Exploring Adaptation of Indigenous Folk Songs from Let the Hills Sing

以英文口語 發表於2024.10.20 (日) 美東時間10:30

SEM (the Society for Ethnomusicology ) 第69屆會議 (線上)

The purpose of this study is to explore how indigenous songs have been adapted into hymns and the challenges encountered in the process. Let the Hills Sing: Hymns of the tribal Christians in Taiwan was a music score jointly published in 1986 by the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and the Asian Institute for Liturgy and Music based in Philippines. It includes 25 hymns adapted from indigenous songs, representing six ethnic groups, accompanied by a cassette recording, aiming to introduce contextualized indigenous hymns to all believers. This highly experimental practice not only embodied the ideal of developing contextualized and indigenous Christian music in the Asian churches at that time but also held particular significance against the backdrop of the indigenous movement in the 1980s Taiwan. The research utilizes interviews and music score analysis to investigate the compilation process, song selection, origin tracing, and recording process. It seeks to clarify the methods used in adapting indigenous songs into hymns and reveals significant discrepancies between the musical notation and recordings of some hymns. In certain cases, the complexity is so high that musical scores cannot be printed, with only lyrics and reference notation from other hymnals being provided. In the context of Taiwanese hymn research predominantly focused on the tracing of lyrics and song origins, this study represents a new attempt by incorporating historical recording materials to witness the process of hymn contextualization.