Taipei, Sept. 26 (CNA) A free outdoor concert featuring local and foreign musical talents was staged in Taipei Saturday to commemorate late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who lost his life in 2002 while on assignment in Pakistan.
A total of 15 performers and groups took to the stage to present different genres of music, including folk, rock, blues, African, Latin-American, and Hakka folk music, according to the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), one of the co-sponsors.
The 14th Daniel Pearl Day of Music took place at the Taipei Hakka Cultural Park, drawing hundreds of local and foreign participants.
"This is the seventh year the AIT has been involved in this festival," said AIT director Kin Moy at the event. "We're happy to be here," he added.
As an outstanding reporter, Daniel Pearl "represented the American values that we share: the value of tolerance, the value of peace and the value of freedom of the press," Moy said.
Noting that Pearl was a musician himself, Moy said that "I think he'd love this kind of event."
Also attending the event was Moy's wife, Kathy Chen (陳舲舲), a former Wall Street Journal reporter. Although she did not know Pearl in person, but she recalled that Pearl was a popular colleague at the Wall Street Journal and also an excellent reporter.
This year's concert featured Golden Melody winner Ayugo Huang (黃連煜), the AIT said. The Taiwanese signer won the "Best Hakka Album" at the Golden Melody Awards in June with his album "Shan Ge Yi Tiao Lu" (山歌一條路).
Other performing groups included Afroholique, La Cumbia Del Sol, Red Cliff, Danubak, Shakaboom, Blind Acid Date, Soup Mother, Cosmic Inversion, Poor House, Kon Kon Ba, Flat Fives and Point22, the AIT said.
The music festival is held annually in honor of Pearl, who was also a musician. While working on a story in Pakistan as the South Asia bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, Pearl was kidnapped and beheaded by terrorists.
To commemorate his life, his musician friends and family launched the Daniel Pearl World Music Day in 2002 to spread a message of tolerance, hope and humanity. The annual event has grown to include 13,000 performances in more than 130 countries and areas, said the AIT.
(By Elaine Hou)
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