At CMJ, Taiwan Rocks the East Village

Three celebrated rock bands from Taiwan played in New York City for the first time on Wednesday night as part of the CMJ Music Marathon. Rock music, which was almost unheard of in Taiwan before 1987, has gained in popularity in the last 15 years as a generation of musicians who came of age under a more democratic government have looked to British and American bands, from Metallica to Radiohead, for inspiration.

The scene in Taiwan is beginning to produce interesting music.

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On the CMJ bill were 1976, Bearbabes and Echo, three well-established bands that are helping define the Taiwanese indie rock sound. They played at Dominion NY on Lafayette Street in the East Village and the crowd was filled with young Taiwanese expatriates and immigrants, most of whom were excited to see their home country’s rock stars play on the same New York stage. “It’s so hard to hear the three of them together,” said Julia Hsu, a 28 year-old from Taiwan.

1976 is a traditional four-piece outfit that plays smooth, tight rock with a minimum of onstage antics, inspired, they say, by British new-wave bands like the Smiths and the Cure. Their lyrics sometimes contain double entendres, touching on issues like the yearning for peace with mainland China. “Our songs are about the society we live in in Taiwan,” said the lead singer, Kai Chen, who wore a Smiths T-shirt. “We speak about politics in our love songs.”

Mr. Chen, who is 35, said he and the other members of his band felt like pilgrims to one of the holy cities in the history of rock. He wandered the East Village Wednesday afternoon and bought a Ramones T-shirt. He said he was hoping to meet members of the Strokes, and perhaps go to some concerts and see the city’s more storied performance spots. “For me, it’s a lot of sightseeing,” he said. “So much history here.”

Bearbabes, one of the young up-and-coming groups in Taiwan, played a more rough-edged set, adding some folk touches and the ethereal sound of a cello to the mix of bass, guitar and drums. Echo finished the concert with a solid set of psychedelic rock. The group’s frontman, Po Chang Wu, a 33-year-old former N.Y.U. student, said rock was a growing genre in Taiwan, where the mainstream pop music continues to be dominated by saccharine easy-listening music. “This last 10 years, our indie bands and our creative song writers are becoming more and more numerous,” he said. “It’s a time for us like the 1990s in the United States, when grunge hit.”