolan Style; Abao established the project ‘Nanguac’, which aimed to encourage more Indigenous people to create music in Indigenous languages. The strategies of creating communication practices, events, and spaces/structures through writing songs and holding concerts and annual festivals were parallel with the analysis of the Isthmus Zapotec popular culture activism (De Korne, 2021, pp. 184–187). It is unsurprising that musicians employ these strategic creations due to their performative nature.

Both musicians also demonstrated the action of representing Indigenous people/identities as shown in Theme 3: Image planning. Representing was also an important action in De Korne’s analysis of Isthmus Zapotec's popular culture. While Taiwan embraces multiculturalism and has become more inclusive, stereotypes of Indigenous people still exist. Many non-Indigenous Taiwanese either romanticized Indigenous people as those who are primitive and close to nature, or pitied them for being underprivileged. The images of Indigenous languages, often presented through music, are therefore reduced to exotic performances that showcase the ‘primitive culture’, ‘spirituality’ and ‘nature’, or melancholic struggles and displacement. These external images do not encourage young Indigenous people to learn and use their languages. The results demonstrated that drawing from local/global and past/present references, Abao and Suming aimed to represent Indigenous language with the images of ‘foreign’, ‘contemporary’ and ‘confident’. This can also be viewed as a way to manage the problem of tolerability. Their concept of using Indigenous popular music to capture the modern life of the Indigenous people is also an attempt to normalize the Indigenous languages and avoid the Indigenous languages being marginalized into traditional ceremonies or presentational performances.

What was unique regarding the activism of the two musicians is how they conducted a wide range of actions of connecting existing people, things, and spaces in the framework of strategies. For example, bringing youngsters from their communities to perform connects events to people; Abao’s effort in encouraging Indigenous people to create Indigenous music (and further learn the language) connects communication practices to people; combining EDM with Indigenous language to appeal to young Indigenous connects people to communicative practices. These connections were sometimes local (community-based). However, it could also be national (all Indigenous Taiwanese, as the Nanguac project demonstrated), so it can create a sense of community for all the Indigenous Taiwanese to overcome the diversity of ethnicity and urban/rural divide.

Furthermore, their aims to normalize Indigenous languages in Taiwan also connects the non-Indigenous audience to communication practices. The content of the music that attempted to spark cross-ethnic discussion connects the non-Indigenous people to Indigenous people/culture. Suming’s initiative in regenerating the ‘Atolan community through festivals and raising the awareness of land justice also connects the non-Indigenous people to the Indigenous space – the local economy the festivals created further connects financial resources to the Indigenous people and space. These strategies that connected non-Indigenous people to Indigenous society aimed to create a better language environment for the Indigenous languages.

Discussion and conclusion

The macro language planning policies on revitalizing the Indigenous languages in Taiwan failed to consider other languages and the sociocultural environment for the Indigenous languages. As a result, Indigenous Taiwanese are still reluctant to shift their language use. The present study analyzes the language activism of two Indigenous Taiwanese musicians and demonstrates their activism strategies in attempts to revitalize the Indigenous languages in Taiwan. Their actions of strategic creating and representing align mainly with the other Indigenous musician in the world. These creations allow the urban Indigenous people to have opportunities to use the Indigenous languages while they are away from the Indigenous communities; it also provides new energy and projects a possible outlook for Indigenous languages for the rural Indigenous people. In addition, their music and activities also represent the Indigenous people/identity and further empower Indigenous people and motivate them to speak/learn their languages. This is similar to what has been observed in the literature (Farfán & Cru, 2020; Moriarty & Pietikäinen, 2011). However, it is worth noting that the music genres they adopted differ from what was reported previously. Instead of choosing hip hop (including rap) for their music performances, which was also observed as a sign of ‘resistance’ for Indigenous people worldwide (Mitchell, 2000), they mainly employed EDM, R&B, pop and other genres. It is possible that the hip hop genre has already been signified with Southern Min because rap has been linked to expressing localness by Southern Min as its style shares many similarities with traditional Southern Min liām-kua唸歌 (songs with narration) (Schweig, 2014). As a result, Indigenous pop aims to find another way to highlight their identity. This interesting difference also illustrates the importance of viewing the Indigenous revitalization efforts in the context of language ecology.

