Where the Ancestors Still Sing a Tradition: Taiwan

The festival varies from village to village, as do its songs, dances and rituals. Families return from cities, elders resume their central roles, and younger people gather according to age groups, forming circles for dances that can continue for hours. Singing is at the heart of these gatherings, not as entertainment added to a ceremony, but as a means of transmitting knowledge and bringing the community together.

In Taitung, Dennis Buya, an Amis cultural practitioner and trainer with the Chu-Yin Culture and Arts Troupe, works to pass these traditions on to another generation of singers. His approach begins with something simple: breathing.

“We always begin with natural breathing because singing should feel as natural as speaking,” Buya says. Singers are encouraged to relax their bodies and support the voice with steady breath rather than force it.

That philosophy reflects the character of Amis singing itself, where the voice is closely connected to language, movement and communal participation.

Amis singers rehearsing together, with Buya in the center. Image Credits - Robert Bociaga 

Amis warrior sculpture in Taitung. Image Credits - Robert Bociaga 

When Different Voices Become One

One of the defining features of Amis music is its polyphonic character. Rather than having an entire group reproduce precisely the same melody, different voices can move together in distinct musical lines, producing a layered sound in which individual parts remain audible while contributing to the whole.

For Buya, this is also a reflection of how Amis communities understand collective life.

“It reflects the Amis value of listening to one another,” he says.

Depending on the community and region, singing can include call-and-response structures, high-register counter-melodies, vocal ornaments and improvisation. Some traditions use non-lexical sounds that allow singers to participate without having to follow a fixed text. Songs can be accompanied by circular dances whose movements correspond to the rhythm and structure of the music.

The differences between communities are significant. Northern and southern Amis traditions can have noticeably different approaches to melody, response and polyphony, while individual villages may retain their own pronunciation and vocal style.

“Every Amis community has its own way of singing,” Buya says. “Even the same song may have different pronunciation, melody, or vocal style from one village to another.”

That diversity means that there is no single version of an Amis song that can necessarily stand for all communities.

Amis traditional clothing and textile crafts. Image Credits - Robert Bociaga 

Learning the Song, Not Just the Words

Traditionally, children learned songs without sitting down for formal lessons. They heard older people singing at home, during festivals and throughout everyday community life, gradually absorbing melodies and words by listening and joining in.

That system has become harder to sustain as urbanization and changing lifestyles have separated many younger Amis from the communities where traditional songs were once part of daily life.

Schools, recordings, festivals and cultural groups now provide new ways of learning, and Buya sees clear advantages in this development. Formal teaching can help ensure that songs survive when fewer young people encounter them naturally in their homes.

But preservation can create another problem: standardization.

“There is also a risk that everyone starts learning the same version,” Buya says.

For a tradition in which different villages have historically maintained different musical forms, that could mean preserving the song while gradually losing some of the distinctions that make each community’s version meaningful.

Buya therefore argues that young singers need to learn more than melody and lyrics. They should understand where a song originated, who traditionally sings it and why it is performed.

When his group performs a traditional song, the first step is to understand its community of origin and reproduce the tradition as faithfully as possible.

“We don’t change it to fit our own style,” he says. “Instead, we respect the original tradition.”

Traditional Amis cultural display. Image Credits - Robert Bociaga

Keeping Difference Alive

The tension between preservation and change runs through contemporary Amis cultural life. Traditional a cappella singing and village ceremonies now coexist with staged performances, cultural organizations and festivals that bring Amis music to audiences beyond the communities where it originated.

The harvest festival itself has also evolved. Historically connected to the agricultural cycle of millet cultivation, ilisin is now generally associated with the rice harvest, with its timing and precise rituals varying between communities. Christian influence has altered some traditional practices, while tourism and cultural performances have created new contexts in which Amis songs and dances are presented.

Yet the underlying function remains remarkably persistent: bringing people together and passing knowledge between generations.

For Buya, having singers from different Amis regions is not necessarily a threat to cultural continuity. It can instead provide an opportunity to recognize how diverse the broader culture is.

“We learn from each other and better understand how rich and diverse Amis culture is,” he says.

There is something fitting about that philosophy in a musical tradition built around multiple voices. Amis polyphony does not require every singer to become identical before the group can sound united. The voices can remain different while belonging to the same composition.

The same may be true of the culture itself.

As younger Amis learn songs in schools, cultural groups and festivals, the challenge is not simply to make sure the songs survive, but to preserve the knowledge of where they came from and why they sound different in different places.

In Taitung, where Buya trains singers with the Chu-Yin Culture and Arts Troupe, that work takes place between the old and the new: between songs learned by listening to elders and songs taught through formal instruction, between village traditions and performances before wider audiences, and between the need to preserve cultural heritage and the need to allow it to remain alive.

The future of Amis music may therefore depend less on producing one definitive version than on ensuring that younger singers continue to recognize the many voices within the tradition — and understand why each one matters.

Traditional Amis carving and handicrafts. Image Credits - Robert Bociaga 

-Asia Media Centre