This research explores how the educational promotion of běntǔ yīnyue (本土音樂, native music) participates in constructing Taiwanese identity. Grounded in the researcher’s personal trajectory, it examines how the Taiwanization movement has recontextualized běntǔ yīnyue in schools, transforming it into a key medium for shaping diverse local identities. Through ethnographic fieldwork and reflexive writing, the study unfolds as both a theoretical inquiry and a personal journey of cultural return.

Drawing on Christopher Small’s concept of musicking, this study proposes an analytical framework integrating practice, imagination, and setting of performance. Musicking is examined across three interrelated dimensions: (1) curricular materials and institutional structures; (2) pedagogical interactions in classrooms; and (3) the design and staging of performances. These are explored through reflexive ethnography, individual-centered narratives, and autobiographical writing that foreground the researcher’s positionality and relational engagement.

Three case studies illustrate situated practices of musicking běntǔ yīnyue in Taiwan: the transformation of Pak-kuan (北管) from ritual soundscape to school subject; Indigenous music education through the teaching of Atayal musician Pawang Iban; and Hengchun folk songs and the yueqin (月琴) as local symbols shaping students’ sense of belonging. The study argues that musicking běntǔ yīnyue constitutes a performative act of cultural politics through which memory, subjectivity, and belonging are reconstructed.