E A S T A S I A N V O I C E S I N G L O B A L M U S I C S T O R I E S
I N T E R S E C T I O N A L P R I V I L E G E S , N E W
M I N O R I T I Z A T I O N S
East Asian Voices in Global Music Stories: Intersectional
Privileges, New Minoritizations
Wednesday, 7 August 2024
9.30am – 6.00pm 1 Bedford Square, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 3RF
Organisers: Shzr Ee Tan (RHUL) and Ken Ueno (UC Berkeley)
ABOUT THIS SYMPOSIUM
This symposium brings together emerging and converging strands of activity and critical thinking around transnational East Asian presences in unevenly globalised music and sounded scenes around the world. Building on a recent spate of academic meets and performances/ workshops themed on East Asian voices, including multiple panels on the theme at annual conferences of the Society for Ethnomusicology and American Musicological Association, as well as recent work in in the UK on Transpacific East Asia, Racialised Performance in Western Classical Music and Cultural Imperialism and the “New Yellow Peril”, we seek to make meaningful community together once more in expanding and intersecting scenes within musicology, ethnomusicology, performance studies, composition, and sound studies. We locate ourselves strategically beyond the scopes of Western art music and delve into shared global sounded histories, presences, communities, practices and futures. We ask challenging questions of ourselves and our friends/ colleagues and allies:
How are East Asian voices represented and co-presented in performance, academic and listening spaces in discourses and activities around sound and music, today?
How have stereotypes about East Asian performers/ scholars (eg as ‘automatons and robots’; as ‘model minorities’; as ‘rich international students paying high fees’; as ‘creative overachievers’; as 'mystical' Shakuhachi players; as ‘Violin/Tiger Mums’; as ‘'nerd-cool violinists'; as animestyled zither players, and more) changed over the past few decades? Looking deeper into historical presences, how have East Asian voices been ‘hiding in plain sight’, or ‘invisibilized’, or ‘refashioned’ and ‘re-launched’ , locally and globally, over time?
Drawing from the work of Koichi Iwabuchi (2002) and Chen Kuan-Hsing’s Asia As Method (2013), what does a recentering of globalisation look like from East Asian eyes and ears in 2023, given the asynchronous, layered and complex transnational experiences of different (and intergenerational) East Asian individuals and communities within and beyond East Asian territories and various diaspora?
How do East Asian music practitioners and researchers construct vastly-different identities of the Self, and identities of the Other in multiple scenes? How do East Asian musicians make sense of “the rest of the world”? What is the value in looking at a view of the sounded and musical world from exceptionalist standpoints of (for example) transnational China, Japan and Korea?
In changing politico-economic climates where East Asian constituents are now often seen as bearing new forms of privilege even as they remain minoritized in structurally-unequal systems, how is intersectionality understood and practised?
What are the inter-East Asian relationships and hierarchies in different (for example) transnational/ transpacific Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander worlds, and where do these interactions play out in sounded and musical worlds within unevenly
globalised contexts? How is musical solidarity enacted/ compromised in East Asian negotiations with, and responsibilities towards communities in the wider Black & Global Majority?
Expanding the intersectional scope even further, where do different East Asian voices figure in fast-changing debates on intergenerational notions of academic/ musical “progressivity”, “postcolonial trauma/anxiety”, current “hopes and fears”, musical decolonisation, and also debates on new minoritisations caused by environmental change and economic precarity?
Programme
9.30am – 11am: Keynote Panel 1 Plenary – Inter-East Asian perspectives
11am – 12.30pm: Break-out rooms
1a: Sinophone Diversities
2a: Representations/Institutional Affordances
3a: Contemporary/New Sonic Articulations
4a: Old/New Histories
12.30pm – 1.30pm: LUNCH
1.30pm – 3pm: Room 1b – Systemic and Real-life Challenges Today Room 2b – Transnational Politics, ‘Authenticity’ & Race
3pm – 3.30pm: TEA BREAK
3.30pm – 5pm: Keynote Panel 1c – New Musical Intersectionalities
5pm – 6pm: Wrap 1d – Paths Forward
*with thanks to RHUL PDA School, Open University and Music & Letters for funding contributions towards this event ** limited spaces are available for in-person attendance at RHUL Bedford Square. Please contact shzree.tan@rhul.ac.uk to reserve.
Conference Timetable
9.30 – 11am
Keynote Panel 1
PLENARY – InterEast Asian perspectives
Chair: Shzr Ee Tan
Surprise Item - Ken Ueno
Room managers: Shanika Ranasinghe/ Yuting Zhao
IN PERSON – Hedy Law, Shzr Ee Tan and guests
ONLINE
Jocelyn Clark
Hee Sun Kim
Xiao Mei
Mari Yoshihara
11am – 12.30pm Breakout Room 1aSinophone Diversities
Chair: Shelley
Zhang
Room manager: Shzr
Ee Tan/ Shanika Ranasinghe
IN PERSON
Ye Zihan
Tianyuan Zhao
Breakout Room 2a -Representations/ Institutional Affordances
Chair: Hee-sun Kim
Room manager: Yuting Zhao
IN PERSON
Zhang Ke ONLINE
Breakout Room 3aContemporary/ New Sonic Articulations
Chair: Alexander Cannon
Room manager: Joshua Wen ONLINE Wee Yang Soh
Breakout Room 4aOld /New Histories
Chair: Nikki Moran
Room manager: Xiaojing Li ONLINE
Samuel Cheney
Jiang Yuhan
Elina Hamilton
Yutong Zheng
Yawen Gong
Huilu Yu
Meng Ren
12.30pm – 1.30pm LUNCH
1.30 –3 pm
Room 1b – Systemic and Real-life
Challenges Today
Chair: Hedy Law (inperson)
Room manager: Shzr
Ee Tan/ Shanika Ranasinghe
IN PERSON
Meng Ren
Junseok De Back
Ryo Ikeshiro
Paroma Ghose
Gavin Lee
3pm - 3.30 pm Tea Break
3.30pm – 5 pm
Keynote Panel 1c
New Musical Intersectionalities
Chair: Roe-Min Kok
Room manager: Shzr
Ee Tan/ Shanika Ranasinghe
ONLINE
Hannah Hyun Kyong
Chang
Mu Qian
Nancy Rao
Amanda Hsieh
Kiku Day
Junkai Pow
Tiange Zhou/ Jia
Chai
Chi-Yin Lam
Chia-yin Hung
Nathanel Amar
William Spok
Jasmine Sun
Jia Deng
Xingyu Ji Gregoire
Bienvenu
Qiuli Tong
Room 2b –Transnational Politics, ‘Authenticity’ & Race
Chair: Eric Hung
Room Manager: Yuting Zhao
ONLINE
Xinyi Ye, James Gui
Hon Ki Cheung. Jim Yeh & Luming
Zhao
Runchao Liu
Mingyeong Son
Adiel Portugali
Garrett Groesbeck
Made Mantle Hood & Masaya Shishikura
Chat and ...
