Written by Min-Erh Wang
Image credit: Contemporary Taiwanese music explores a plural and evolving cultural identity through the interplay of Western classical, local Han genres, and Indigenous musical traditions. (Generated by AI)
Over the past few decades, a discernible shift has taken root within Taiwan’s musical landscape: contemporary Taiwanese composers have increasingly sought to integrate indigenous melodies, regional folk traditions, and local historical narratives into their creative works. Whether reflecting on pivotal domestic social events or reinterpreting Taiwanese literature, these sonic creations deliberately foreground a distinct sense of place. When composers and musicians from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong gathered in Taipei to inaugurate the East Asia Music Circle forum, discussions centred directly on defining “Taiwanese colours in music” (台灣色彩) and mapping how regional orchestras cultivate localised creative trajectories.
Yet, this development raises a fundamental musicological question: how should scholars conceptualise and theorise these developments? Is it possible, or even desirable, to narrate a coherent “Taiwan School of Music” (台灣樂派)? Proposing such an idea inevitably touches upon one of the most fraught territories in contemporary humanities: the intersection of music and nationalism. Unpacking this proposal reveals not only an aesthetic endeavour, but also an urgent engagement with historical memory, state identity, and postcolonial agency.
The Geopolitical Shadows of Taiwanese Musical Historiography
Enquiries into a “Taiwan School of Music” often encounter immediate scepticism, with questions revolving around how one can rigorously define “Taiwanese music,” whether the project risks stoking narrow musical chauvinism, and why this conversation has surfaced so late in global musicological discourse. While musical nationalism was thoroughly explored in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, its application to Taiwan remains a contentious and relatively unexamined frontier.
The historical reticence to discuss musical nationalism in Taiwan stems directly from the island’s post-Second World War political reality. Following the relocation of the Nationalist (KMT) government to Taiwan in 1949, society was enveloped in the institutional mantle of the “Republic of China”. For decades, state-sponsored cultural policy promoted Taiwan strictly as the rightful custodian of orthodox Chinese civilisation, systematically suppressing the articulation of an autonomous Taiwanese cultural consciousness.
This ideological hegemony began to fracture in the 1990s following democratisation and the termination of the Cold War. As localisation (bentuhua) gathered momentum into the twenty-first century, scholarly vocabulary adapted, bringing notions of “Taiwanese consciousness” and “Taiwaneseness” into mainstream academic debate. Over the past decade, catalysed by transformative civic movements such as the Sunflower Movement, these enquiries have acquired vibrant cultural urgency. Nevertheless, because the heritage of the greater Chinese cultural sphere remains entrenched in Taiwan’s institutional and educational infrastructure, evaluating how a distinct Taiwanese musical school can exist alongside, or critically reinterpret, this legacy remains essential.
Navigating Bohlman’s Critique: Redefining Musical Nationalism
Engaging with nationalism in music requires addressing significant intellectual wariness. Ethnomusicologist Philip Bohlman’s critical scholarship provides three pivotal caveats regarding why musical nationalism has historically been met with academic scepticism:
- The erosion of artistic autonomy: Modernist cultural historiography often treats music as an autonomous domain, viewing its conscription into state-building projects as an aesthetic compromise.
- Aesthetic levelling and trivialisation: When compelled to represent an entire nation, diverse regional and individual expressions undergo aesthetic standardisation to fit the broadest, most populist common denominator.
- The mobilisation of exclusion: At its most toxic, state-serving musical nationalism fosters chauvinism and prejudice, erasing the nuanced voices of internal minorities, marginalised communities, and cultural outsiders.
These critiques should not deter scholars from investigating the Taiwan School of Music; rather, they provide the methodological guidelines necessary to construct an emancipatory discourse.
First, musical nationalism must transcend the historicist confines of nineteenth-century European art music and pure folk preservation. As Bohlman observed through phenomena like the Eurovision Song Contest, national identity continues to negotiate popular culture, hybrid genres, and improvisational forms. A “Taiwan School of Music” cannot remain confined to the orchestral concert hall; it must actively encompass popular song, traditional opera, Indigenous chant, and experimental improvisation.
Second, the discourse must reject the myth of uncontaminated “authenticity”. Given centuries of migration, colonial subjugation under Japanese rule, and the post-war influx of mainland traditions, Taiwanese musical practices are inherently syncretic. The objective of a Taiwan School is not to fabricate an illusory, sanitised musical purity, but rather to document and honour the messy historical interactions that constitute Taiwan’s living heritage.
Finally, a reflexive Taiwan School must deliberately reject cultural chauvinism. Rather than elevating a singular dominant Han genre into a privileged state emblem while marginalising others, the framework must prioritise pluralism, ensuring that Taiwan’s multicultural acoustic expressions coexist on an equitable footing.
