Who Is Over There Singing Their Own Songs Published

Source: Interview with Chang Chao-wei, Author of Who’s Singing Their Own Songs Over There? — The Meaning of Folk Songs: Keeping Memory, Preserving Strength
From: Douban Books
Date: January 13, 2010. Author: Wen-shu

Published in 1994, Who’s Singing Their Own Songs Over There? is Chang Chao-wei’s master’s thesis. It surveys the history of Taiwan’s modern folk song movement of the 1970s and uses folk song as an entry point to explore the complex relationship between intellectuals and popular culture, opening up new methodological dimensions for subsequent research into Taiwan’s popular music culture.

Completed in 1992, the book addresses not only the folk song movement from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, but also the freely flourishing New Taiwanese Song movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Taiwan society in the 1970s presented multiple possibilities; different voices broke through with difficulty; intellectuals across fields began asking questions, debating, making self-reflective choices — exerting enormous influence on the social and cultural formations of the 1980s and 1990s. How should the younger generation find an outlet, what kind of outlet should they seek, and how should they respond to tradition, politics, commerce, and their own lives? These urgent questions arose all at once in that fraught time and space.

The book was reprinted by Rolling Stone Culture in 2003.

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External Links

• Who’s Singing Their Own Songs Over There? — Book Description (China Times Reading Network)
• Milan Kun’s Renaissance (Chang Chao-wei’s blog)
• We’re All Still on the Road — My Folk Song Fortieth (Chang Chao-wei)