In postwar Taiwan, many indigenous people migrated to cities for physically demanding wage labor. Their labor songs, born from this diaspora, blend tradition and modernity, distinct from traditional work songs.The late Amis singer Xia Guoxing (1953–2009, Onor) debuted in the 1980s, releasing over 30 albums and composing around 500 Amis-language songs. Categorized as "mountain love songs," his music spread via grocery truck cassettes, earning him the nickname "king of the vegetable-truck cassette songs." This paper focuses on his labor song "The Voice of a Formwork Worker." His simple, lively, and playful style resonated with workers. Fusing traditional Amis rhythms with modern beats, his lyrics mixed Amis, Mandarin, Japanese, and Hokkien in a karaoke format, leading researchers to note his modern creativity gave Amis songs a popular flavor. Often performed at harvest festivals, his work is examined here within postwar Taiwan's socioeconomic history to explore modernity and multiple modernities, including the individualization and contractualization of labor, the commodification of time, workers' strategies, and an aesthetic combining traditional and modern songs.
Yang Shifan (Thu,) studied this question.