Pasibutbut of the Bunun

Pasibutbut – The Vocal Art of the Bunun Between Ritual and Resonance

In the fascinating world of what I refer to as →timbre overtones—a concept situated at the threshold of overtone singing—Pasibutbut holds a distinctive place. What might at first sound like polyphonic choral singing reveals itself, on closer listening, to be a refined interplay of overtone resonance. The vocal timbres don’t just harmonise—they interact, weaving a floating texture of shifting chords. Particularly intriguing is the striking resemblance to the free-form chant improvisations of Western overtone singing ensembles, as if these traditions had touched across space and time.

Pasibutbut originates from the Bunun, an Indigenous people of Taiwan traditionally known for their exceptional hunting skills. But internationally, they became renowned not for their bows and arrows, but for their eight-part vocal music, meticulously documented in 1943 by Japanese ethnomusicologist Takatomo Kurosawa in remarkable field recordings.

The song Pasibutbut, also known as the Prayer for the Millet Harvest, was originally a sacred ritual chant. The term roughly translates to “pulling and dragging”—a nod to the sonic structure, where the voices interlace like threads under tension. Only a select few were allowed to participate in this ceremony: pure, healthy, blessed men, who had recently observed sexual abstinence and whose families were free from recent misfortune or death.

Today, Pasibutbut is increasingly performed for tourists—often adapted, and not always sung by the Bunun themselves. What remains is a powerful acoustic testament to a culture that opens spaces with sound—ritual, spiritual, and musical.