To most Taiwanese the Bunun people, the fourth-largest tribal group in the island nation with around 50,000 members today, are renowned for their unmatched hunting skills. Even among the Taiwanese indigenous people the Bunun hunters are considered the best hunters of all aboriginal tribes in Taiwan.

The Paiwan tribesmen dub the Bunun hunters as “the hunters with witchcraft,” while the Atayals call them “shadows,” an acknowledgment of their superhuman hunting skills. Because of their navigation skills and their ability to survive in the mountains after generations of hunting in the wild, for decades the Bununs, who are fairly widespread from central to southern and eastern counties in Taiwan, have been the preferred choice as mountain guides.

To the world outside Taiwan, however, the renowned Bunun hunters are better known through another aspect of their culture: their music.

Like other aboriginals in Taiwan, music is an important part of their lives, and the Bunun are especially famous for their unique eight-part harmonic singing, which has won them a permanent spot in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Surprisingly, what brought this unique music form to the attention of Western ethnomusicologists as early as in the World War II was not a local scholar studying aborigines, but rather a Japanese, Takatomo Kurosawa.

The investigations of Kurosawa, who conducted a field trip to Taiwan’s indigenous tribes from January to May 1943, are a milestone in the history of Taiwan music.

During his five-month-stay in Taiwan Kurosawa paid visits to a total of 155 tribes around the island and made field recordings of nearly a thousand aboriginal songs.  

His research reports, as well as some of the field recordings, were later published in 1973 as "The Music of the Takasago Tribe in Formosa," which can rightly be called the first and foremost collection of Taiwan aboriginal music.

Among these nearly 1000 songs and lyrics the most important finding during Kurosawa’s field trip was none other than his discovery of a traditional Bunun song called “Pasibutbut,” (“Prayer for the Millet Harvest”), which is considered the best example of the tribe’s eight-part harmonic singing style. 

Kurosawa discovered the song during his stay in the eastern county of Taitung in Lungshan Village (today’s Haiduang Township, Kanding Village), on March 25, 1943.

Nine years later Kurosawa permanently changed musicologists' ideas about the origins of music when he presented it to a UNESCO conference in Paris in 1952.

Pasibutbut: “Prayer for the Millet Harvest”

The uniqueness of the “Prayer for the Millet Harvest” has nothing to do with the song’s lyrics or rhythm, but rather in its distinctive eight-part harmonic singing.

The late Dr. Lu Pin-Chuan who specialized in Taiwan’s aboriginal music once called “Pasibutbut” “a revolutionary way of singing… an unprecedented and unimaginable phenomenon in folk music around the world.”

Musicologists at that time were equally impressed to find such a sophisticated polyphonic harmony system among an ancient tribe as the Bunun’s eight-part harmonic singing chorus, ultimately changing the early concept that music derives from one note, then two notes and so on, eventually reaching complex harmonies.

The origin of “Pasibutbut”

One legend says that this particular song was created in ancient times when a Bunun was inspired by the sound of a rushing waterfall. Another version indicates that it was the sound of humming bees that gave birth to the “Pasibutbut.”

Whatever the original inspiration, the song is truly motivated by the sound of nature, and the Bununs have passed down the song through generations, performing it only on important occasions.

As the name “Prayer for the Millet Harvest” suggests, the “Pasibutbut” is sung during the Millet Harvest Festival, which usually takes place each year from November to December. 

The song is meant to be a prayer for peace, good health, safety and a rich harvest for the family, and traditionally only adult males, usually 6 to 12 men, can participate in the singing - no women.

There are also strict qualifications for the participating tribesmen. Only the holy and pure, blessed ones are allowed to take part, which means no widowers, men with diseases, or men whose family have suffered accidents, can join in the singing chores.

To stay pure, instead of sleeping with their wives, the chosen ones must live in the shaman’s house for a short period before the singing takes place.

