Underground Music as Empowerment of Indonesian Migrant Workers in Taiwan

Principle Investigator：Muhammad Irfan, MA student, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (UST), NYCU

This paper explores the underground music movement among Indonesian migrant workers in Taiwan. The underground music brings the workers to blend in with the local community. Through music such as punk and metal, Indonesian workers in Taiwan are considered equal by Taiwanese punkers or metalheads. There are almost no boundaries between them. The underground community in Taiwan can enjoy the music of Indonesian workers and vice versa. This type of music unites and dissolves the differences between the two communities such as language and social class.
I focus the paper on Indonesian migrant workers' bands in Taiwan that are playing in the underground music areas. As long as I know, there are only two bands that play in this field recently. Southern Riot, the punk band from Pingtung, and Jubah Hitam, the metalcore band from Chiayi. 
The variables that I will describe are not only about music as a bridge between local communities and migrants, but also the effectiveness of music to empower them and became a tool to conveying their concerns. For this reason, I do not only analyze the relationship between local communities and migrants but also pay attention to the content of the lyrics that made by the Indonesian migrant workers bands.