Wrap 1d – Paths Forward (in person)
Chair: Eric Hung
Shelley Zhang
Alexander Douglas
Roe-Min Kok
Alex Cannon
Meng Ren
Nikki Moran
Shzr Ee Tan
Dinner –
Doumo Japanese Restaurant 29 Tottenham St, London W1T 4RP. If you are not a keynote panellist/ advisory board member, you are still welcome to join us at your own expense. Book with Doumo: +44 20 7018 2352
Meeting Links
Room 1/a/b/c/d/e
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-
join/19%3ameeting_NTFhYWUwZTMtMmIyNi00Y2RjLWJmMmEtYjY4YTQ2ZjIwNjQy%40 thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%222efd699a-1922-4e69-b601108008d28a2e%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2254d6bd96-6e42-4127-a161330dbf649fb1%22%7d
Room 2/a
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetupjoin/19%3ameeting_OGJhNzdkMTUtMmE3Yy00YjEzLTg1YWUtMzVhM2QzZWI4NjJl%40t hread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%222efd699a-1922-4e69-b601108008d28a2e%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2254d6bd96-6e42-4127-a161330dbf649fb1%22%7d
Room 3/a/b/c/d
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-
join/19%3ameeting_MWQxZjIzY2YtZDBjNy00YTQ4LTk3OWEtZjA5OGUxYjFjMjMx%40thr ead.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%222efd699a-1922-4e69-b601-
108008d28a2e%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2254d6bd96-6e42-4127-a161330dbf649fb1%22%7d
Room 4
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetupjoin/19%3ameeting_NDVjMWY0YjAtZDJkZi00NTk5LThhMTktNjczMzhhMTdiZmM1%40th read.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%222efd699a-1922-4e69-b601108008d28a2e%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2254d6bd96-6e42-4127-a161330dbf649fb1%22%7d
OUR KEYNOTE PANELLISTS AND ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS
Alexander M. Cannon is an ethnomusicologist with research expertise in Vietnamese music and creativity studies. He is Associate Professor of Music in the Department of Music at the University of Birmingham and Principal Investigator of the ERC-selected and UKRI-funded project SoundDecisions. His monograph Seeding the Tradition: Musical Creativity in Southern Vietnam (Wesleyan University Press, 2022) won the RMA/CUP Outstanding Monograph Book Prize in 2023. He has further publications in Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Forum, Asian Music, and the Journal of Vietnamese Studies
Jocelyn Clark is an assistant professor at Pai Chai University in South Korea. She has published in academic journals such as The World of Music, Asian Musicology, and Perspectives on Korean Music. Her research interests include orality, music of place, contemporary ‘national music’ performance practices in Korea, China, and Japan, and how these practices are coming into the age of AI. She s engaged in long-term field research on sanjo and byeongchang. Korean traditional genres of which she is also an official government-licensed (in the Intangible Cultural Heritage System) practitioner. She commissioned and/or premiered over 30 new works for Korean gayageum.
Kiku Day is a shakuhachi player and ethnomusicologist – and a world traveler from Copenhagen, Denmark, who is working at the intersections of performance of traditional shakuhachi music, contemporary music, composition and improvisation, ethnomusicology, history, politics, meditation and writing. She is a founding member of the European Shakuhachi Society (ESS) for which she served as a chairperson 2009-2019. Together with Michael Soumei Coxall, she initiated the European Shakuhachi Summer School and Festival in 2006 – a festival which is held in a new country every year.
Hannah Hyun Kyong Chang is a Lecturer in Korean Studies at the University of Sheffield. Her research interests include transpacific and global music history; early Protestant music in Korea; and musical modernity and modernism in East Asia.
Alexander Douglas
A lecturer at both King’s College London and the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Alexander’s research identity began with music and theology before expanding to multiple issues constellating around philosophical and theological anthropology, aesthetics, epistemology, the critical medical humanities and race.
Amanda Hsieh is Assistant Professor in Musicology at Durham University. She is the winner of the 2021 Jerome Roche Prize and the 2023 Kurt Weil Prize. Her ongoing monograph project is tentatively entitled ‘The Japanese Empire’s German Art Music, 1910–1945’.
Eric Hung is a musicologist with extensive experience in non-profit management, and an Adjunct Lecturer in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. His academic research focuses on Asian American music and public musicology. Current projects include a book on trauma and cultural trauma in Asian American music and an edited volume on public musicology. His pedagogical project, “Incorporating Local Musics in the Undergraduate Music History Curriculum,” won the Teaching Award from the American Musicological Society. Hung is also an active pianist and conductor who has performed in Germany, Austria, Hong Kong, and Australia and throughout North America. Prior to joining the nonprofit world full-time, he was a tenured professor at Westminster Choir College of Rider University.
Hee-sun Kim has a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh. She is a former ICTMMEA chair and the Director of Division of Music Research at the National Gugak Center, and currently professor of ethnomusicology and Korean Studies at Kookmin University, Seoul, Korea and Executive Director of Jeonju International Sori Festival.
Maiko Kawabata is an award-winning musicologist and violinist educated at Cambridge University (B.A.) and the University of California, Los Angeles (Ph.D.). She joined the Royal College of Music in 2017 having previously held positions on the faculties of the University of Edinburgh, University of East Anglia, and the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Her main research interest is in the history of musical performance, with a focus on extremes of solo violin playing – convention-breaking styles and ideas such as virtuosity and unplayability.
Roe-Min Kok is a music historian with wide-ranging, interdisciplinary interests. She studies the history of the European family and domesticity, nineteenth-century notions of childhood and children’s music, the family of Robert and Clara Schumann, and music colonialism in global history (western art music in non-western/ postcolonial/ colonial settings, imperial music educational systems and decolonizing initiatives). Underlying her work is a fundamental curiosity about sociocultural frameworks through which music is created, received, understood, and discussed. She employs a wide assortment of methods ranging from philology and autoethnography to critical cultural theories on race, gender, and class in pursuing answers to the query: “To what questions can this musical work (or music phenomena) provide answers?”
Hedy Law is Associate Professor of Musicology and Acting Director of the School of Music at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests include eighteenth-century French spectacle, the French Enlightenment, music with Cantonese lyrics, and global music history.
Frederick Lau is an ethnomusicologist, flutist, and conductor whose scholarly interests include a broad range of topics in Chinese, Western, and Asian music and cultures. He has published widely on issues related to music and identity, nationalism, modernization, politics, globalization, diaspora, musical hybridity as well as Western avant-garde music. Lau has received numerous research grants from agencies such as the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Scholarly Communication with the PRC, Freeman Grants, and the German Academic Exchange (D.A.A.D.). He served as the former book review editor of the Yearbook for Traditional Music and is editor of a book series entitled Music and Performing Arts of Asia and the Pacific, University of Hawaii Press.
Nikki Moran is a Senior Lecturer in Music. Her work examines the social situation of musical performance and spans critical, theoretical and empirical research involving elite North Indian instrumentalists, jazz and free improvisers, and western classical ensembles and conductors. Her latest publications include articles on musical mind and imagination for Music & Science (SAGE) and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association (Cambridge Core), and a forthcoming co-authored chapter, ‘Interaction in Indian music: Connections and critical reflection’. Her current research addresses the function and nature of 'accompaniment' as a creative form of social interaction, based on detailed musical ethnographies of expert accompanists.
MU Qian is an editor at RILM International Centre. Born in Tianjin, China, Mu received his PhD in ethnomusicology from SOAS, University of London, with a dissertation on music and meaning in Uyghur Sufism. His publications appeared in Central Asian Survey, European Journal of Musicology, and The Routledge Companion to Ethics and Research in Ethnomusicology Everyone listen close Wanp-wanp jangl kap, a CD he recorded and produced of the polyphonic songs of southwestern China’s Dong/Kam people, was selected by the Transglobal World Music Chart as the Best Asia & Pacific album of the 2019–2020 season. Mu also organizes international tours for Chinese musicians and hosts serial radio shows on BBC to introduce Chinese music.
Meng REN is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and lecturer of ethnomusicology at the International Centre for Music Studies at Newcastle University. Meng received his PhD degree in ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s degree in international higher education from New York University.
Nancy Yunhwa Rao has produced award-winning research on a range of topics, including gender and music, sketch studies, music modernism, cultural fusion in music, racial representations, and the music history of early Chinese Americans. Her publications have provided innovative analytical approaches to cross-cultural music, and enhanced public discussions about cultural encounter in music. Through her scholarship, as well as teaching, she has promoted diversity and advanced knowledge and dialogue about the complexity of diversity issues in music scholarship.
Shzr Ee TAN is a Reader and ethnomusicologist/performance studies researcher (with a specialism in Sinophone, Southeast Asian and Indigenous geocultures) at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is committed to decolonial work and EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) practice in sound studies and the performing arts, with interests in how race discourses intersects with new digitalities, geopolitical shifts in power, and recent debates on climate awareness, multispecies thinking, changemaking, and precarity. Shzr Ee is also Vice Dean of EDI for the School of Performing and Digital Arts at Royal Holloway
Ken Ueno, is a composer, vocalist, improviser, and sound artist. His music celebrates artistic possibilities which are liberated through a Whitmanesque consideration of the embodied practice of unique musical personalities. Much of Ueno’s music is “person-specific” wherein the intricacies of performance practice is brought into focus in the technical achievements of a specific individual fused, inextricably, with that performer’s aura. His artistic mission is to champion sounds that have been overlooked or denied so that audiences reevaluate their musical potential. Ueno’s artistic mission is to push the boundaries of perception and challenges traditional paradigms of beauty, and champion the talents of specific performers.
