Reclaiming the Sounds of the Hengchun Peninsula: An Interview with Suying Yu, Curator of the Hear Here World Music Festival
The breeze on the Hengchun Peninsula is always filled with the sounds of the sea and the yueqin. In the town of Hengchun and Manzhou Township, the land has produced a folk song tradition. And after decades of field recordings, transmission among musicians, and the naming of living national treasures, they now have the Hear Here World Music Festival to bring that music to the global stage.
Wind Music took the reins of the festival in 2023, turning an in-depth field survey from 13 years ago into a new curation philosophy: giving older musicians a real chance to collaborate with international bands. We had a chat with curator Suying Yu about the dispute regarding the naming of the festival, the way music is transmitted, and the annual genre experiment.
Hear Here World Music Festival event information:
▸Date: 10.09 (Fri.)-10.10 (Sat.), 2026
▸Location: West Gate Square, Hengchun, Pingtung County
▸Organizer: Pingtung County Government
▸Co-organizer: Pingtung Cultural Affairs Bureau
▸Executive organizer: Wind Music
Q1: Let’s start with the name. How was “Hear Here World Music Festival” decided upon?
The precursor to the event didn’t have “world” in the name. After Wind Music took over the curation, the Pingtung County Government told us they wanted a stronger focus on world music, hence the new name. It seems like a simple change, but it set a new tone for the entire event: the vocabulary of world music was to be applied in making the peninsula’s folk music heard again.
Q2: What are Wind Music’s qualifications to take charge of such an event?
Wind Music was founded in the 1990s. In collaboration with ethnomusicologist and Taipei National University of the Arts Professor Wu Jung-shuen, Wind conducted field recordings of Taiwanese Indigenous, Pingpu, Meinong Hakka, and Fulao (Hoklo) folk music over a period of more than a decade. We spent many of those years on the Hengchun Peninsula (in Hengchun, Checheng, Fenggang, and Manzhou) collecting local original music.
We were able to talk with and record songs from such living national treasures as the late Chu Ting-shun, Chang Wen-chieh, Tung Yen-ting, and Tung Tien-mu, and others still with us, including Chen Ying of Hengchun and Chang Jih-kuei of Manzhou. We turned that into an album series, Fulao Folk Songs in Heng-chun Peninsula of Taiwan Island, which won a Golden Melody Award. These primary sources are what give us the right to claim the understanding of the music of this region and why we later began to integrate the new and old instead of just putting them on display side by side.
Q3: A lot of people talk about “Hengchun folk music,” but (in the Mandarin name) you emphasize the entire peninsula. What’s the story behind that?
This is something that non-locals are ignorant of, while locals care very much about it. The peninsula is composed of such localities as the towns of Hengchun and Checheng, and the townships of Manzhou, Fenggang, and Fangliao, but people got used to omitting the word “peninsula” when talking about folk music from the Hengchun Peninsula, and over time, non-locals came to believe that this music tradition came solely from the town of Hengchun.
But actually, the folk-song tradition and yueqin tuning methods in Hengchun and Manzhou are distinct. Manzhou’s Chang Jih-kuei was the first in the peninsula’s folk music tradition to be named a living national treasure by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture; later, Chu Ting-shun and Chen Ying received the honor as well. So using the word “peninsula” is not just about the geography; it’s about name rectification to remind people that the music comes from the entire peninsula.
Q4: How have these songs been passed down?
The transmission of songs is achieved mainly by associations in Hengchun and Manzhou, who nurture “musician apprentices” and trainees, though they do so differently. The one in Hengchun has yet to register its musician apprentice system formally with the Ministry of Culture. Under the tutelage of Chen Ying (now in her nineties) are several apprentices ranging from their teens to their seventies. Two of them, Wu Teng-Jung and Huang Chueh-yin (both in their seventies), along with Chen Ching-sung—who has not joined the association—have been named Hengchun Folk Music Preservers by the Pingtung County Government, bringing the current total to three.
The Manzhou tradition, on the other hand, has registered its system with the Ministry of Culture, and its living national treasure is Chang Jih-kuei (in her nineties and living with dementia).Manzhou’s musician apprentices must pass a demanding test given by Wu Jung-shun and others in order to be named “folk music masters.” Chang Pi-ying and Chang Chin-kuei have been named Manzhou Folk Music Preservers by the Pingtung County Government, while the rest are still in training.