Another unique aspect of the language activism illustrated in this study was the wide range of strategic connecting that the musicians employed. The connection between resources, events, space/structures, people/identities, and/or communication practices were generally found in the domains of education (De Korne, 2021, pp. 196–198). However, this study shows that these musicians spent a lot of energy in the action of connecting to foster a healthy and positive environment for Indigenous people to use their languages and find balance in the multicultural and multilingual society. Moreover, the connections create a positive cycle of bringing financial resources to the Indigenous people and places. Creating economic values for minority languages is an important but often ignored aspect of language revitalization (Olko, 2021). Both musicians understand the financial pressure that Indigenous people are facing and aim to develop paths to incentivize language revitalization. Abao’s aim to establish Indigenous pop as a genre is one possible path. The commodification of Indigenous music is a way to bring economic value and can be a positive means for communication when Indigenous musicians have the agency; the Amis music festivals and the later developed NPO ‘Atolan style’ were another path to revitalize language and culture and contribute to community development through cultural tourism. The strategic connections they made aimed to create a self-sufficient system for cultural activism. This is parallel to several grass-root cases of converting cultural heritage (e.g. weaving, edible heritage, Indigenous knowledge and so on) into economic capital through ecotourism observed in some Indigenous communities in Taiwan – these local industries also provide sustainable ways for self-empowerment, cultural identity, and restoring the cultural heritage (Yeh et al., 2021). Although the Indigenous languages might not be used extensively through cultural tourism, the economic profit could still help support language revitalization in communities (Kelly-Holmes & Pietikäinen, 2014). For example, cultural industry and tourism were identified as industries within the Te Reo Māori language economy (Roskruge et al., 2017).

Furthermore, this study shows that their language activism has extended the connection to non-Indigenous Taiwanese. Through their music, they strategically connected non-Indigenous people to Indigenous people/identity, events, and space/structures. Abao and Suming took soft approaches to change the perceptions of the non-Indigenous Taiwanese. Instead of showing ‘resistance’ and ‘fighting back’, they emphasized the planning of tolerability on the majority-languages speakers. Indigenous language activists are known to conceptualize language as a form of identity, spirituality, and connection to land and people, and language revitalization needs to be extended to social transformation (Meek, 2010). This study is another piece of evidence that Indigenous people believed that language revitalization could not be dealt with by focusing on language alone. By using music as a platform, the connections of non-Indigenous people aimed to deepen the cross-cultural understanding and create a friendlier environment for Indigenous development. The data suggest that the planning for majority speakers should be considered a vital aspect of language activism. Both musicians showed that the (re)vitalization of the Indigenous languages would not be successful if the society remained ignorant and hostile towards the Indigenous peoples. This study provided an example of how language activists took language ecology into the consideration and strategically connected the majority language speakers to foster a better environment for language revitalization.

It is worth noting that the Council of Indigenous Peoples has been providing Arts grants that sponsor Indigenous creative works, including music production, to promote Indigenous cultural industries since 2011. For example, both Abao and Suming’s albums had been subsidized by the grants. This governmental initiative can therefore be considered macro language planning – although it was initially only intended to be a culture policy. As the findings demonstrate, cultural planning could positively influence language planning (and land planning in ‘Atolan’s case) for Indigenous peoples. This suggests that planning in all these areas needs to take a more holistic approach to complement each other. Similarly, language planning and policy research would also benefit from interdisciplinary work in cultural studies, geography and Indigenous studies.

In conclusion, this study shows that the language activism done by these two Taiwanese singer-songwriters has gone beyond the typical strategies in creating communication practices and representing Indigenous people/identities. Their language activism illustrates how the micro language planners adopt some aspects of macro language planning (e.g. the cultural policy on music production) and reuse them to mitigate the shortfall of other aspects of macro language planning (e.g. Indigenous language education and hostile language environment) through strategically connecting both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to their initiatives. Their language activism also demonstrates the importance of language ecology and the planning of tolerability and provides possible future directions in Indigenous language revitalization.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Karen Huang

Karen Huang holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Chinese at the University of Auckland. Her research interests include language and identity, language ideology, and language planning.