XIAO Mei is a professor and director of the Research Institute of Ritual Music and the Asian-European Music Research Centre at Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She is president of the Association for Traditional Music in China, EB member f the Institute of China Uyghur Classical Literature and Muqam and editor of Asian European Music Research Journal and was an International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) Executive Board member (2011-2019). Her research encompasses minority music in China ecomusicology, shamanic music, organology, audiovisual archiving, and intangible cultural heritage.
Mari Yoshihara is Professor of American Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi and Professor at the Center for Global Education at the University of Tokyo. She is the author of Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism (Oxford, 2003), Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music (Temple, 2007), Dearest Lenny: Letters from Japan and the Making of the World Maestro (Oxford, 2019), as well as numerous books in Japanese. She is currently working on a follow-up research on Asians and Asian American in classical music and also on a social and cultural history of piano lessons in Japan. From 2014 to 2024, she served as the editor of American Quarterly, the journal of the American Studies Association.
Shelley Zhang is a musician, creative writer, President of the Association for Chinese Music Research, and Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Rutgers University. Her scholarly work examines issues of migration, citizenship, and race, with a particular focus on the transnational careers of Chinese musicians in Western art music within the context of the one-child policy. Her interdisciplinary work explores the potentially intimate relationships between late capitalism and the performing arts, and seeks to illumine understudied histories through ethnographic and archival methods. She has received funding from Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Wolf Humanities Center, amongst others.
CONVERSATIONAL PROMPTS (ALPHABETISED)
Nathanel Amar (Breakout Room 3a)
French Center for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC), Hong Kong
I would like to talk about the recent surge of touring abroad by Chinese indie rock bands. After three years of COVID restrictions, Chinese bands have been able to tour again the world – mostly East Asia, Europe, Australia and the US. The recent multiplication of international tours by Chinese indie rock bands is not solely explained by the end of COVID restrictions. The three seasons of the talent TV show “The Big Band” (乐队的夏天, in 2019, 2020 and 2023), produced by iQiyi (also responsible for “The Rap of China” 中国有嘻哈) have made rock and roll more popular than ever in China. For the conference, I would like to examine the link between the three seasons of “The Big Band” and this recent surge of popularity for Chinese indie rock bands. If indie rock was mostly confined in the underground these past decades, the TV show has made this genre accessible to the general public. As for hip-hop, this recent popularization comes also with risks: the more a subculture is visible, the more it must be controlled by official institutions. Bands have to censor their lyrics, their live performances are tightly watched by the authorities, and they can be caught up in international controversies when travelling abroad. We can thus divide Chinese indie-rock bands into two categories: those who gained international recognition and are invited to perform abroad after The Big Band, as Wutiaoren (who were invited to speak at Harvard University during their US tour) or Re-TROS, and those who face difficulties after their newfound notoriety, as Young Dan 回春丹, whose Taiwan concerts were cancelled after they published a controversial message on Taiwan international status.
Elina G. Asato Hamilton (Breakout Room 4a) University of Hawai'i, Mānoa
I am interested in participating in discussions that bring more East-Asian composers of "classical music" into the Western classical music history curriculum. I focus on Japanese musicians specifically because of my linguistic abilities and personal experiences of having been trained in classical music in Japan. Like many, I see the decades that span the late 19th and early 20th century to be pivotal moments toward globalization of music and have been developing ways in which we can include the many East Asian musicians who contributed to European-style music into the college music history curriculum since 2017: first at the Boston Conservatory and now at UH Mānoa. One way I have expanded the historical narrative is through a discussion of conservatories as institutions of significance, raising the importance Shanghai Conservatory and Tokyo University of the Arts to stand alongside those in the Western world as participants in a global and political agenda that was driven by colonial objectives. Another is through understanding the historical significance of large music festivals or world expos in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as moments of ethnographic study of Western societal norms by East Asian participants and officials. I have designed individual courses for entire semesters and have developed individual lectures where composers, such as Yamada Kōsaku and Claude Debusy, can be introduced in the same hour. I would be happy to share my successes and the inevitable pitfalls I have encountered in this
journey. I hope to find others who are doing similar types of teaching within the classroom and share sources and pedagogical methodologies. Complications for teaching include, but are not limited to, accessibility of material, especially since much of the literature is not available in English and scores remain challenging to get a hold of, though I have found that there is plenty to offer effective courses, at least at the undergraduate level. My work on diversifying the curriculum has frequently been touted as not coming from a point of diversity (because it is primarily a European subject?) and has been rejected by the field numerous times. I would like to discuss ways to foster an inclusion of East-Asian musicians and their work within the broader field of musicology so that it does not remain marginalized but stand where it should: as a significant contributing factor to 20th century music history.
Grégoire Bienvenu (Breakout Room 3a) Sorbonne
Nouvelle University
My PhD research mainly questioned how young Chinese musicians engaged with global music flows and localised them in a creative way. I am now prolonging this work through a postdoc study about how Chinese popular music actors are trying to develop their career abroad, echoing 2000’s Jiang Zemin’s famous “going global strategy” (走出去战略). The main questions I am tackling, and I would like to bring in this IASPM event are the following:
- In the post-pandemic era, what are the strategies adopted by Chinese musicians to “make it abroad”?
- Are there previous successful popular music exports from China, which are they and how did these happen?
- Given the fast-paced development of the music industry in mainland China and the size of its market, is going global even an objective for Chinese artists?
From my previous observations and my own experience in the music industry between China and France, Chinese popular music faces many shortcomings to enter the international, still US-driven, mainstream music flows. Several attempts launched after the pandemic demonstrate that there is a desire from Chinese artists to gain international recognition. But the publicised successes of the few international tours hide the fact that they mostly rely on the vast diaspora settled all over the world and struggle to reach the ears of a more general audience. Could this change in the future? To discuss this question, my colleague Nathanel Amar and I thought about a panel that could be entitled “Chinese popular music going global - perspectives and limits” and would gather some specialists of different Chinese popular music styles. If most of us are spread over the world, I could very likely attend this conference in person to coordinate our discussion.
Samuel Cheney (Breakout Room 4a)
University of Edinburgh
I am primarily interested in attending this conference because of the opportunity to listen to the perspectives of other discussants. As a cultural historian of the British empire and its encounter with China, I am keen to widen my understanding of how the racializing discourses
and paradigms that surrounded Chinese music and musicians in Britain across the Victorian and Edwardian periods may still influence musicians and music scholars today. That being said, if invited to speak, I hope that I can offer some historical perspectives derived from my research about the long historical precedents for many of the stereotypes of East Asian performers cited in the conference ‘Call for Participation’. I would also be keen to show how the widely-maligned figure of ‘Chinese music’ possessed a wide variety of (often counterintuitive) functions in British imperial culture. Alongside contributing to the racialisation of Chinese people in British minds, music also undermined British travellers’ imperial ‘ways of seeing’ in China and was accommodated into cosmopolitan (or, imperial) British musical identities in the early-twentieth century. Although I primarily focus on historical representations of East Asian musicality, within a broader perspective of British imperial history, I nonetheless hope that I can offer some small insights to other attendees while learning from them too.
Hon Ki Cheung (Breakout Room 2b)
University of Texas at Austin
My current research focuses on the Chinese musical representations in Chinese American composers, specifically those who lived through the Cultural Revolution as teenagers and eventually found themselves finishing their doctorates at Columbia in the early 1990s. I am thinking about them as both the racialized and the racializer in the transnational musicking process.
This generation of composers has garnered much international attention for their “individualistic” and “authentic” depiction of Chinese folk images in their music while fully embracing interculturality, with scholars focusing on how they represented Chinese folk music or images in a highly Westernized, post-tonal soundscape. However, similar to Chen (2013), who analyzed the narratives and motivations of aligning Han Taiwanese with the Southern Asian region, the Han composers I study use minority and exotic rural images to depict Chineseness, while the people behind these cultures are often seen as inferior even in the composers’ narratives. At the same time, I found the term “folk songs” to be an ambiguous word with a double meaning folk songs that have been sinified and those manipulatable, pentatonic, cliché-based folk music gestures. While there is already much to unpack in this process in the Chinese context, I’m more intrigued by how such different aspects of Chinese culture are homogenized for their audiences. While they have inherited the legacy of socialist nationalism and the post-socialist discourse on “rescuing” folk cultures from the rural “roots,” they also possess the agency to depict and mediate facets of Chinese culture in the concert space. If I am chosen to participate in the conference, I would love to collectively think through such complex issues in their identity expressions, in which their voices are mediated by the long modernization process in twentieth-century East Asia and the highly capitalist and elitist American art-making social sphere.
