30-second overview: In 1943, Japanese musicologist Kurosawa Takachō carried recording equipment deep into the Kanadip Community in Haiduan Township, Taitung County, and recorded the Bunun tribe's prayer song for a bountiful millet harvest, Pasibutbut. Nine years later this recording was sent to UNESCO, where the assembled musicologists were all astonished — Western theory held that polyphonic choral singing was the product of high civilization, yet the Bunun people, in remote mountains without writing or instruments, achieved it through human vocal resonance alone. This celestial sound known as "eight-part harmony" remains Taiwan's most internationally recognizable voice to this day.
1943, the final stage of World War II. Japanese musicologist Kurosawa Takachō, commissioned by the Taiwan Governor-General's Office, hauled heavy recording equipment into the Kanadip Community in Haiduan Township, Taitung County1. With assistance from local police and a Bunun youth named "Adao," he overcame unstable electricity and difficult transport to capture a sound that would change music history.
Kurosawa Takachō later wrote: "This is the most perfect natural harmony I have heard in my life."2
In 1952, he sent this recording to the International Folk Music Council under UNESCO. At the time, the mainstream view in Western music theory was: human music evolved from monophony to polyphony, then to complex harmony — a linear path of "civilizational evolution." The appearance of Pasibutbut shattered this line3. A people without a writing system had sung something Europeans believed only high civilization could produce.
Not Eight Parts, But More Mysterious Than Eight
The name "eight-part harmony" is actually a beautiful misunderstanding.
From a music-analytic perspective, Pasibutbut actually has only four voice parts (sometimes five): the bass Mahalngal, the middle Manda, the treble Bondada, and the highest voice added at the conclusion4. But when the Bunun sing with extremely precise resonance technique, a physical "overtone" phenomenon occurs between the human bodies and the space — higher-frequency scales stack atop the main melody, making listeners feel as if they hear eight, even more, voice parts sounding simultaneously5.
📝 Curatorial note: This technique of collectively producing overtones bears a striking resemblance to Mongolia's khoomei (throat singing). But khoomei is a soloist's art; the Bunun achieve it through collective chorus — a completely different order of difficulty.
| Voice Part | Bunun Name | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Bass | Mahalngal | Fundamental tone, like the earth trembling, providing the resonant foundation |
| Middle | Manda | Fills the space, making the harmony thick and full |
| Treble | Bondada | The ascending main melody, symbolizing millet growth |
| Overtones | (Overtones) | Virtual voice parts produced by physical resonance |
In mountain forests isolated from the world, the Bunun people, through imitating waterfalls, bees, and wind, passed down this art for thousands of years6.
An Ascending Prayer
For the Bunun people, Pasibutbut is not performance; it is ritual. This song is sung after the Ear-Shooting Festival and before the Sowing Festival, its purpose to pray to the sky god Dehanin for a bountiful millet harvest7.
The singing follows strict rules:
The voices must climb slowly from low to high, symbolizing the millet growing strong and sturdy. If the pitch drops or goes off-key midway, it is regarded as an ill omen, foretelling possible famine that year. The people believe that insufficiently harmonious singing means the people's hearts are not pure or the tribe is not united, and the sky god will not grant a harvest7.
When singing, the people form a circle, hands resting on neighbors' backs, feeling each other's chest vibrations. This is not individual virtuosity; it is collective will in dialogue with the sky god. Traditionally only men may sing, and a purification ritual must precede the singing7.
📝 Curatorial note: Pasibutbut's "quality control" mechanism is extraordinarily strict — going off-key is not merely a mistake, it is an offense to the sky god, a dire omen for the whole tribe. It may be precisely this pressure for perfect performance that has kept this art refined for thousands of years.
The Sound Is Growing Fainter
In 2009, the Ministry of Culture registered "Bunun Eight-Part Harmony" as a National Important Traditional Art, designating several communities as preservation groups8. But the speed of protective registration may not keep pace with the speed of loss.
The younger generation leaves the communities; participation in traditional rituals declines. Tourist performances, to cater to audiences, sometimes simplify the singing process and ignore ritual taboos. The more fundamental problem is language — the loss of the Bunun language makes the deep cultural meanings behind the lyrics difficult for the next generation to understand.
"We are not learning to sing; we are learning how to converse with nature, with ancestral spirits."
In Bunun communities across Nantou, Hualien, and Taitung, elders still teach young people to control throat muscles, to hear the overtones in the air. They transmit not just technique, but an entire way of understanding the world — sound is not human-made; it grows from the earth, and humans merely let it pass through.
At the moment Kurosawa Takachō pressed the record button in 1943, he probably never imagined that eighty years later this sound would still be Taiwan's most powerful cultural export. Not because it is ancient, but because in the simplest way — a few people's throats — it proves one thing: the depth of art has never depended on technological advancement.
References
- Hearing the Colony: Kurosawa Takachō and Wartime Taiwan Music Survey (1943) — See original link for supplementary textual data〉, NTU Library, 2008↩
- Music of the Taiwan Takasago Tribes — Kurosawa Takachō, 《》, Victory Records, 1974↩
- Kurosawa Takachō's Taiwan Indigenous Music Survey — National Central Library Taiwan Branch〉, NTU Institute of Musicology, 2008↩
- Bunun Pasibutbut Prayer Song for Millet Harvest — National Cultural Heritage Network — See original link for supplementary textual data↩
- Biling Watching Bunun People Sing Pasibutbut Become Bisosilin — See original link for supplementary textual data〉, Asia University Master's Thesis, 2008↩
- Taking Taiwan Indigenous Music Art 'Bunun Eight-Part Harmony' as an Example — See original link for supplementary textual data〉, Chin-Yi University of Technology Academic Conference, 2003↩
- Several Reflections on the Ritualistic Performance of Pasibutbut — National Museum of Prehistory — See original link for supplementary textual data↩23
- Registration Data for 'Bunun Eight-Part Harmony' — Bureau of Cultural Heritage, Ministry of Culture — See original link for supplementary textual data↩