Taikè Rock Carnival
台客搖滾嘉年華
Source: Not Afraid of Being Unfashionable — Wu Bai: Call Me Taike
From: Liberty Times
Date: 2005-08-19 · Author: Hu Ju-hung
“Taike Rock Carnival” was a three-edition music festival organised by Neutron Culture from 2005 to 2007.
Taiwanese-language rock singer Wu Bai observed that Taiwan had never produced a culture that transcended language and ethnicity; he hoped to find a group of like-minded friends to jointly promote Taike popular culture. The “Taike Rock Carnival” concerts, first held in 2006, were one action taken by him alongside Lin Wei-che, Pigsy, the Glittering Sisters, Machi, Bobby Chen, and the New Formosa Band to advance Taike popular culture. From “New Taiwanese Song” to “Taike Music,” from “Taiwanese Rock” to “Taike Rock” — from the 1989 manifesto of the New Taiwanese Song movement with Mad Songs, to the 1998 “final climax” of Taiwanese rock, to singer Wu Bai and others’ Taike declaration in 2005 — all can be seen as successive acts of re-imagining and affirming a Taiwanese cultural subjectivity.
However, because of the pejorative connotations the word “taike” carried in social perception, and because Neutron Culture sought to register “Taike Rock” as a trademark, the matter sparked controversy and heated debate in cultural circles — until then-President Chen Shui-bian issued a statement through the “President A-bian Electronic Newsletter”: “There are two kinds of taike: one is the put-down ‘hick-taike,’ which society does not accept or tolerate; the other is taike as genuine self-identification — a symbol of pride and confidence.” Only then did the debate subside.
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External Links
- Cultural Circles Dissatisfied as “Taike” Trademarked (Coolloud)
- “Taike” Liberated! Neutron: We Abandon the Trademark Registration (TVBS)
- New Taiwanese Song Movement (Taiwan Popular Music Wiki)