Taiwan – Queen City Sounds and Art

Small Island Big Song is not a conventional musical project in any usual sense. It is a a multimedia (music, film, performance) collective including over a hundred musicians across 16 island nations of the Pacific and Indian Oceans that serves to create a contemporary musical statement from the perspective of the regions that are facing cultural and environmental challenges which clearly has an urgent relevance today. All of the works are written, recorded and overdubbed in nature at the place of the various artists’ custodial land. All of the works out of this project are a co-production of Taiwan and Australia. For the single “Listwar Zanset” (“the story of our ancestors”) Mauritian singer, songwriter and dancer Emlyn and Taiwanese singer Putad (of the Amis people) collaborate with vocals over an interlinking flow of percussion with backing vocals and later stringed instruments. Their voices are strong and lively to match the instrumentation and one need not understand Creole or Amis to be impacted and certainly not the message in English of threatened cultures and people toward the end of the track. The song operates beyond language and its message of liberation and the preservation of memory and culture can be felt in its fortifying and confident tone. On the world stage the indigenous and those not wielding the greatest economic, political and military power are often overrun and neglected when history bears out that the fate of these people becomes the fate of all in the end and it’s best to listen now when it’s not too late for everyone. Watch the video for “Listwar Zanset” on YouTube and connect with Small Island Big Song at the links below to hear more from this unique project whose music exists outside a narrow conception of existing genres.