Junseok de Back (Room 1b)
SOAS/University of Westminster
As a practitioner of Hip-Hop music and culture, I have always gotten flak for being Asian. This is something that to this day has held my career as a Hip-Hop artist back severely, even after landing a production deal in the U.S. with CMG Records. I am not the only one facing these kinds of obstacles: In LA, 88 Rising was founded because there was no platform for East Asian talent so they created their own. It is necessary, but also feels wrong. Asians have been a big part of Hip-Hop culture from the start but are denied time and time again. We need to be part of it just like Cypress Hill and Fat Joe are part of it. Instead, we only got Jin and that didn’t last very long. All others reached in sideways, like Jay Park who had to forge his own path before Roc Nation signed him. This needs to change.
Jia Deng (Breakout Room 3a)
China Conservatory of Music
This project examines the evolution of curatorial practices in the Sound Art Museum (Beijing, China), the first museum of its kind in the world. The Sound Art Museum integrates sound, sculpture, painting, installation art, and text to trace the history of sound art as a field that is distinct from both music and the visual arts. My project will focus on the museum’s development during the past ten years, a period in which its exhibitions have explored new forms of cultural memory and expression. These include investigations into the imagined past through the use of static, silent objects (‘sound carriers’) and the creation of narratives that are triggered by dynamic, sounding objects.
The contrast between these two poles the ‘static’ and the ‘dynamic’ can be illustrated by two distinct exhibitions and sets of works. In the exhibition “Beijing Sounds and Life” (Laobeijingshenghuo, 老北京声活), the audience seems to be placed in a domestic courtyard in Beijing. They encounter various objects from Beijing’s past displayed in glass cases, including “pigeon whistles” (Geshao, 鸽哨) and peddlers’ clappers. These antique objects, silently displayed, may inspire imaginary soundscapes of Beijing at the beginning of the 20th century. Other recent exhibitions at the museum have centered more on contemporary experience by presenting sounding objects within the exhibition space. For instance, the artist Yin Yi’s sound installation Waves uses air blowing through a suspended household electric fan to blend the senses of touch and hearing and evoke the seaside in the artist’s hometown (Qingdao, Shandong). Yin Yi uses air as a medium that connects space and time and that links physical space to representational space. This treatment of sound as an integral material component of the work, and not merely as a supplement or extension of the visual, is illustrative of more dynamic and narrative approaches to sound art.
Between this polarity of the ‘static’ and the ‘dynamic,’ there is a broad range of differing approaches to the sonic, visual, tactile, and textual elements available to sound artists. Through research into the museum’s current exhibitions, extensive archives, and reviews, and through interviews with artists, curators, and Qin Siyuan (the co-founder of the museum), this project will analyze how particular artists, works, and exhibitions have used these diverse media to explore Chinese cultural memory and contemporary life. It will also examine the role of the museum as a social institution that mediates and constructs narratives of the development of sound art itself.
Paroma Ghose (Room 1b)
Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, Munich
My postdoctoral research looks at postcolonial South Korea and how the burgeoning global popularity of its pop culture is evolving in the midst of a vacuum of cultural cognizance. South Korea’s K-pop, a product of a postcolonial state, has challenged the ‘West’s’ global, cultural dominion in an unprecedented manner. Predominantly apolitical, K-pop’s international reach and influence runs parallel to its racially and culturally prejudiced reception by cultural commentators in the West. Indeed, current geopolitical norms, defined by past, unequal power relations (colonialism, conflict, trade, globalisation, etc.) and their resultant cumulative prejudice, still govern the terms of these encounters. Meanwhile, South Korea has inadvertently become an aspirational standard for other postcolonial countries, which are turning their cultural (and political) gaze from West to East. In so doing, they have evinced historical prejudices and their continued circulation, revealing a shift from dominance through political salience, to power through cultural sonority. I am intrigued by the changing direction of the global cultural gaze, its geopolitical implications, and what this can tell us about a world we have labelled ‘postcolonial’, but which continues to move within the ideological norms bequeathed to us by centuries worth of Western hegemony. The rise of K-pop as the apolitical and unexpected representation of a postcolonial state that no longer regards itself as subaltern therefore opens a fascinating set of questions: Is South Korea the ‘new West’? Or does it ascendance to the global cultural pivot represent a larger, structural change for the way that the world thinks, behaves, and listens? These are uncomfortable but important questions that I would very much like to reflect upon with fellow researchers, probing into the decolonisation of knowledge in a world that is not yet postcolonial.
Yawen Gong (Breakout Room 1)
Peking
University
In the realm of Chinese sound art, Chunyang Yao’s piece ‘Her/e’ stands out distinctly. She blends Naxi folk songs with field recordings of streams from Lijiang to explore the physical and emotional dislocation and return of a minority woman long separated from her homeland. ‘Her/e’ illustrates her nostalgia in the modern world through the interplay of sound and body, delving into the potential of sound art to express cultural identity.
Following that, the discourse shifts to how different scholars perceive sound studies. Christoph Cox contends that sound art breaks traditional barriers, fostering a metaphysical engagement with identity through abstract and spiritual experiences. On the other hand, Pauline Oliveros emphasizes the importance of the body in sound art, while Ako Mashino highlights the corporeality of sound, viewing it as a crucial vessel for expressing cultural identity.
I believe that sound art research cannot simply borrow from traditional music studies or electronic music. Firstly, Lau argues that 'East-West' musical pieces for their lack of discernible Chinese musical traits, deeming them fundamentally Western despite their claims of invoking Chineseness. Additionally, Lau’s focus gives little attention to Chinese
sound art. Secondly, Bob Ostertag in 2002 pointed out a major critique of electronic music: the absence of the performer's body, which he considers key to the success of art.
Therefore, I recognize the interpretive openness of sound art as a potent medium for identity exploration. I argue that Cox’s sole emphasis on metaphysical engagement can be restrictive. The physical presence in sound art is essential as it enables artists to dynamically express their identities. I will investigate whether sound art, especially through bodily engagement, can transcend traditional identity categories like nationality and gender, thus creating more complex personal identities and providing a deeper, more nuanced expression than music.
Notes
Chunyang Yao：An experimental musician and sound improviser from the Naxi ethnic group in Yunnan. She is an exceptionally rare artist who merges Chinese ethnic minority music with electronic ambiance, noise, sound art, and musique concrète. The influential British avantgarde music magazine "Wire" has featured her in a special report.
Naxi：An ethnic group indigenous to southwestern China, primarily in Yunnan (including Lijiang) and Sichuan provinces. Naxi culture is one of the most distinctive and well-preserved among China's ethnic minorities.
Garrett Groesbeck (Breakout Room 2b)
Wesleyan University
The topics raised by the organizers resonate deeply with questions I am currently exploring through my dissertation research and forthcoming publications. My proposed topics are linked by the concept of institutional "affordances" (DeNora 2000) which guide and help to shape students' relationships to music and East Asia. -In contemporary music higher education, what kinds of skills are considered essential to become a "composer" or a "performer," and how might this binary set up potential conflicts around who "creates" music and who "interprets" it? -Which countries, cities, or institutions are framed as the ideal places to study particular kinds of music, and in what capacity ("exchange student," "international student," "researcher")? -In what ways does the need to maintain a full orchestra, choir, and wind ensemble shape music department priorities? -Which musical figures from East Asia are given place of prestige in music department curricula, and for what reasons? These questions are shaped by my experiences as a student in North America and Japan, during which I was "oriented" (Ahmed 2006) toward Japanese music in particular ways, as well as extensive conversations with colleagues and collaborators from/in/through East Asia. Ultimately, I imagine future music education systems that are premised not on extractive models of information- and tuition-gathering, but on a "radical politics of care" (Romero et al. 2023) with regards to students, minoritized voices, and others who occupy fraught positions in the current global music academe.
