The Amis Harvest Festival in contemporary Taiwan

Abstract

The Amis tribe is the largest of Taiwan's nine indigenous tribes. The Harvest Festival is their biggest event each year. Many scholars have written about the folk songs of the aborigines and about the aborigines in general, but very little about the Amis Harvest Festival and its music in particular. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Harvest Festival of the Amis people, including the core of the Festival: their singing and dancing. Given that the Amis Harvest Festival has essentially changed from what was once a ceremonial event that focused on warrior training, to an event that now focuses on entertainment and competition, the purpose of my thesis is to examine the Harvest Festival and its music during the late 1990's, and to document significant influences that have effected changes to the Harvest Festival, as well as the effect those changes have had on the Amis people.