Samingad is an aboriginal

Taiwanese aborigines

Taiwanese aborigines is the term commonly applied in reference to the indigenous peoples of Taiwan. Although Taiwanese indigenous groups hold a variety of creation myths, recent research suggests their ancestors may have been living on the islands for approximately 8,000 years before major Han...

 Taiwanese

Music of Taiwan

Taiwan is densely-populated and culturally diverse, including a majority of Bensheng ren , a powerful faction waishengren who arrived with Chiang Kai-shek in the middle of the 20th century and the minority of aboriginal peoples.With the arrival of the KMT led Republic of China government in 1949,...

 pop

Pop music

Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

 singer and songwriter

Songwriter

A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...

. She is an ethnic Puyuma. In her native Puyuma language Samingad means "without equal". She was born October 2, 1977 in a Puyuma Township in Taitung County

Taitung County

Taitung County is a county in eastern Taiwan. The name means "Eastern Taiwan". Taitung County is also known as 後山 by many of the locals, meaning behind the mountains or the back mountains. Taitung is officially administered as a county of Taiwan, Republic of China.Taitung runs along the south east...

. She was discovered while singing in a restaurant, where she worked as a waitress. Her first album "Voice of Puyuma" was released with Magic Stone Records and received a Golden Melody Award

Golden Melody Award

The Golden Melody Awards is an annual Taiwanese music award, founded in 1990, presented by Government Information Office , Republic of China. It is usually presented in May, June or July each year and presented for music in Mandarin, Taiwanese, other Chinese dialects, and Taiwn's aboriginal...

for "Best New Artist" 1999. In 2001 she received a Golden Melody Award for "Best Dialect (Non-Mandarin Language) Female Vocalist" for her second album "Wild Fire, Spring Wind". Her music draws much of its inspiration from the Gospels, as well as from tales of the tribe's former agricultural and hunting lifestyle, and from the complex emotions triggered by Puyuma's struggles in Taiwan's contemporary society.