James Gui (Room 2b)
Colombia University
I don't have a clear topic idea, but I just want to attend the conference. I am less interested in discussing the representation of Asian musicians and more interested in how inter-Asian musical circulations are embedded within overlapping structures of empire. I am thinking in particular about the world order in Asia that arose alongside Cold War alignments; for example, how can we think through the musical legacies of South Korean participation in the Vietnam War, when Korean "consolation performers" accompanied soldiers to the battlefield? Are there ways to think about Asian adaptations of Western popular styles rock, hip hop, techno that goes beyond celebrations of hybridity and so-called "resistance"? What new insights can sound in particular, as opposed to text or visual culture, say about shifting geopolitical allegiances and the afterlives of the Cold War?
Made Mantle Hood (Breakout Room 2a)
Tainan National University of the Arts
In what ways have Indigenous explanatory models been marginalised in performing arts and displaying Indigeneity in Southeast Asia within broader Inter-Asian contexts? How have nation-state narratives marginalised Indigenous ontologies about space, place and land through music festivals?
Chia-Yin Hung (Breakout Room 2a)
Royal Holloway, University of London
In contemplating the conversation surrounding our discussion topic, I am struck by the profound implications of my personal journey as a Taiwanese and ‘Chinese’ music performer, now embarking on a path as an indigenous decolonial women researcher. My experience in London has illuminated the complex and often precarious positionality inherent in these intersecting identities, particularly from a global perspective. As I navigate the bustling metropolitan landscape, I am constantly reminded of the need to negotiate silence on politically sensitive topics, a skill that has become indispensable in my academic and artistic pursuits. In our dialogue, I hope to delve into the nuanced challenges and opportunities presented by this multifaceted identity. How can I effectively balance my roles as a performer and a researcher, while honouring my ancestral heritage and commitment to decolonial scholarship? What strategies can we employ to amplify the voices of marginalised communities, particularly within the realm of indigenous music research? Moreover, I am eager to explore the intersections of culture, power dynamics, and representation, recognising the potential for transformative dialogue and collective action. Yet, amidst these hopes, I also harbour fears – fears of perpetuating colonial narratives, of unintentionally silencing marginalised voices, and of navigating the complexities of identity in an increasingly polarised world. However, it is through open and honest conversation that I believe we can confront these fears, cultivate understanding, and work towards a more inclusive and equitable future.
Ryo Ikeshiro (Room 1b)
City University of Hong Kong
Sound Practice – Inter-East Asian relationships and hierarchies in Hong Kong and East and Southeast Asia For the past several years, I have been based in Hong Kong where I am involved in what may be described as sound practice – used loosely to include sonic art, sound art and non-commercial forms of creative practice involving sound – as a practitioner, an educator and a researcher. There has been a recent emergence of sound practice from East and Southeast Asia which counters the Western-centric history and canon, but its uneven development mirrors inequalities within Asia and its own colonial past. Due to its noncommercial nature, sound practice’s dependence on public arts funding and higher education is particularly significant which offers both opportunities and pitfalls in its future development and possibilities for its decolonialisation. I would like to contribute to the topic of inter-East Asian relationships and hierarchies within the field of sound practice and in its relation to academia. For a number of reasons, universities which are not necessarily the highest ranked (including my own) tend to be more associated with sound practice, through their emphasis on interdisciplinarity and/or technology in lieu of more traditional approaches. Under pressure to climb university rankings, such institutions in Hong Kong may adopt strategies related recruitment and research which reinforce hierarchies based on Western models in the region, which may also be reflected in related settings for sound practice. In amongst all of the above, I am deeply aware of my somewhat privileged status through my Western upbringing and education and Japanese identity as well as my role in this mechanism. I would like to share my observations and efforts to navigate and contribute to the complex scene of sound practice.
Xingyu Ji (Breakout Room 3a)
Peking University
In discussing Question 5, I hope to delve into how East Asian composers incorporate diverse cultures into their music. Composers worldwide are experimenting with combining local musical elements with Western traditions, breaking down the barriers between different musical cultures. This endeavor not only facilitates cultural exchange but also helps composers redefine or express their cultural identities on the global stage. This process is considered a means of identity articulation. Particularly in East Asia, many composers show keen interest in this. For instance, Chinese-American composer Tan Dun frequently integrates distinctive Chinese cultural elements with Western music in his works. Although Tan Dun has discussed his individualistic identity in public, academic evaluations of him remain mixed. From a post-colonial perspective, some scholars with Chinese backgrounds within the Anglo-American academic sphere extensively discuss the Chinese cultural traits in Tan Dun's compositions. American scholar John Corbett argues that Tan Dun is shaping his "Orientalism". Similar phenomena are common in the works of composers from other East Asian nations, such as Japan and South Korea. For example, Korean composer Hae-Sung Lee regards Korean instruments as symbols of identity due to their unique capacity to convey individual, collective, and external sentiments. Scholar Hee Sook Oh considers this as part of the process of identity articulation.
From the dual perspectives of production and reception of East Asian intercultural musical works, this article will explore the conflicts and harmony in these interactions. As scholar
Christian Utz pointed out, finding a balance between recognition and critique of cultural "self" and "other" is a significant challenge in shaping contemporary East Asian musical compositions. Given the global impact of intercultural musical works and the infusion of Chinese music into Western musical culture, this article will also explore the aesthetic significance of fusion and present a new perspective, arguing that intercultural integration is the most crucial element in dialogues between various cultures.
Yuhan (Jade) Jiang (Breakout Room 4a)
University of Edinburgh
I would like to discuss the idea of musical progressivity and postcolonial trauma in the case of jazz in China. The introduction of jazz to China in the 1920s brought with it conflicting perceptions: on the one hand, it was seen as a form of spiritual pollution, while on the other, it was viewed as a progressive Western influence capable of modernizing Chinese music. This dual imagination continues to shape attitudes towards jazz in contemporary China. In the context of Chinese higher education, jazz is primarily regarded as musical knowledge and stylistic elements to enrich popular music production. However, certain jazz musicians attribute a deeper value to jazz, viewing it as the foundational underpinning for all contemporary music, extending beyond just pop music to encompass various musical forms apart from classical music. This perspective reveals the association between the West and modernity, perpetuating a perceived dichotomy between the advanced and scientific West and the supposedly traditional and lagged behind China. On the other hand, the approach and utilization of Western cultural forms through "modern" and scientific methods for nationalist purposes to modernize contemporary music in China is coupled with a resistance to the embedded cultural connotations of jazz. In this case, jazz is seen as an advanced musical tool rather than an African American cultural form. This "imitation" or “mimicry” of Western modernity may actually signify an alternative form of modernity, shaped by an occidental imagination from the Chinese perspective.
Chiying Lam (Breakout Room 2a)
University of Southampton
As an individual who embraces the complexities of identity, There is always a fear - a fear stem from a historical backdrop of marginalization, discrimination, and stereotypes perpetuated by societal norms. Yet, within this vulnerability lies a profound strength an acknowledgment of the under-represented voices and narratives that deserve recognition. In navigating this duality, I have adopted two distinct names, each embodying a facet of my identity. I am 'Chiying' whenever I need my Asian voices to stregthen me. I am 'Gigi' when I confront societal expectations while embracing the multifaceted nature of my being. This act is not just about self-preservation; it's about reclaiming agency and carving out space in a world that often seeks to confine. We should embraces dissensus among East Asian Voices as well.
Gavin S. K. Lee (Room 1b)
Soochow University
I would like to talk about the ways in which “theory” actually makes certain segments of East Asian populations invisible, by privileging one population over another, and this process is fundamental to the very process of theorizing that is inherited from Euro North America. Theorizing is a process that regards East Asian peoples as fodder for theoretical value, raising up populations that fit with the theory, and excluding others who don’t. Intra-Asian studies de-emphasizes East Asians caught in Western circulations. At least some global music historians de-emphasize peoples in relatively insular periods or who are relatively less cosmopolitan. At least some theorists of global modernism regard East Asian avant-gardists as colonial mouth pieces. At least some definitions of global musicology de-emphasize actual East Asian researchers (contemporary academic figures) and define it as global historical circulations instead (historical figures). At least some decolonial theorists disregard coloniality beyond settler colonialization, refusing to recognize the persistence of cultural colonization and epistemic colonization the former of which (according to Kuan-Hsing Chen) includes Taiwan’s Club 51 which wants Taiwan to be the 51st US state; the latter of which includes the privileging of the very theories such as Intra-Asian studies or Transpacific studies that include some East Asians while excluding other East Asians. What these theories do is create a sieve comprising of intersecting lines of theories, which determines which specific East Asian populations get envoiced, and which others remain inadvertently silenced. There’s a problem with theory inherited from Euro North America, for whom it is maybe not that important that the audibility of some East Asians is predicated on the silence of other East Asians. (p.s. How many of the participants are actually based in East Asia?)
