A Musical Interlude - Taipei 101 Flash Mob Chorus

We take a break from normal posting to bring you a little taste of Taiwan, 2013. This is a musical flash mob event which took place in the awesome foodcourt of the basement of the 101 building (until a few years ago, the tallest building in the world). I can and will say a lot about Taiwan on this blog, but sometimes I think music can express things more deeply and clearly than words can, even in a language you don't know.

Since this blog is in English most of my readers won't be able to understand the lyrics to the songs, but I encourage you to take a listen anyway, the beautiful of the songs and the passion with which they are sung don't need translation. (and there are English subtitles which communicate the basic meaning of the lyrics, though their beauty doesn't really come across in the word-for-word translation)

There are 4 songs in total: the first is Green Island Serenade (Referencing the island of Taiwan. There might be some political implications with the choice of this song as well, but I will mostly steer clear of Taiwanese politics on this blog!), the middle part is a medley of two nostalgic/romantic songs, Mo Li Hua (Jasmine Flower, a very famous song, its story and a better translation of the lyrics than in the video is available here on its wikipedia page) and Bāng Chhun-hong (Spring Breeze, which is not sung in Mandarin but in Taiwanese, the local language which I hope to study after Mandarin), and lastly a very lively ending with Gao Shan Qing (The Mountain is Green, only a Chinese wikipedia entry for this one), a song about Alishan mountain and the native peoples of Taiwan who live there. Part of the song (you'll know!) is in Ami/Amis, the language of Taiwan's largest remaining indigenous tribal group.

To me, holding a flashmob in the basement of a ultramodern skyscraper featuring beloved traditional songs in these languages is "very Taiwan." If you've never been there, I hope you can get a feel for the place through this brief performance: