Music, Youth Culture and Taiwan

Every now and then, when exploring a new topic with your students, you will be handed an unpolished gem. An idea, an insight, undefined and rough to the touch. These precious cultural moments break the somewhat repetitious cycle of teaching and exhaustion.

In Monday evening's class I was discussing music with my students. These students are at an intermediate level and can be exposed to new vocabulary with a relative degree of comfort and poise. One of the articles we examined discussed the link between violent lyrics and violent behaviour in university students. 500 students were examined the study, half were exposed to music with violent lyrics and the other half to non-violent lyrics. The predictable story goes that listeners of violent lyrics make violent associations with words that can have both non-violent and violent interpretations, whilst the latter group chose the non-violent interpretation of the word. I'm not here to discuss the accuracy of the research and findings, I am more interested in the conversation that followed.

I can only fathom that in Western countries the proliferation of sociomusic-subgroups can be accredited to many things - Ah yes, the obvious lineup of scapegoats and suspects - market fragmentation (divide and conquer), industry incubation, individualism (identity), multicultural/media influences, not to mention the throes of emancipation. Also, a strong culture of critique and experimentalism. Taiwan's sociomusic strata seems less complicated, obviously less mature. I wonder why? I know that Taiwanse film industry was subject to extreme censorship by the nationalist government of Chang Kai-Shek and that the media fulfilled a similar propagandist function to that of the mainland. A film establishment had been created for the sole purposes of the government, content producing the cliche kung-fu films in the Hong Kongnese mold and the kind of kitschy love stories that are now encapsuled in Taiwan's beloved soap operas. Perhaps the music industry is still recoverng from a similar fate?

It's hard to imagine that this hyper-consumer market has not spawned or fostered different species of teenagers, greater differentation, when a few thousand kilometres away diversity and dynamism is the hallmark of a Japanese youth culture so hellbent on individual expression, irregardless of it's depth. Despite what I read, there seems little Western pop in the Taiwanese diet or at least little expression of sociomusical subgroups like that seen on the footsteps of Flinders Street Station in Melbourne. I have seen two punks in three months. Nothing that could be classified as a hyper-masculine hip-hop culture (although I did see one such clothing store in the youth district of Ximen Ding). I see plenty of familiar, sexualized pop imagery, both in youth attitudes and in the media. In that regard the cultural landscape is being eskewed towards a familar Western bent.

In some ways Taiwan's identity, politically and socially, is in a state of flux. Learning English and the adoption of pop-culture specifies the means of escape for some Taiwanese kids, their compasses reading only West. I know I'm just scraping the surface here, but whilst Leese and I place our faces the grindstone, these gems will have to remain unpolished.

-SS