Renegade Rhymes: Rap Music, Narrative, and Knowledge in Taiwan by Meredith Schweig (review)

Reviewed by: Renegade Rhymes: Rap Music, Narrative, and Knowledge in Taiwan by Meredith Schweig Yuan-Yu Kuan (bio) Renegade Rhymes: Rap Music, Narrative, and Knowledge in Taiwan. Meredith Schweig. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology. xxiii + 247 pp., 18 halftones, 4 line drawings, music, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN: 9780226820590 (hardcover), $95.00; ISBN: 9780226819587 (paperback), $30.00; ISBN: 9780226820583 (e-book), $29.99. Amid escalating US-China tensions, Taiwan’s politically contentious status has taken center stage in international media discourse. Many media platforms, however, indirectly endorse the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) claim over Taiwan, often referring to it as a “renegade province”—terminology rarely used by the Taiwanese people (xvii). In her evocative music ethnography, Renegade Rhymes, Meredith Schweig problematizes this narrative by utilizing Taiwan’s vibrant rap music scene as a subversive lens as well as an intervention to foreground an emic perspective. Notably, Schweig’s personal affiliation with Taiwan as a “daughter-in-law of Taiwan” (13) offers a unique perspective that profoundly shapes her impassioned and intimate accounts, enabling her to advocate for Taiwan’s global visibility and audibility (179) within the anglophone world. Schweig’s extensive research (2009–20) investigates the sociocultural role of rap music as a strategic tool within the complex sociopolitical and geopolitical realities of postauthoritarian Taiwan following the lifting of martial law in 1987. Focusing primarily on rap events, recordings, social movements, and university extracurricular activities in urban and western Taiwan, Schweig asserts that the narrative ethos of rap, embodied in rappers’ performance practices and pedagogical ambitions, serves as a potent political intervention within Taiwan’s evolving democratic landscape. She suggests that their objective is to reconfigure epistemic hierarchies, power dynamics, and gender relations while shaping notions of Taiwaneseness and generating knowledge within a transformative context (1). This transformative power of rap music takes on even greater significance against the backdrop of Taiwan’s transition from a nation under authoritarian rule to a postauthoritarian state amid ongoing negotiations within a framework balancing neoliberalism and [End Page 163] democracy (11) while also dealing with the persistent threat of potential annexation by the PRC. In addition to presenting engaging ethnographic narratives, Renegade Rhymes skillfully integrates musical, textual, visual, and historical analyses throughout its structure, comprising five content chapters, a prologue, an introduction, and an epilogue. The book follows a thematic organization, with the content chapters divided into two distinct parts. Part 1, “Polyphonic Histories,” comprises two chapters that examine the introduction, emergence, adaptation, and articulation of rap music in Taiwan. Within these chapters, Schweig introduces three vernacular terms for “rap”—xiha (a Mandarin transliteration of “hip-hop”), raoshe (Mandarin for “rhapsodizing tongue”), and liām-kua (Hoklo for “song reading”)—highlighting the linguistic diversity inherent in the genre (20). Central to Schweig’s analysis is the recognition of individual creativity and agency as she investigates the dynamic process of historicizing, reshaping, and recontextualizing the definition of rap within the framework of local popular and traditional music genres. Moreover, Schweig explores the diverse perspectives of artists on the history of rap, revealing the genre’s ongoing revision and reimagination in relation to Taiwan’s local and global pasts. These perspectives are deeply intertwined with the cultural, political, and economic dynamics that shaped the nation’s transitional period toward democracy. In her compelling critique, Schweig rejects a rigid conceptual categorization of rap, proposing instead that its history in Taiwan is multifaceted and polyphonic and resists a singular and homogeneous definition. She presents rap as a “rich semiotic mode” capable of conveying diverse meanings, challenging readers to reconsider conventional understandings of the genre (61). Part 2, “Narratives and Knowledge,” consists of three chapters, each of which investigates distinct aspects of Taiwan’s rap scene. Chapter 3 deconstructs gender dynamics; chapter 4 examines the production of knowledge within the epistemological framework of Taiwan’s rap culture; and chapter 5 scrutinizes rap’s articulation as a political intervention and historiographical vehicle. The backdrop for these investigations is the sociopolitical landscape of Taiwan marked by the bensheng-waisheng sociopolitical divide, a bifurcation between early Hoklo and Hakka immigrants (benshengren) and the post-1949 mainland immigrants (waishengren) (6). The focus of Schweig’s...