Shih-Hui Chen: Returning Souls: Four Short Pieces on Three Formosan Amis Legends

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Returning Souls

Four Pieces on Three Formosan Amis Legends for String Quartet

Returning Souls

Four Short Pieces on Three Formosan Amis Legends for Solo Violin

Four Short Pieces on Three Formosan Amis Legends for String Quartet

In 2010, under the auspices of a Fulbright Scholar grant, I had the good fortune to live in Taiwan for a year while studying the music of the Han and Indigenous Peoples there. As a visiting scholar at Academia Sinica, I collaborated with award winning anthropologist and filmmaker, Hu Tai-Li, on a film project entitled Returning Souls. This film documents the recovery of lost tribal icons by the Amis tribe and interweaves three of their cultural legends with modern day realities, including national land policies, religious beliefs, community identity and clan rivalries. The lost icons are three wooden pillars with carvings of Ami ancestors that were removed from their community in 1958, following a hurricane. Anthropologists feared the damaged pillars would disintegrate, so they brought them back to the Academia Sinica museum for display. The Ami believed that when the pillars were taken, the souls of their ancestors were also taken away from their village. The film traces efforts by the young Ami members to return these souls back to their village.

The main melody of this project, taken from an improvised song by one of the tribal elders in the film, serves as an introduction and unifies the entire piece. Although I do not usually write programmatic pieces, to do so seemed particularly fitting for this project. Below, I provide the subtitles and brief plots of the legends that are also indicated in the score:

Introduction: Sun: The Glowing Maiden

An ancient ancestor of the Amis tribe gave birth to many children. The last child was “The Glowing Maiden,” a girl whose body glows (symbolizing the sun).

Legend I: The Great Flood: The Descending Shaman

Sister and Brother are the only two humans to escape the Great Flood with their lives. They later marry and give birth to strange creatures like lizards and snakes; a descending shaman brings blessings that allow the pair to give birth to normal humans.

Legend II: Head Hunting: The Ascending Stars

Two brothers are instructed by their father to head hunt someone who is spoiling their fresh water supply. They later find out that they unknowingly beheaded their own father, and were scorned by their mother for their heinous act. The elder brother shows remorse. He stomps his foot, and his body sinks further and further into the ground, while his spirit ascends to the sky and becomes stars.

Legend III: The Glowing Maiden; Returning Souls

In the film, although struggling with many obstacles, the young people in the Amis tribe uplift their own spirits as they recover their ancestors’ souls.

Returning Souls, Four Short Pieces on Three Formosan Amis Legends was commissioned by the Houston Arts Alliance through an Individual Artist Grant, funded by the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance. The quartet version was commissioned by the Formosa Quartet with the funding from Art of Elan

Returning Souls

Four

Pieces on Three Formosan Amis Legends

Introduction: Sun, the Glowing Maiden

Shih-Hui Chen

Father's head

His

Legend III: The Glowing Maiden, Returning Souls

pizz. pizz. behind the bridge behind the bridge

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