Runchao Liu (Room 2b)
University of Denver
I would love to join a panel of discussants to exchange ideas on the transnational cultural politics of aural racialization through popular music genres (as in non-classical) by considering the various use and (re)presentation of racially charged sonic symbols in both commercial and less/non-commercial cultural spaces. What I would like to contribute to this conversation will focus on the competing processes of hearing and unhearing racial identities through examining the implications of the re-articulation and localization of "the oriental riff" in East Asia – a musical motif representative of the heritage of musical orientalism dating back to the nineteenth-century fantastical musical plays in the U.S. and the U.K. and popularized throughout contemporary mediascapes, including but not limited to popular music, operas, films, video games, social media, and cartoons. In addition to discussing how the adoptions and adaptations of a Western imagination of Asia are employed for a local audience, I would also like to use this opportunity to reflect on the ways the re-articulation of the oriental riff in Asia, along with the rise and circulation of Asian popular cultures on a global scale, intersects with, differs from, and complicates the colonialist roots of orientalism, discourses of decoloniality, and transnational cultural politics. Some musical examples I would like to discuss include MC Hotdog’s “Han Liu Lai Xi” (trans. “Korean Wave Invasion” 2001), Shan-Wei Chang’s “He Quan” (trans. “Crane Style Boxing” 2003), Cyndi Wang’s “Jie Mao Wan Wan” (trans. “Curved Eyelashes” 2005), and “Xing Zuo” (trans. “Astrology” 2007) by Leehom Wang. Most of these musicians are of Taiwanese descent. I
would love to learn from fellow discussants/audiences about comparative insights and examples.
Yuhui Lu Univeristi Malaya
In discussion, I am eager to explore the concept of cultural hybridity exemplified by the Johor Bahru Chingay in Malaysia and the Teochew Qinglong Temple Fair in China. Both events feature 'The Procession of Deities,' a profound expression of community, spirituality, and celebration originating from China's southeastern coastal traditions. These events, with their vibrant parades, performances, and prayers, serve as a dynamic canvas displaying the interplay of tradition and adaptation.
My primary aim is to unravel the layers of cultural integration within these festivals, examining how they've maintained their core values while adapting to local contexts over time. I am curious about how these practices, particularly the Johor Bahru Chingay, have preserved their identity amidst the cultural tapestry of Malaysia and how this has influenced the festivities back in Teochew. Furthermore, I seek to understand the emotional and spiritual resonance such events hold for the Chinese diaspora and their role in reinforcing communal bonds. My hope is that our conversation will shed light on the less-explored narratives of cultural transmission among the various Chinese ethnic groups and dialect communities. I am concerned, however, about the potential erosion of these traditions in the face of rapid modernization and globalization. Can these cultural practices retain their significance for younger generations? Ultimately, I wish to contribute to the broader understanding of cultural heritage's role in shaping communal identity in a diasporic context. It is an exploration of how traditional practices can thrive and evolve, narrating stories of migration, settlement, and community solidarity.
Adiel Portugali (Room 2b)
Tel Aviv University
Shifting Sounds, Rising Scenes: Discussing Spaces of Creativity and Individuality in Chinese Jazz: In this proposed conversation, I wish to discuss how jazz generates and disseminates practices of creativity and individuality in twenty-first-century China. Based on interviews, observations, and documentation drawn from extensive field research, the discussion will focus on three different trends that typify jazz activity and creativity in China: jazz that follows global music traditions and developments, jazz that incorporates Chinese ethnic, folkloristic, regional or political elements, and jazz that expresses the individual styles and identity of those who play and create it. The interplay between the musicians and audiences that follow the above trends raises multifaceted queries on the authenticity, artistic integrity, political expressions, and directions of contemporary Chinese jazz and Asian music culture in general. For instance, it reveals that those who practice universal jazz trends in China are often tagged as imitators of Western jazz, while those who attempt meshing local elements
or instruments in their music are often criticized as making overly Chinese and deliberated fusion. In this respect, the third individual trend seems to stay safe; however, what is essentially Chinese or authentic in this kind of jazz? By negotiating the above dilemmas, trends, and transformations, this conversation will further seek to shed light on China’s current spaces of creativity and Individuality and explicate the complex affiliation of jazz and other music cultures, voices, and stories under non-democratic regimes.
Jun Kai Pow (Breakout Room 2a)
Independent Scholar
Ethno/Musicology as Perversion: The Institutional Minoritization of Male Academics of Colour
I am a male musicologist and ethnomusicologist of colour specializing in culture and sustainability in twentieth-century Southeast Asia and Western Europe. I am interested in the representation of race, sexuality and sustainability in music and other media in twentieth-century Southeast Asia, especially in Malaya and Indonesia, and also of their diaspora in Europe and the Caribbean.
I am able to make the observation that the ten keynote panellists for this Symposium are women scholars. Over the past decade, I have recorded and tabulated the number of male ethno/musicologists of colour with tenure or tenure-tracked positions in the UK and there are far and few after Daniel Chua’s exit. How did we end up in this situation? Was it the cunningness of intersectional recognition? My presentation is based on my own professional trajectory as a Beethoven and Schoenberg scholar and now a Malay angklung ethnomusicologist. From the way I see it, my musicological experience have always been an endogenous undertaking as ‘postcolonial child’ (Kok 2006), while my ethnomusicological remained congruent with the exegetic history of ‘conversational’ working relations (Bayley 2011; Hunter 2012), that is, amongst angklung musicians. These nonetheless defy the subjective alignment of music and material–those of a male researcher of colour and a group of marginalised Indo women on traditional ethnic instrument in the Netherlands. I contend in tandem that the socio-textual juxtaposing and refashioning of Westernised, queer and East Asian identities afford a more subjective theory of professional perversion that shapes musical privileges and institutional discrimination.
Newcastle University
Those raised challenging questions are very important to be addressed and explored among and beyond POC scholars and artists. In the context of post-pandemic politico-economic climate, we really need to reflect on many serious concerns and issues (racial discrimination, stereotype, social injustice, advocacy, EDI programmes, mutual support among POC groups/communities, etc.) both in the past and in the present in order to move forward altogether in this forever changing world. As someone who has studied/lived/worked in many countries and has been abroad since 2003, as well as a victim of anti-Asian attacks
Meng Ren (Breakout Room 1) (Room 1b) (Wrap 1d)
during the global pandemic, I am still thinking about what exactly I can contribute to this conference with my own transnational experiences... Anyway, I definitely look forward to some thought-provoking panels and discussions at this conference. Also, in light of this conference, we can continue to collect ideas of how we can effectively contribute to the various EDI projects in higher education, particularly in the West.
Wee Yang Soh (Breakout Room 3a) University of Chicago
I am interested in having a conversation around East Asian exceptionalist and nationalist standpoints, how they emerge within and through emerging media industries such as K-pop and C-pop, and how to reckon with them as these culture industries become increasingly decentralized. Current studies around the Korean culture industry center their focus on Korean agents, actors, and idols, despite the increasing outsourcing of industry processes to non-Korean creative professionals within and beyond South Korea. These professionals range from professionals directly involved in the K-pop production process such as songwriters, music producers, and choreographers to media professionals such as digital marketers and translators. Both Korean and non-Korean interlocutors that I have been meeting during my ongoing ethnography struggle with the definition of 'K' in 'K-pop'. For example, K-pop songs are increasingly incorporating more English pop lyrics and choreography from Black hip-hop dance subcultures. Furthermore, some of these nonKorean creative professionals have reported xenophobic and archaic legal and media infrastructures that deny them proper credit and living wages even as the industry monetize from their artistic sensibilities.
The increasing decentralization of culture industries thus trouble nationalist and essentialist depictions of East Asian countries, and it becomes necessary to confront new forms of cultural imperialism even as these culture industries remain open-ended sites of new possibilities for identity creation and transnational collaborations. There are two sides to the conversation that I wish to have: 1. How, as scholars and creative practitioners, we can challenge the continued minoritization and exoticization of East Asian cultures while also taking stock of the new regimes of power and control that are emerging through new media in East Asia? 2. How can we encounter, conceptualize, and experience the "Korean", the "Japanese", the "Thai", and other essentialist cultural markers that are increasingly porous and borrow creative inspiration from beyond their borders?
