Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Jury’s Comments for the Annual Shortlist Award

This is a musical narrative about mourning and remembering losses. Contrary to the traditional form of indigenous music performance, the stage was decorated as a memorial service, as if the memory of the ethnic community could only be related through such a ceremony.

Disappearance and absence were continuously represented in the work, forcefully reminded by the traces on the wall. The empty chairs (absent people, absent youths), the silenced conversation (images without sounds), and the spoken and supposedly reconstructed memories all hinted at the indigenous peoples’ right of discourse. The performance commenced with a broadcast on the radio broadcast, a state apparatus that did not have a physical existence, yet was omnipresent, forming a strong contrast to the indigenous voices that had a physical existence but were unheard and uncomprehended. Hence, the work posed a tactful, yet serious accusation. In addition, this work preserved and passed on the song of Falangaw. The heartfelt and moving song and dance in the finale demonstrated the tenacious life of the indigenous people.

Comments on the Finalists

This work was a musical narrative about mourning and remembering losses. Contrary to the traditional form of indigenous music performance, the stage was decorated as a memorial service, as if the memory of the ethnic community could only be related through such a ceremony. However, the real setting was empty chairs (youths were absent from home), silenced words (images without sounds), and memories that were reconstructed yet filled with changes, revisions and a drifting past. Comparing to the sound of “the national voice,” which was loud and clear, the unheard, fragmented voices in the tribal language hinted at the deprivation of the indigenous people’s right to discourse. In addition to the performance of the divine singing from Falangaw, “the absent voices” were turned into a momentum to expose oppression. With a poignant metaphor formed by the coordination of voice, body, and space, Mailulay stated a tactful yet severe political criticism. (Commentator: CHI Hui-Ling)

Artwork Introduction

The Chu-Yin Culture and Arts Troupe has been established for eighteen years. It has been promoting the local art and cultural movements basing on the intention to preserve and maintain the Amis traditional culture. By singing the epic songs of the Taitung Malan Amis traditional culture, Chu-Yin elders present the authentic folk music while the women and young people dance along to pray to the ancestors’ spirits.

“Mailulay: Traces on the Wall” was the first work that Chu-Yin cooperated with the cutting-edge director, Chen, Yan-Bin. The play intends to elaborate each tribal person’s life experience by presenting Malan polyphonic music. The old folk songs engage each performer’s life stories on the stage. 

About the Artist

To sing the traditional tribal stories of the Eastern Taiwan, to recall the Amis’ joyful dancing world.

The Chu-Yin Culture and Arts Troupe is named after “chu” (the traditional Amis farming tool, “a pestle”), which symbols the source of power and the life spring of the indigenous people, in hope of not forgetting about their roots. Chu-Yin represents how the aboriginal people desire to express outwards from their inner souls. Altogether, tribes aim to mutually understand and appreciate each other through the cultural transmission by dancing and singing, to anticipate the traditional singing and dancing culture, and to inherit and pass down the tradition via the most original and purest performances.

The Chu-Yin Culture and Arts Troupe has been established for eighteen years. It has been promoting the local art and cultural movements basing on the intention to preserve and maintain the Amis traditional culture. By singing the epics of the Taitung Malan villages, Chu-Yin elders present the authentic folk songs while the women and young people dance along to pray to the ancestors’ spirits.