There are folk music clubs in the elementary and junior high schools on the peninsula too. Principals of these schools have established the Pingtung South Community College, which annually holds a national folk song competition in which contestants of all ages sing in the folk tradition. Such nationwide participation in a traditional event is quite rare in Taiwan and serves as a spiritual pillar of the festival.
This vitality also stems from sustained collaboration between the public and private sectors. For years, the Pingtung County Government has actively promoted all-ages folk music instruction across four townships on the Hengchun Peninsula—Hengchun, Manzhou, Fangshan, and Checheng. By 2026, a total of 35 institutions were offering courses, including the Folk Music Hall at the Hengchun Cultural Center, nine kindergartens, sixteen schools, four senior centers, and five community associations, reaching 1,279 students in all.
These efforts are increasingly gaining international recognition: the Manzhou Elementary School folk music troupe was invited to perform at the closing ceremony of the Ricca Ricca Festival in Okinawa on July 30, 2026, while the Yonggang Elementary School folk music troupe will take the stage at the Golden Melody Awards for Traditional Arts and Music on August 22.
Q5: What’s the biggest difference in curation concept between the pre- and post-Wind Music eras?
Before 2023, the event leaned more toward a lively carnival-style format. After Wind Music took the reins, we focused on integration and collaboration, inviting groups from varying genres to take the stage alongside local folk musicians. In practice, that means ensuring non-local performers visit the local folk music associations to learn about the peninsular folk tradition. Then, they are to tweak their arrangements and shows to include the local performers, instead of demanding the locals follow their lead.
This order of priorities is a critical aspect of the attitude we expect from non-local groups. So over the past few years, local elderly and young folk musicians have enjoyed the integrated approach and willingly made the necessary adjustments so that true collaboration is taking place, in turn making the shows better.
Q6: The genres involved are different every year. Tell us about that and about this year’s theme.
Upon becoming the curators in 2023, we chose to focus on a certain collaborative genre each year to encourage dialogue among varying music vocabularies and between elderly and young folk musicians from the peninsula and contemporary artists.
The first year was big band jazz, for which the non-local groups inherently had a capacity for inclusion and improv, as seen in their collaborations with Sauljaljui. The second year was rap, and the third was folk rock.
This year is about music accompanied by dance. Headlined by Spectro, it will also see joint performances by Sauljaljui, musicians from Israel, and dance groups. Choosing a different genre each year not only helps create reinterpretations of the peninsula’s folk music vitality but also expands the potential for integration between local tradition and contemporary trends.
Q7: The biggest change this year is that the celebration is going to last a whole month. Can you tell me about that?
This year, the Pingtung County Government expanded the event scale from a two-day festival into the Hengchun Peninsula Folk Month, spanning most of October with a series of events to enhance the celebration. The month-long format also marks the full completion and opening of the Hengchun Cultural Center, signaling a new chapter for folk music on the Hengchun Peninsula—with both the hardware and software now in place, this year’s festival unfolds on a larger scale and with greater attention to detail.
October 3 is the explosive opening, at which a big name from West Africa and a pioneering rock band from Mongolia will take the stage. October 9 and 10 are the focus of the month, the Hear Here Hengchun World Music Festival, where the above-mentioned blend of old and new will happen alongside a party for world music, special shows on the Folk Stage, and a street fair.
But that’s not the end. The Hengchun Peninsula National Folk Song Competition, a hit for years now, is slated for October 15-17, allowing people of all ages to show their stuff. Then, the October 24-25 Folk Song Forum will wrap things up by translating all the energy of the month into an in-depth dialogue between industry and culture. As this year’s catchphrase is “Dance Your Folk Out!” We look forward to the peninsula dancing in wave after wave for the whole month.
This October on the Hengchun Peninsula, enjoy the brilliant sunshine and sea breeze in the daytime, and at night, come to hear the yueqin-led party from the West Gate Square to the mountains and communities. From the opening on October 3 to the forum at the end of the month, we invite you to southernmost Taiwan to hear folk music that has been born of the land and is now in dialogue with the world. We’ll be looking forward to seeing you Dance Your Folk Out!
Related reading: Taiwan’s Southernmost Music Festival Brings 8 Countries, 5 Continents to Hengchun this October
