For beach getaways, Taitung can’t be beat, says reggae musician Red-I. “You’d think you were in Tahiti, ya know?”
Red-I, aka Patrick Chen, is among a handful of artists performing at the Taitung Music Festival (東海岸音樂季), which starts tonight and features live reggae, Aboriginal and jazz music at a scenic beachside area in Taitung County.
The festival, now in its third year, presents some of Taiwan’s most prominent Aboriginal musicians along with accomplished music groups from Japan and the Philippines.
Performers include Japanese musician Oki, who plays the tonkori, a traditional stringed instrument of the Ainu, an aboriginal group of northern Japan.
Oki, who plays the tonkori backed by a reggae and dub
band, tours internationally and has participated in major world music festivals such as Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD.
Other international acts include United Creation, a jazz group from Okinawa; female singer Machaco, a pioneering figure in Japan’s reggae scene; Stoned Rockerz, which Red-I describes as one of Japan’s top backing reggae bands; Filipina singer Phatty Maria, who was the 2008 Japan Dancehall Queen Champion; and Papa U-gee, another veteran singer in the Japanese scene.
The lineup of international performers was organized by Red-I, who grew up in Canada and honed his musical skills as a young adult in Belize and Mexico.
He says the event is a rare chance to catch some top-notch bands from the Pan-Asian reggae scene. “I don’t care where you go in Taiwan, but you’re not [normally] going to get to see half of these bands for free.”
Even though Caribbean sounds dominate the evening program, it’s “not a reggae festival per se,” said Red-I.
Almost all of the local performers in the lineup are Golden Melody Award winners from the Aboriginal music scene: Atayal singer Inka Mbing (雲力思), singer-songwriter Pau-Dull (陳建年), the Nanwang Sisters (南王三姊妹) and folk legend Kimbo Hu (胡德夫).
There’s new, young talent, too. Matka and De Hot, which won the battle of the bands at this year’s Ho-Hai-Yan Rock Festival, performs a blend of reggae, rock and Paiwan music tomorrow night.
Red-I’s previous group, the Riddim Outlawz, disbanded, and he now spends much of his time touring the reggae circuit in Japan and the Philippines. But he promises a spirited show on Sunday. “I got a lot of tricks to pop out the hat, man,” he said.
Last year the festival attracted 25,000 visitors over nine days, according to the Taitung County Government, which sponsors the event. Red-I estimated that the crowd on Saturday night last year was 5,000-strong.
He says the event’s location is reason alone to go, being one of the few places in Taiwan that doesn’t resemble a “Chinatown.”
“It’s the last piece of real Taiwan … Taitung is the last piece,” said Red-I. “People that don’t know this place, man, you’re missing out.”
Since their leader Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and others were jailed as part of several ongoing bribery investigations, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has risen in the polls. Additionally, despite all the many and varied allegations against Ko and most of the top people in the party, it has held together with only a tiny number of minor figures exiting. The TPP has taken some damage, but vastly less than the New Power Party (NPP) did after it was caught up in a bribery scandal in 2020. The TPP has for years registered favorability in the thirties, and a Formosa poll
Chiayi County is blessed with several worthwhile upland trails, not all of which I’ve hiked. A few weeks ago, I finally got around to tackling Tanghu Historic Trail (塘湖古道), a short but unusually steep route in Jhuci Township (竹崎). According to the Web site of the Alishan National Scenic Area (阿里山國家風景區), the path climbs from 308m above sea level to an elevation of 770m in just 1.58km, an average gradient of 29 percent. And unless you arrange for someone to bring you to the starting point and collect you at the other end, there’s no way to avoid a significant amount
Nov. 4 to Nov. 10 Apollo magazine (文星) vowed that it wouldn’t play by the rules in its first issue — a bold statement to make in 1957, when anyone could be jailed for saying the wrong thing. However, the introduction to the inaugural Nov. 5 issue also defined the magazine as a “lifestyle, literature and art” publication, and the contents were relatively tame for the first four years, writes Tao Heng-sheng (陶恒生) in “The Apollo magazine that wouldn’t play by the rules” (不按牌理出牌的文星雜誌). In 1961, the magazine changed its mission to “thought, lifestyle and art” and adopted a more critical tone with
While global attention is finally being focused on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) gray zone aggression against Philippine territory in the South China Sea, at the other end of the PRC’s infamous 9 dash line map, PRC vessels are conducting an identical campaign against Indonesia, most importantly in the Natuna Islands. The Natunas fall into a gray area: do the dashes at the end of the PRC “cow’s tongue” map include the islands? It’s not clear. Less well known is that they also fall into another gray area. Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) claim and continental shelf claim are not