Masaya Shishikura (Room 2a) Huizhou University/ Tokyo Institute of Technology
Before WWII, Japanese overseas prostitutes, known as karayuki-san, disseminated the Japanese taishōgoto musical instrument to India and East Africa. Today, the taishōgoto is still actively used in local music scenes of these places. Such a transborder and transtemporal story demands us to take a more fluid, plural and intersectional approach that transcends normative categorizations of people and stereotyped discourses, such as West/East colonizers/colonized and majorities/minorities.
Mingyeong Son (Room 2b)
Asian Music Research Institute of Seoul National University
Musical Authorship and Creativity in a Global Context: Perspectives on Western Composers and East Asian Musicians Collaboration
I am a musicologist trained in Western music from South Korea, with research interests that include contemporary music, Korean diasporic compositions, and the aesthetics of interculturality and transnationality. My doctoral thesis explored how Western composers approached and created Korean music in the 21st century, examining the aesthetic significance and various aspects of Korea expressed in their music. During this research, I uncovered the significant yet often hidden contributions of Korean traditional music performers in the creative process of Western composers.
Currently, I am focusing on the perspective of performers and collaborative music. I investigate how aspects of authorship, creativity, and copyright of performers are reflected and obscured in musical scores. My main research questions are:
1. Despite the collaboration between Western composers and Korean performers in creating intercultural music, does the score still obscure the Korean traditional music performer’s voice due to the dichotomy frame of center/periphery, self/other, and composer/performer?
2. Are the authorship and creativity of Korean traditional performers collaborating with Western musicians still constrained by tradition and exoticism? How can they challenge the exoticization and minoritization of East Asia within the discourse of cultural hybridity, interculturality, and transculturality in contemporary globalization?
3. With performers increasingly contributing to music-making through composition and improvisation, and composers providing more open measures and time for performer input, how should we view authorship in music creation?
4. In the compositional process, collaborative music often involves real-time or improvised performance-based creation, rather than traditional Western classical composition practices. How should “compositional creativity” be understood in this context? What potential concerns and conflicts arise in interpreting and analyzing such music?
Through these questions, I aim to expand the discourse on musical authorship by discussing the definitions of creation, performance, and the compositional process within the power dynamics between Western and East Asian artists in culturally hybrid music of the global era.
Aesthetics of Deterritorialization: Interdisciplinary Creativity and Collaborative Music by Korean
William Spok (Breakout Room 3a)
LAPCOS (Laboratoire d'Anthropologie et de Psychologie Cliniques, Cognitives et Sociales)
During my various fieldwork experiences as part of my PhD, I encountered numerous Metal bands, musicians, managers, graphic designers, concert organizers, label managers, and sometimes all of these roles combined. While the majority of the ensuing interviews were
conducted in China, a portion took place when bands toured France, as was the case with Voodoo Kungfu, whose leader resides in the United States, and Zuriaake, with whom I was able to converse both in France and China. These bands are among the few Chinese acts exporting their music not only through digital platforms (which are increasingly inaccessible in China when it comes to Western platforms) but also through live concerts. Another such group is the Mongolian Folk Metal band, Nine Treasures. Although I did not manage to interview the band members themselves, I had extensive discussions with their manager, who arranges their concerts both in China and abroad. These exchanges provide a unique perspective on the question: how to conduct a tour as a "Chinese" band, with "Chinese" identity at the core of the group's identity. This question also arose when I sought to assist Bliss-Illusion a band practicing Post-Black Metal with Chinese and Buddhist influences in securing a record deal with a French label to make their music available outside of China.
How does one describe non-Western Metal in the West, where so-called "folk" sounds not derived from Western cultures are often labeled as "exotic," with all the stereotypes that accompany this term? Moreover, in the meantime, the Covid-19 pandemic has struck, bringing to the fore numerous racist stereotypes that have not spared the globalized Metal scene.
Jasmine Sun (Breakout Room 3a)
Peking University
How do Chinese contemporary female sound artists navigate the intersecting challenges of gender, race, and culture in their sound art creation processes? Considering the broader trends of globalization, Chinese migration wave in 1980s (mostly to the US and European) and the introduction of Western feminist thought in China during the early 1990s, what drives these artists to seek broader creative opportunities overseas, and how has their global presence influenced their work?
These artists make great contributions to the realms of sound art and electronic music on the global stage. Chinese philosophy is a fundamental element in shaping their sound works. For instance, Ying Wang’s “Tun Tu” (《吞 吐》) (2020) manifests Daoist cosmic concepts with electronic sounds, creating a cosmic breath effect, while Jing Wang’s "Journey" (《旅》) (2005) utilizes Zen Buddhist ideas to transform the erhu's sound through Max/Msp, reflecting life’s complexities.
What’s more, I notice the ambiguous attitudes towards gender identity among Chinese contemporary female artists, exemplified by Qin Yufen, who resists the "female" label in interviews yet embeds feminist thought in her works. How these artists position themselves within global stories, using sound to express their multifaceted identities?
Ly
Quyet Tien (Breakout Room 4a)
Eastern International University, Vietnam
Vietnamese LGBT Pop Music is a branch of Vietnamese Popular Music, which has appeared recently in Vietnam. Its particularity expresses the voice of the local LGBTQ community in music, contributes to the diversity of V-Pop in particular and East Asian Music in general, highlighting the rainbow identity of Vietnamese LGBTQ community in the conventional East Asia. I want to bring to the conference a topic, that is still unknown to many scholars
Qiuli Tong
Beijing Normal University
I hope to engage deeply with the themes outlined in the fourth chapter of my dissertation, " 全球视野下的文本生成与身份建构." This chapter will be divided into three sections:
World Citizens: Imagining Inter-Asia and Globalization (世界公民：亚际与全球化的想象)
Here, I intend to explore how Asian idol MVs portray a sense of global citizenship, reflecting the interconnectedness of cultures across Asia and beyond. I hope to discuss how these visual texts contribute to the imagination of a cosmopolitan identity that transcends national borders, embodying the fluidity and hybridity of contemporary cultural exchanges.
Colonial Legacies: Nation-States and Cultural Segregation (殖民遗留：民族国家与文化区 隔)
This section will investigate the lingering effects of colonial histories on the construction of national and cultural identities within Asian idol MVs. I aim to examine how these videos navigate and sometimes challenge the boundaries imposed by nation-states, reflecting the ongoing tensions between globalization and cultural specificity.
Assimilation: Living Cultures and Mobile Ideologies (同化：活着的文化与流动的意识形态)
Finally, I plan to analyze the processes of cultural assimilation depicted in Asian idol MVs, focusing on how living cultures are continually reshaped by mobile ideologies. This discussion will encompass the dynamic interplay between traditional cultural elements and modern global influences, highlighting the evolving nature of identity in the digital age.
Through our conversations, I hope to gain insights and feedback that will enrich my understanding of these complex topics, addressing both my hopes for contributing to scholarly discussions on cosmopolitanism and my fears about adequately capturing the nuances of identity construction in a rapidly changing cultural landscape.
Xinyi Ye (Room 2b)
University of Pennsylvania
I will discuss how traditional East Asian music is incorporated into popular music and culture in contemporary East Asia, and its impact on the protection of musical cultural heritage. While contemporary sound culture in East Asia, represented by K-pop and J-pop, is primarily based on the harmonic structure of Western music theory, and traditional music is losing its audience in its original performance setting, its elements remain present in popular culture.
For example, Chinese singer-songwriters such as Jay Chou and Leehom Wang have created what they call Chinese-style pop by incorporating Chinese musical instruments, lyrics referring to classical literature, and pentatonic melodies from Chinese opera into their iconic style of Mandarin popular music. Similarly, though it seems that K-pop is not bothered by the concept of continuing tradition, traces of Korean traditional music are still present, such as the jangdan drumming patterns in Psy’s Gangnam Style. However, even though these compositions are a market success, these forms of engaging in traditional music are at risk of fabricating the traditional way of listening by reducing complex opera repertoires into melodic fragments. I would like to invite discussants to examine strategies that contemporary songwriters use to involve traditional, ethnic, and East Asian classical music in popular music, and the dilemma between making a global hit song and preserving traditional culture. It also brings up questions including the concept of invented tradition and nationalism in East Asian music, challenges of cultural heritage preservation, and whether these attempts break or reinforce contemporary popular music as a Euro-American-centric cultural form.
