The Pu­zanga­lan Children’s Choir, which comes from the extreme south of Taiwan, has this to say on their Facebook fan page: “In the Pai­wan language, pu­zanga­lan means ‘hope.’ The Pu­zanga­lan Children’s Choir, composed of Pai­wan children, is a group of youngsters who love singing, are willing to work hard, and who want a different future. They hope to use song to bring good wishes and happiness to everyone, and to bring hope for their own future.”

Nine years have passed, and under the leadership of executive director Tsai Yi-fang and conductor Muni Ta­kival­it, the choir members of various ages have used their heavenly musical voices to put into practice their own manifesto, standing on the international stage, confidently singing songs of hope from their native land before the whole world.

 

In the summer of 2017, there could be heard in Italy the sound of mellifluous voices tinged with a strong flavor of Taiwan. The Pu­zanga­lan Children’s Choir, from the southern tip of Taiwan, which is now in its tenth year, first won gold at the Musica Eterna Roma International Choir Festival and Competition. After that they went to the Leonardo da Vinci International Choral Festival, where they were named as a Grand Prix Finalist, and received the gold diploma for children’s choir, and the best choreography prize, as well as the highly competitive female soloist award.

Moved by educational aspirations, executive director Tsai Yi-fang founded the predecessor to the Puzangalan Children’s Choir back in 2008. (photo by Jimmy Lin)

On winning this series of prizes, Pu­zanga­lan executive director Tsai Yi-fang and conductor Muni Ta­ki­val­it, as well as the ten-plus choir members, happily enjoyed their moments of glory on stage. However, back in 2008, when the choir was first founded, it came about as a result of a simple educational aspiration by Tsai Yi-fang, then director of educational affairs at ­Jiayi Elementary School in Ping­tung County.

Majia Township, where ­Jiayi Elementary is located, is an Aboriginal community, with most of the students being from the Pai­wan and Ru­kai tribes.

Tsai, who had been teaching at ­Jiayi for over 20 years, observed that students’ grades plummeted after they moved on to middle school. So, he thought, why not use a school choir to help them build self-confidence through long-term encouragement?

This idea happened to match the thinking of the recently arrived music teacher, Muni Ta­ki­val­it. The two of them got together and assembled the predecessor to the Pu­zanga­lan Children’s Choir.

Regular practice changes children

Tsai and Ta­ki­val­it hoped that the choir, which was open to pupils of all ages, would develop in the direction of fixed and regular practice, so they began rigorous practice sessions twice a week at fixed times.

However, initially many children showed little interest, because the practice sessions cut into their leisure time. Tsai, who says he played the role of a “strict supervisor,” was forced to drive into the community and go right to the doors of the missing choir members to look for them.

Having been through practice after practice, when the choir members stand on stage their faces show a confident spirit.

Tsai and Takivalit divided the tasks involved in running the choir between them. Tsai, who describes himself as tone deaf, took care of administrative matters large and small, while the heavy responsibility of leading practice sessions fell to Takivalit. But at each practice, Tsaiwould be right outside the door, listening discreetly. After two months, the children’s voices raised in song sounded better to him than they had in the past.

He also observed changes in the kids themselves. On their faces he could see expressions of concentration and confidence, and through group singing they also learned the importance of teamwork.

Muni Ta­ki­val­it states that most people assume that in a choir, “singing” must be the most important thing. But the real key to success in performing choral pieces, she says, is knowing how to listen. “Only if you slow down and open your ears, and listen to your collaborators’ voices, can the sounds be in harmony. Otherwise no matter how well each section of the choir sings, they will just be singing for themselves,” explains Ta­ki­val­it.

In 2012, Tsai Yi-fang was scheduled for retirement and many of the choir members were going to graduate. Thinking about the long-term development of the choir, it was decided to separate it from the operations of the school, and to use the Pai­wan word pu­­zanga­­lan to name the now-independent choir.

As luck would have it, before long the children’s pure, heavenly voices, drilled through long hours of practice, found appreciation among talent spotters, and they had the chance to go on the international stage.

That year, at the invitation of the World Vision organization, the choir went to perform in northern Taiwan. Taking advantage of free time in their schedule, the group went to the plaza outside the National Taiwan Museum in Tai­pei and held an impromptu practice session there. The brisk music and penetrating voices attracted the attention of NTM director ­Hsiao ­Tsung-­huang, who happened to pass by. He immediately invited the choir to be guest performers at an exhibition opening. The beautiful singing voices at that performance captivated other guests from faraway Germany, and the group received an invitation to the International Children’s Choir Festival in Dresden. After that, Pu­zanga­lan appeared on stage in countries including Japan, Hungary, and Korea.

Their selection to sing at the inauguration of President Tsai Ing-wen in 2016 raised their name recognition greatly. Their performance of the ROC national anthem, arranged by Muni Ta­ki­val­it to integrate an old Pai­wan melody and changing the solemn traditional singing style, won widespread acclaim.

Takivalit grew up in the Ti­mur indigenous community in Ping­tung’s San­di­men Township, and is herself Pai­wan.  It is only since 2009 that she has tried integrating old Aboriginal melodies into choral pieces. The group has since ­developed a performance style of “singing old melodies in new ways.”

Cultural memories

Takivalit says that all the Aboriginal tribes have old melodies passed down by oral tradition, with the singing mechanics and modes of sound generation being ­different from each other. The old Paiwan melodies are sung by producing sound from the chest and the throat at the same time, giving the voices a penetrating quality.

In arranging pieces, Ta­ki­val­it not only incorporates the unique features of the Pai­wan singing style, she also adds the old melodies, sung in chorus with a polyphonic structure, into traditional choral pieces.

She says that in the past most choirs simply applied Western methods, expressing beauty in voice through vocal resonance techniques. But in the last decade, the rise in local consciousness has encouraged people to seek out elements of local culture, and this is what prompted her to have the children perform old indigenous melodies. Thus singing has brought the choir members closer to their vuvu (Pai­wan for “grandparents”), searching for that generation’s roots. And many older people who had stopped singing the old melodies can now hear the familiar tunes of their childhoods in the voices of their grandchildren.

Just as Tsai Yi-fang and Muni Takivalit hoped nine years ago when they started the choir in school, singing has definitely brought changes in the children. Close your eyes and listen to the voices of the Pu­zanga­lan Children’s Choir, and you can hear the hope and memories of this land that once lay untapped.