It is also important to note that the singing must be continuous, with no interruptions or pauses. During the singing, no off-key notes, sneezing or farting are allowed. Even those listening to the song cannot make a sound, lest it bring disgrace down on the ritual and affect the people’s health and the harvest for the coming year.

The Bununs believe that only by adopting the most solemn and conscientious attitude in singing the “Pasibutbut” will their deity “dihanin” be pleased and bless the tribesmen.  

A first encounter with “Pasibutbut”

The sacred ritual used to be exclusive to the Bununs tribe during the harvest festival, but now it can be viewed in a number of Bunun aboriginal tribes around Taiwan and is increasingly used as a tourism attraction.

I have had the privilege of witnessing the “Pasibutbut” two times so far, first at the Bunun Tribal Leisure Farm in Taitung’s Hongye Village some eight years ago when I was still a graduate student.

I was then a student counselor, responsible for leading a group of homecoming American-born Chinese high school students on a round-island tour of Taiwan during summer vacation.

Like all young high school students around the world, they were fun-loving and cheeky, and never really paid attention to anything we showed them about the beauty of Taiwan.

But during their stay at the Bunun Tribal Leisure Farm, where we were all invited to witness the holy “Pasibutbut” singing, these ABCs underwent a change, as if they were deeply amazed or even shocked, when they heard the beautiful and heavenly voices of a group of young Bunun tribesmen.

They stopped chatting and devoted their full attention to the heavenly voices. I too was stunned and astonished as I enjoyed singing that was truly the sound of nature.

Though it has been nearly a decade now, I still remember vividly how the Bunun singers slowly but steadily slid their voices under the lead of one chief singer, who started the pitch himself by humming, before two or three others joined him to thicken the pitch.

This was followed a third, fourth and fifth of a triad of singers, which was when you suddenly realized that the first pitch was still there and had already eased back up to the top.

In the meantime other singers were trying to take up the leading pitch, going from tone to tone, before all at once they raised the volume from soft to loud, and then louder, until they finally reached the climax at an amazingly high range.

That was the cue for the chief singer to signal to everyone that they were almost at the end of their range. He barked a short order and they knew they were coming to the end. Then when they finished, the men all held their heads up toward the sky as if they had just finished their most sacred piece.

Later I was told that in Bunun dialect, the word “Pasibutbut” literally means “to pull and drag.” The Bununs also call a tug of war “Pasibutbut.”

The name was perfectly befitting for the eight-part harmonic singing method, which puts a high degree of importance on the interaction between each of the singers.

Nine years later, during a trip to Ishigan Village or Double Dragon Village in Nantou County several months ago, I again had an opportunity to re-experience the piece that I had found unforgettable for a long period of time. 

After a long day’s bus ride, our small group of reporters finally arrived at the Double Dragon Community amid a pouring rain.

Tired and exhausted, we were surprised to find that the Bununs had prepared quite a reception for their visitors. The Bunun singers were waiting for us in the plaza in front of a small hostel, and they were all wearing tribal costumes which they had donned because they knew that a group of reporters was coming.

The only difference between this performance of the “Pasibutbut” and the one I had experienced eight years ago was that not all of the Bunun singers were men. Many of them were women and, more significantly, they were all elderly.

Though featuring much older members in the Bunun chorus, the second rendition of the “Pasibutbut” was still one of the most enjoyable parts of my three-day trip to Nantou.

Though all the singers were old, with many of them even in their 70s, their sound was still as pure as the sound of a waterfall or humming bees.

After chanting the “Pasibutbut” for a while, they put their arms around each other, formed a circle and started stepping to the right.

Under the lead of the chief singer, the pitch then started easing upward, then other voices gradually overlapped it and picked up in accompaniment, swirling around it until a unified driving force fused them together, finally ending in harmony.

The moment the song ended, the audience burst into spontaneous applause, including me, as we all knew that we had jointly witnessed voices from above - the voices that Professor Kurosawa witnessed some 60 years ago and the ones presented to a UNESCO conference in Paris in 1952, which ultimately changed the ideal of music, once and for all, and also helped promote Taiwan to the world.