The Hegemonic Mirror: The “Chinese National School”
To appreciate the theoretical necessity of the Taiwan School of Music, one must examine the contrasting model across the Taiwan Strait. Over the past decade, official Chinese musicological circles have mounted a vigorous campaign to establish the “Chinese National School of Music” (中國樂派). Backed directly by state apparatuses and intertwined with official rhetoric advocating the “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation,” this initiative explicitly seeks to narrate China’s stories through state-sanctioned music.
This state-engineered enterprise found concrete expression in the multi-volume compendium Chinese Music Classics (中國音樂大典), spanning dozens of historical and audio-visual volumes. In his institutional prefaces, Wang Liguan, Dean of the China Conservatory of Music, openly linked the discipline to patriotic revival, declaring that national rejuvenation mandates cultural self-confidence. The canonised repertoires, featuring revolutionary classics like The East Is Red and the Yellow River Cantata, reinforce an unambiguous ideological agenda designed to legitimate the political authority of the Chinese Communist Party under an all-encompassing Greater China worldview.
The profound contrast between these two trajectories clarifies the purpose of the Taiwanese project. Where the Chinese National School operates as a top-down, state-directed instrument demanding patriotic conformity, the Taiwan School of Music must embody a bottom-up, community-driven process. True cultural nationalism is founded on organic self-identity and democratic deliberation, whereas state-directed patriotism imposes the orthodoxies of a political elite. The Taiwan School does not seek to manufacture an artificial national confidence; it serves as a platform for open-ended consensus-building.
Institutional Pushback and Strategic Essentialism
Advancing this paradigm within Taiwan has nevertheless provoked pointed controversy. When the Taipei Chinese Orchestra presented a conceptual framework of a Taiwan School of Music at a symposium, highlighting how the ensemble shifted from its late-twentieth-century pan-Chinese aesthetic toward commissioning works infused with Taiwanese characteristics, it drew sharp rebukes from established music scholars in Taiwan. Critics dismissed the notion of a Taiwan School as superficial, argued that musical nationalism is theoretically obsolete, and voiced suspicion regarding underlying political motives.
These criticisms warrant a firm, threefold response:
- In an international environment where Taiwan’s sovereign statehood remains systemically contested, enquiring into the sonic dimensions of Taiwanese self-identity is an entirely legitimate intellectual inquiry.
- If scholars scrutinise the political motivations behind a Taiwanese musical school, they must apply an equally rigorous critical lens to the cultural imperialism embedded within the Chinese School.
- The categorical refusal to admit the Taiwan School into academic discourse is itself an ideological choice that demands critical interrogation.
To navigate these challenges, sociologists of Taiwanese identity have frequently turned to A-Chin Hsiau’s sociology of cultural nationalism, which draws on the framework of “strategic essentialism“. In an asymmetric geopolitical arena where Beijing actively mobilises cultural hegemony to justify the eventual annexation of Taiwan, temporarily asserting a coherent, distinctive Taiwanese cultural identity constitutes an indispensable defensive strategy.
A Pluralistic Path Forward
Navigating the unresolved nature of Taiwan’s international status requires nuanced cultural tools. A rigorously conceived Taiwan School of Music must be defined by several key principles:
- It must remain a grassroots, democratic pursuit, emerging organically from creative communities rather than functioning as an instrument of state propaganda.
- It must practise methodological and aesthetic pluralism, embracing folk, art, Indigenous, and popular musical expressions without establishing an internal hierarchy of cultural legitimacy.
- It need not position itself in crude, total antagonism toward Greater Chinese cultural tradition. Given Taiwan’s complex history, the elements of Han culture woven into Taiwanese society can be critically reclaimed, reimagined, and reframed from a distinctly Taiwanese perspective.
- It provides a vital mode of strategic essentialism, giving sonic form to a democratic cultural identity that stands resilient in the face of ongoing external political pressure.
Conceiving a Taiwan School of Music is not an attempt to revive the rigid, chauvinistic nationalisms of the nineteenth century. Rather, it provides an open acoustic arena where Taiwan’s complex histories, plural communities, and contested aspirations can finally be heard on their own terms.
Note: This article was originally published in Mandarin Chinese with the title 《 音樂的民族主義與世界的音樂人？試論「台灣樂派」發展可能》 (2024) on United Daily News Global (轉角國際）.
Min-Erh Wang holds a DPhil in Music from the University of Oxford. His research focuses on how East Asian countries have responded to Western classical music since the late nineteenth century. His scholarship received a Merit Prize in the 2021 International Journal of Taiwan Studies Research Article Competition, and his work is included in Keywords of Taiwan Theory II (台灣理論關鍵詞 II). In addition to his academic research, he is a cellist and a columnist for udn Global on music, culture, and related topics. 王敏而 文章列表 | 轉角國際 udn Global
This article was published as part of the special issue on IJTS Research Article Competition Winners.