Urban musical life and politics: Case Study on Street Music in Taipei
Date Issued
2013
Date
2013
Author(s)
Chen, Hsiao-Wei
Abstract
In this research, street music is the focus, as a form of everyday musical space in the city. The author examines contemporary street music in Taipei, unraveling its political reality in terms of ‘making art a part of city life’ as part of street arts, proposed by the Taipei city government.
Street music is a relatively ubiquitous activity in daily urban life in many Western cities, particularly since the folk-song revival in the 1960s (Prato 1984: 153). There are many performers with guitar, harmonica, or some other musical instrument or equipment in hand, bringing music and song to a passing audience, motivated by a variety of forces: a desire for fun and self-expression, to meet people, and usually also to earn money. Street music is associated with street art, while street art is not only linked to street music (street artists put on many other types of performances, such as miming, juggling, puppetry and acrobatics).
In the West, contemporary street music can be traced to the cultural-political turmoil in the 1960s. Avant-garde art, left wing theatrical circles, and the counterculture reconceived the relationship between politics and culture, choosing city streets as venues to express politics in order to narrow the gulf between everyday life and politics. Street music’s ‘gradual disappearance was due to a lowering of urban soundscape fidelity (the invention of the automobile) and to the advent of new means of musical reproduction’, involving in this trend, and leading to a rebirth of the ‘folksinger’ as a popular stereotype, and a ‘return to the street’, which contributed to the breaking down of barriers between art and life.
In the same period, following the integration of street arts as an element of urban development, street music has gone hand in hand with the growth in the role of culture in the economic development of cities. More generally, the 1980s and 1990s in Europe were marked by strong growth in this sector (street art) in terms of number of companies, shows and festivals, as well as attendance by the public. Today, there is a real correspondence between the artistic approach of street artists and the cities’ new concerns: insertion of cultural programming into a strategy of attracting tourism, institutional communication of social action in disadvantaged neighborhoods, and the ‘redynamising’ of the local economy. Street music now has been subjected to institutionalization, to varying degrees: in some cities street art is regarded as a formal sector in the government, and street music benefits from direct financial support; however, in some other cities street music is considered more as a spontaneous entertainment, and unavoidably confronts passive regulation in the interest of public order.
Historically, street music in Taipei (as well as Taiwan and most Chinese societies) was once performed as an inseparable part of traditional folk life, and served as a means for the underclass to make a living, which endowed street musicians with an inescapable image of begging. In the post World-War II era and particularly in the 1960s, while the population in Taipei grew rapidly with rural-to-urban migration, street music joined with street vendors at nighttime as a way for the authoritarian government to help solve unemployment problems. Under Martial Law, this period also witnessed a general loss of a more grassroots and spontaneous street music life. In the post-authoritarian era (1987-), starting from 2003, in response to urban competition under economic globalization, street music integrated into street art, and was incorporated as a means to re-imagine Taipei as a global city, in which a more charming, accessible city was conceived. The outcome is a rapid change of the astheticization of landscape and soundscape in parts of Taipei city, which seems to be making street music life possible again, just like the slogan ‘making art a part of city life’ proposed by the Taipei city government.
Though this blossoming of street music could also be deemed a response to Taipei citizens’ aspirations in the 1990s for multiple and cultural access to urban public spaces, how street music has been managed to a large degree has been a top-down development, rather than coming from any direct appeals from the citizens of Taipei. Currently, street musicians often emerge on weekends in the three main commercial and leisure districts of Taipei, where most potential consumers gather. Except for some underground passages in rapid transit stations, street performances are hardly to be seen in everyday life of Taipei. We see no prevailing ‘art becoming a part of city life’, but rather some selected showcases conveying how fancy Taipei city has become. This raises a concern about the appearance of ‘public music life’ as unfolded by the Taipei city government. Street music serves as a main component of the street art scene in Taipei, although promotion by the government is not confined just to that. Thus, street music of Taipei offers a route to examine the political reality of ‘public art life’ in general, and ‘public music life’ specifically.
Briefly, this research demonstrates how street music is used as an aesthetic instrument for imagining a global city. It argues that since the claim ‘making art a part of city life’ from the city authorities is embedded in the logic of city competition rather than city life per se, ‘street music life’ on a daily basis can only be true in a restricted sense and for limited citizens. It is less possible for more essential or deep transformation of city life to emerge via street music. Through the ways it is managed, street music is more like a consumptive embellishment in the daily life for citizens of Taipei as a whole.
Subjects
通俗音樂
城市
日常生活
日常生活政治
SDGs
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-102-D91228001-1.pdf
Size
23.54 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):0abda122fd51f604fed44037d33f1856