Satoyama and Hakka Children's Songs in Taiwan

Luo Ai Mei (PhD, CUHK) Research Fellow, Asia Culture Center

Gwangju, South Korea

 

Introduced by the United Nations in 2010, the Satoyama Initiative is a cultural-ecological project implemented in different countries to revitalize farming areas negatively affected by industrialization and globalization after WWII. A variety of related art projects have  also   been   launched   as   part   of   this   initiative. Focusing on a Hakka children’s song project in Taiwan between 2012 and 2014, I  explore  how music mediates the reconceptualization of the environment as a way to revive rural landscapes.

 

I begin by reviewing how the Meinong township  in southern Taiwan, where the children’s songs were produced, confronted the crisis of rural development under influences of the global economy, Taiwanese industrial policy, and  population  movement.  I  will  then examine how  Hakka  children’s  songs  reconfigure an imagination of space and place in relation to satoyama. Through various musical gestures, these children’s songs reshape the rural as liveable, tangible, and renewable resources as they build upon Hakka local knowledge to emphasize the interconnectedness of human and nature.