Taiwan Today

Taipei City-based National Taiwan Normal University is set to offer the nation’s first courses on the pop music industry, and plans to invite famous singers and groups such as A-Mei, Jody Chiang and Mayday to lecture. “Pop music has long been considered a sub-culture and hardly any university has offered formal training programs,” said Wen-Pin Hope Lee, a music professor who heads the NTNU Center of Public Affairs. “But pop music is already mainstream and universities should not ignore developments in the field.” Last year, NTNU opened a development office for research into Asian popular music with Lee at the helm. The office has been burning the midnight oil, collecting, categorizing, cataloguing and preserving Taiwan’s pop songs. “The industry has long suffered from a lack of scientific surveys,” Lee said. “In future, statistical analysis of trends and current conditions will be carried out. Understanding young people’s tastes is essential for boosting the industry.” On May 1, the office announced the results of a survey conducted among Taipei City’s high school students. Mayday was the most popular group with its songs “I Don’t Want to Leave You Alone,” “Cheers” and “Starry Sky” as the top three, while Hu Xia’s “Those Bygone Years”—the theme song of the movie “You Are the Apple of My Eye”—the best-known and most popular male solo. NTNU will begin offering the courses in February next year at the earliest, covering topics such as digital composition, lyric writing, singing and performance. Taiwan tertiary educational institutions have been diversifying course offerings in recent years. Taichung City-based Asia University, now in its 13th year, provides courses including art industry management, biotechnology, health care, medical cloud computing, semiconductors and recreation management. This approach demonstrates the value of tailoring courses to meet the needs of industry, and is one of the reasons for the institution’s recent inclusion in the Times Higher Education 100 Under 50—a ranking by the U.K.-based publication of the world’s top 100 universities under 50 years. Other Taiwan institutions on the list are Kaohsiung City-based National Sun Yat-sen University, at 40th, Taipei City-based National Taiwan University of Science and Technology at 42nd and National Yang-Ming University at 96th. (SDH)