Elders Drinking Song

As if your bones heard something familiar from before you were even born.

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That song is from the Amis (阿美族) people of Taiwan.

老人飲酒歌 or Elders Drinking Song is a traditional Amis chant, famously performed by Difang (郭英男) and Igay (郭秀珠) who were Amis from the Maran (馬蘭社) settlement.

The vocals were lifted straight from a 1988 recording of Difang and Igay singing during a French government-backed ethnomusicology project — meant for research. With EMI as the outsourced vault. EMI (Electric and Musical Industries), a commercial British label. Because even "non-commercial" academic recordings were often pressed to vinyl/CD by big labels, just for reach or preservation. EMI probably saw it as just another folk catalogue item.

The original singers never expected their voices to hit global charts — through Enigma.

Enigma is a German musical project founded in 1990 by Michael Cretu.

Aside from the nicking drama, Enigma (in their song, "Return to Innocence" — official single release: 4 January 1994) — which, embodies the enigma — actually showed this remarkable spiritual chant to the world. 🏆

Back then, since there was no detail about the melodious chant in the song, people assumed it was Native American chant. Well, they were not wrong in the slightest. That vibe we sensed? It's not coincidental. It's that deep, primal, ancestral tone that comes through in many indigenous vocal traditions across the world. Non-lexical syllables (like "hey ya ha oh") used to carry spiritual resonance, rather than language meaning.

It's not about style. It's about function:

to speak to spirits, honour ancestors, mark time, and remind the people who they are.

The 1988 recording — part of a French ethnomusicology project capturing indigenous Taiwanese vocal traditions — was almost certainly pure vocal / chant without modern harmonic accompaniment.

The above version in the video was released on 7 October 1998 by the Rock Records (Taiwan based) — complete with the beat, chording, ambient pads etc.

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The Dayak

The traditional attire of the Amis people looks like Dayak's ceremonial wear. The Dayak are indigenous to Borneo (Kalimantan).

Both feature:

• Bright reds, blacks, and whites in geometric patterns.
• Headgear with feathers or beads.
• Woven cloth wraps or sashes.
• Metal trinkets and symbolic embroidery.

That's no coincidence. The Amis are part of the broader Austronesian family — same migration routes that link Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, all the way to Madagascar and bloody Polynesia.

Same broad ancestral stock — but by the time their canoes docked in different lands, the terrain shaped the culture.

Amis — the Cultivators:

• Settled along the fertile eastern coastal plains of Taiwan.

• Naturally lent themselves to wet-rice farming, taro, millet, and fishing.

  ...lent themselves to wet-rice farming...

  Meaning, "due to their location, naturally fit into the role of farmers."

  It's a more idiomatic British-English phrasing. If it were irrational-English phrasing, that'd be... a bit off with bear footprints.

• Their spiritual life grew around seasonal cycles, fertility rites, and communal ceremonies (like Ilisin).
• Identity was forged in cooperation, land tenure, and ancestral lineage — not warfare.
• Their music: layered, harmonious, rhythmic chants — much more about belonging than battling.

Dayak — the Wildland Warriors:

• Deep Borneo — rainforests, rivers, and mountain highlands. Not farming paradise.
• They became forest hunters, semi-nomadic at times, expert in tracking, poison-tipped darts, and survival.
• Spiritual life reflects animism on high alert — every tree, every bone, every tattoo has a guardian or curse.
• Warfare was ritualised — headhunting wasn't just sport, it was cosmological bookkeeping.
• Their music: gongs, war cries, trance-like dances — it moves like a hunting party.

Borneo

The term “Borneo” is a colonial graft. The island itself never called itself that. Locals referred to it by regions or kingdoms:

• Kalimantan in the Malay world.

  Malay world = cultural-linguistic sphere where Malay language, customs, and influence historically spread. Including peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Riau archipelago, Kalimantan, Brunei, bits of Mindanao and Sulu (western coastal Philippines), bits of coastal Thailand and Cambodia (back in Srivijaya days), and so on.

• Banjar, Kutai, Brunei, Sarawak, Sabah — depending on which coast you were kicked onto.
• The Dayak never called it anything — it was just the world.

When the Spanish, Portuguese, and later the Dutch & English blokes showed up, they encountered the Bruneian Sultanate (a powerful coastal kingdom). They called the whole island "Burné" / "Bornei" / "Borneo", based on that one kingdom.

VOC & British cartographers adopted "Borneo" as the island-wide label. It has been that way until now. 🤦

Kalimantan comes from the Sanskrit Kalamanthana, meaning "burning weather" or "hot winds" — describing the equatorial heat.

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All in all, this beautifully-chorded Amis chant, it's not sadness. It's not nostalgia. It's recognition.

That, mate... is the proper sound of cosmos.