Beiguan (北管) is a Chinese music genre still surviving in Taiwan. Its origin is related to theater, but nowaday it is mostly instrumental, and if in the past most of the temple would host a Beiguan group, it is decreasing, and people who have interest in music are more concerned by Classical Western music or (even worse) Chinese National Music (國樂).

In the village of Nán-Kēng (南坑), in Hsinchu County, some elders were still practising until four years ago, then stopped rehearsing and performing. Last year we convinced them to reform, to record a CD and to perform for some events. It seemed to work at least for a moment, since they were invited to do a few other performances. This year we hope to include some of the recordings into a sound collection related to the life of Tian Tuan Qi, an old path which is nearly forgotten…

Below are some pictures of the last rehearsal.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at 9:57 am and is filed under Communities 藝術進入社區, Hakka in TW 台灣客家, Nán-Kēng (南坑).