Day 8: Folk Music

While we seem to be learning less and less in our morning Mandarin classes (as students arrive to each successive class more and more tired), today’s flute class was perhaps the because leap since we were first given the instruments. On the first day, we were given a brief history and taught how to make a sound. The second class was focussed on the basic fingering of three notes, Do Re Mi, while the third lesson taught us dizi maintenance. We had played a few simple songs, but nothing really beyond Mary had a Little Lamb. Yesterday, the fourth flute class, had a lot of free time and discussed our performance, but had very practicing other than expanding our range by three notes.

Today, for our fifth (and second-last) flute session, the teacher introduced our class to Taiwanese folk songs For me, the songs we (tried to) play today reminded me of the Toronto Taiwanese Chamber Orchestra, a youth ensemble focussed on promoting cultural Taiwanese music. I was a part of the group for two years as a cellist.

In class, we played “望春風”, one of Taiwan's most iconic songs, and “桃花過渡", a favourite encore piece of the TTCO, and seemingly (via Youtube) of many other orchestras as well. The first song translates to "Longing for the Spring Breeze", sung in the video on the left. The second song, "Peach Blossom (name) crosses the River" is on the right, played by the erhu.

The afternoon featured a folk music group that came to the Jiantan Youth Center to perform, a quintet known as the "Mountain Grace Ensemble?" (loosely translated, will ask a councilor for the precise name). The played several Taiwanese folk songs, including 望春風. The performance wasn't very long, but very enjoyable. Quite unlike the following session which was too long and not very enjoyable - an introduction to the National Palace Museum.

"Folk Music Appreciation"

The National Palace Museum is home to over 600 000 artifacts, mainly from Chinese civilizations through the ancient times, through the dynasties, and collected by the Republic of China, which brought the treasures to Taipei (after a brief stop in Taichung) after fleeing from China. The museum sent us a guide who took us through 127 powerpoint slides featuring history and pictures of artifacts. Most of the class was more interested in sleeping.

The evening was relatively uneventful, ending with a "slave auction", a charity event that gave people a chance to sell their services (i.e. a massage, umbrella coverage, etc.) for a local charity that aims at helping troubled children through school. That's about it - quite tired from the last couple days, I decided to hit the hay early.