From a city far from the capital, a quiet movement began to take shape.
Based in Taichung, ”EMERGE FEST” has grown from a local experiment into one of Taiwan’s most influential outdoor music festivals. At its core is ”Emerge Music,” a collective that has spent more than two decades nurturing the indie ecosystem from the ground up. Since launching a record label in 1999 and opening Taichung’s first live venue, ”Laonuo Live House,” in 2001, they have insisted on building culture where they stand—patiently, persistently, and outside the spotlight of Taipei.
The launch of ”EMERGE FEST” in 2019 marked a turning point. What began as a homegrown gathering now draws artists from across Asia, with Japanese acts becoming a familiar presence on its stages, and the festival emerging as a vital hub for regional exchange.
At the center of this story is Nuno, also known as Laonuo, the founder of ”Emerge Music.” Once a systems engineer juggling indie band life after military service, his unconventional path led him to plant the seeds of live house culture and festival-making in Taichung. That 25-year journey runs parallel to the rise of Taiwan’s indie scene itself—and today places Nuno among the key figures shaping Asia’s musical present.
Guided by the belief of “building bridges through kindness and vitality,” this interview traces what ”Emerge Music” has built so far, and looks ahead to the future Nuno continues to imagine.
INDEX
The Spark Behind Launching a Music Venue: Japanese Manga and a Glimpse of Tokyo
You founded a record label in 1999. Could you start by telling us how that came about?
Nuno: Before the 1990s, Taiwan didn’t really have dedicated live music venues. Most musicians performed in pubs, singing cover songs from overseas. But in the 1990s, more performance venues began to appear in Taipei, and singer-songwriters who wrote their own material started to emerge.
Nuno: After finishing my military service, I was performing in pubs as well. But I was inspired by Taiwanese bands who were playing original music, and that pushed me to start working as part of an indie band myself.
Through band activities, I made more friends from overseas. I began to think it would be exciting to bring great music from abroad into Taiwan and share it with people here. That idea led me to start a record label called ”GAMAA MUSIC,” which later became the foundation for what we do now.
So you were a band musician yourself from the beginning.
Nuno: Yes, I was always in metal bands. In the 1980s and 1990s, bands like Guns N’ Roses and Bon Jovi made their way into Taiwan, and later I was heavily influenced by Japanese bands such as X JAPAN and LUNA SEA.
Two years after founding the label, in 2001, you opened a music venue called ”Laonuo” in Taichung.
Nuno: In the early 2000s, Taiwan entered a downturn in CD sales, but at the same time, more and more live music venues were opening in Taipei. Around then, I visited Japan for the first time. I was struck by places like Shibuya and Shinjuku, where so many venues were clustered together in a single neighborhood.
Japan felt incredibly alive—people walking around carrying instruments, band members handing out flyers they had made themselves. It was exactly like the scenes I had seen in Japanese manga such as ”20th Century Boys,” ”BECK,” and ”Detroit Metal City (DMC).”
Seeing all of that convinced me that Taiwan, too, was heading into an era centered around live music venues. I felt there needed to be a base in central and southern Taiwan as well. That’s why I decided to open ”Laonuo” in Taichung — the first dedicated live music venue outside of Taipei.
Building a live music venue culture in Taichung couldn’t have been easy. Can you talk about the challenges you faced early on, and when things finally began to turn around?
Nuno: It was definitely hard at first [laughs]. I left behind a stable job as a systems engineer to pursue music, so my family was strongly against it.
I was basically living in hiding inside the venue — I couldn’t go home, and I had no money. I became close with the staff at the shops downstairs, and they would secretly share food that was about to be thrown away so I could get by [laughs].
So it really was a tough period.
Nuno: I lived in poverty for a long time. But at the same time, Taichung didn’t have any other live music venues back then. If people wanted to see shows, they had no choice but to come to us — so in that sense, it was actually easier.
In fact, the very first band to play at my venue was ”Fire EX.” At their first show, there were only two or three people in the audience [laughs].
Fire EX. are now well known even in Japan. So you were supporting them from their very early days.
Nuno: Around 2010, live music venues really started to take off, and things finally became viable as a business. ”Laonuo” was a small space, so I began planning our next step—opening a venue that could hold around 1,000 people.
But in 2011, a tragic fire broke out at a nightclub in Taichung. Many people lost their lives, and in response, the government imposed strict regulations. Every live music venue and club was inspected, shut down, or forced to close.
In 2011, a fire at the Taichung nightclub ”Jack Daniel’s” killed nine people, including customers and part-time student workers, and injured twelve others.
To survive that crisis, I realized we had to move beyond the walls of a venue. That’s when I decided to shift our focus toward outdoor music festivals.