Zi-Han Ye (Breakout Room 1a)
School of Art Theory and Management of Sichuan Conservatory of Music
Research On the Tibetan Pop Musicians in Sichuan and their Cultural Identity
Since the advent of the Tibetan pop music, many popular music works have been produced. They have always possessed a unique musical style in the pop music system, and have large production and good sales. The Tibetan pop musicians in Sichuan, as the main body, are engaged in the participation, production and dissemina tion of the Tibetan pop music. Taking them as the object, a research has been done on the connotation and deno tation of the Sichuan-Tibetan culture, and the formation of the cultural group in Aba and other Tibetan communities in Sichuan. Through interpreting the cultural identity of the Tibetan pop musicians in Sichuan, this article discusses the interaction and socialization of an individual in a particular cultural community, and the differences in the music culture of the three major Tibetan dialect areas, and the intrinsic link between cultural and geographical characteristics and popular music creation. Additionally, the relationship between individual and group, culture and region, identity and interest is also discussed in accordance with the Tibetan pop music.
Jim PoTseng Yeh and Luming Zhao (Room 2b)
Fudan University, Shanghai
Long live the oldies! The Politics of Nostalgia in Chinese Pop Music
Existing literature on musical nostalgia has focused on music production and aesthetic experience, neglecting its association with politics. Positioned within the unique cultural ecosystems of Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, our study delineates the concept of "nostalgia politics" in pop music to investigate the nostalgic forms and political values of oldies, thus enriching the literature. We introduce two distinct approaches to the politics of pop music nostalgia through the resurgence of Cyndi Wang's Love You (2004) in 2022, and
the Hunan Broadcasting System's TV program Endless Melody (Sheng Sheng Bu Xi) (20222024). Two cases exemplify how, on one hand, a rhizome approach transmits collective memory and venerates the "golden age" of society around the millennium. On the other hand, state-driven initiatives utilize musical nostalgia as a tool in the propaganda toolkit, integrating ideology from the top down. In-depth interviews with Cyndi Wang's agent, producers, C-pop music industry practitioners, and TV audiences (n=30), along with public report archives, provide methodological support for our research. On a broader level, this study aims to address how the memefication (dance moves, anecdotes, etc.) and platformization of oldies, in synergy with digital technology and channels, cater to contemporary society's cultural and political demands.
Ke Zhang (Breakout Room 2a)
Nanjing University of the Arts
I would like to discuss how to protect intangible cultural heritage the " Wu Da Gong Diao "in Haizhou, China. The folk music culture of "Haizhou Paizi Qu", originating from the presentday land of Haizhou, Jiangsu, is a representative folk song that combines instrument performance . It is also a "living fossil" for studying Jiangsu Pai Zi Qu.Haizhou " Wu Da Gong Diao " can be divided into two categories，Major tunes:[Ruan Ping]、[Die Luo]、[Li Diao]、 [Po Yang]、[Nan Diao] and [Man Jiang Hong], [Ma Tou Diao], [Huai Diao], [Da Ji Sheng Cao], [Lingling Diao] and nearly a hundred minor tunes.
As a highly representative Ming and Qing minor tune among East Asian voices, in the past decade, with the promotion of intangible cultural heritage application, the "Wu Da Gong Diao"have gradually been excavated and attracted the attention of researchers. However, there is still a significant gap compared to the study of "danci" "gushu" and other traditional Chinese music. Although the "Wu da Gong diao" have gradually received attention from the academic community due to intangible cultural heritage projects, research results are relatively scarce and it’s difficult to find it audio and video materials today. Although some of its scores have been found in Japan, it is difficult to reproduce the original sound. The performance form of the "Wu Da Gong Diao" has always been spontaneous organization among the masses, which is a form of self entertainment . Therefore, the theme of my discussion this time is how to protect and inherit the five major palace tunes, and popularize research results so that they will not be forgotten by the long river of history. Chinese people have been reluctant to part with the music of their hometowns since ancient times. For me, as a native of "Haizhou", I have been deeply influenced by the "Wu Da Gong Diao" since childhood. Time flies, and these older generation artists are gradually aging. I started learning Erhu at the age of five and have participated in performances related to "Wu Da Gong Diao" with the Jiangsu Women's Orchestra .Therefore, it is urgent to inherit the "Wu Da Gong Diao" of Haizhou. I will combine my identity as an insider in this forum, takes [Nan Diao] as an example to discuss its historical origins, lyrical structure, and melody structure based on historical data research and melody sorting，and point out the general theoretical and practical significance of the "double perspective" position and research method on the study of the Haizhou "Wu Da Gong Diao", revealing the essential characteristics and artistic value of the tune.
Tianyuan Zhao (Breakout Room 1a)
Independent Scholar
Due to the group (lower level in social class) of both creation and appreciation, southern drama was considered a subculture art form and has unfortunately been lost today. Top Graduate Zhang Xie, which has been adapted into various other forms of Chinese drama is the earliest surviving play text in the tradition of southern drama. There are now five versions of Top Graduate Zhang Xie. The Yongjia Kunqu opera Top Graduate Zhang Xie stands out as the most famous modern re-launched version due to the playwright, Zhang Lie, skilfully infusing both traditional flavour and a contemporary twist into the adaptation. This version has garnered international acclaim with successful performances in countries like Norway and Korea. As one of the first non-material heritage Kunqu opera schools by UNESCO, those popular in old times but marginalized within the cultural hierarchy have become an integral part of traditional culture that requires preservation today. The discussant will focus on conducting a comparative study between the southern drama Top Graduate Zhang Xie and its modern Yongjia Kunqu adaptation, exploring the factors influencing changes in adaptive behavior and performance styles within traditional Chinese dramas amidst globalization’s influence on their remodelling and reconstruction processes. The analytical and comparative approach can facilitate a deeper exploration of inquiries like ‘how to refashion traditional cultural heritage’ and ‘how to present traditional Chinese culture as well as East Asian culture globally on the modern stage’.
Yutong Zheng (Breakout Room 4a)
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
The historical visibility of East Asian audio contributions has often been obscured and marginalised due to multiple factors such as cultural imperialism, colonialism and systemic biases. These factors manifest themselves through limited exposure in Western-centric historical narratives, linguistic and cultural barriers, and the hegemony of Eurocentric classical paradigms in dominant discourses. Over time, efforts to reclaim, preserve and promote these musical traditions are leading to their revival both in their local contexts and on a global scale. In this context, I would like to take the opportunity to discuss the following questions
- What specific strategies and initiatives have been used to preserve and promote East Asian musical traditions in academia, performance and industry, and how effective have these efforts been?
(e.g. Enigma’s "Return to Innocence" infringement case and the recognition of Taiwanese traditional music)
- How does the distortion and misrepresentation of East Asian music in mainstream discourse harm/help the dissemination of the East Asian voice?
(e.g. the dual effect of exoticism, stereotyping and cultural appropriation)
- How do initiatives to promote cultural diversity and inclusivity within the music industry contribute to the revival of East Asian musical traditions?
- How should we perceive cultural identity in the adaption of works in an oriental flavour?
Tiange Zhou/ Jia Chai (Breakout Room 2a)
School of Future Design - Beijing Normal University/ Music and Dance College – Zhuhai College of Science and Technology
Improvisational Decision-Making in Chaoshan Drum Ensembles: The Unseen Choreography
This study explores the cognitive and social processes underlying improvisational decisionmaking in Chaoshan drum ensembles, with a specific focus on how these practices adapt to and reflect the urbanization challenges in China's Greater Bay Area. By observing rehearsals and performances, and conducting in-depth interviews, the research investigates how the tacit knowledge and unspoken rules that guide ensemble interactions are influenced by the rapid urban development and economic changes in their local contexts. The findings will illuminate how individual creativity and group dynamics are shaped by the pressures of urbanization, offering insights into the collective creation of music in transitioning urban landscapes. This analysis will not only contribute to our understanding of musical improvisation but also highlight the resilience of traditional arts in a rapidly modernizing society, providing a lens through which to view the broader implications of urbanization on cultural practices inside and outside of mainland China.