Arik, Madal (Chen, Chi-hung)
Paper Title: Panelist 2
In Taiwan’s contemporary media environment, Indigenous voices are often marginalized or overshadowed by dominant cultural narratives. Against this backdrop, my co-hosted radio program Radiw-ing on Alian 96.3 Indigenous Radio plays a transformative role by reframing radiw, the traditional narrative song of the ‘Amis people, and positioning it within modern broadcasting and cultural discourse. It functions not only for preservation but as a public infrastructure for revitalization and reinterpretation. Due to Taiwan’s diverse indigenous groups and unique geography, each group's songs differ significantly, and cannot be defined according to one musical form, style or genre. This diversity, along with some unrecognized indigenous groups, often results in the homogenization of indigenous music under Western frameworks, where indigenous songs are categorized into a single “indigenous music” style. As a result, these songs have been subject to musical colonialism, transforming distinct songs into a uniform musical form, neglecting their cultural contexts. Through participation in the indigenous radio program Radiw-ing, I engage in dialogues with musicians, cultural workers, and song transmitters. The radio broadcasts serve as a platform for general indigenous education, specifically for the 98% non-indigenous population, to promote respect through understanding, diverse conversations based on equity, and to break down stereotypes and prejudices. Its episodes also become a valuable archive for analyzing the transformation of indigenous songs into music. My self-reflexive study of Radiw-ing reveals that people from different identities interpret Taiwan's indigenous songs through the lenses of locality and modernity, challenging colonial perceptions of indigenous music.