Ethno project proposal: Chinese pop between Hong Kongers and Mainland Chinese in UCSD

Siu Hei Lee
Preliminary Proposal for MUS 251 (Ethnomusicology seminar), Fall 2012

         15 years into the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1997, Hong Kongers and Mainland Chinese still arguably hold distinct cultural and ethnic identities.[1] How does this distinction manifest among students in University of California San Diego?[2] I attempt to answer this question by investigating their engagement with Chinese popular music, by which I mean all kinds of popular songs produced by Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China-based musicians.[3] My goal is to identify habits of popular music consumption within the two communities, and to see how Chinese popular music serves as a common ground and identity marker between the two ethnicities.

         A quick search on popular music consumption in young diasporic communities yields no result. However, two research tracks shall be very useful for my project. Firstly, among other authors, Nimrod Baranovitch has written extensively on the politics within Chinese popular music. Of particular interest to my project is the feminization of Hong Kong identity in a PRC-controlled popular music video around 1997.[4] It would be interesting to see if overseas Mainland Chinese students of this generation “feminize” Hong Kong in a similar way, through their attitude and consumption of Chinese pop music. Much literature on Chinese popular music is devoted to the rock genre; however, with the exception of Taiwanese rock bands, I do not see overseas Hong Kong and Chinese students as rock aficionados.[5] Secondly, there is much research on the use of music by diasporic communities. Vol. 16, issue 1 of Ethnomusicology Forum is devoted to “Musical Performance in the Diaspora,” and there are also separate studies on popular music consumption in diasporic communities, such as the Minang community in Indonesia.[6] I may look into the methodologies employed in these research projects.

         For my project, I am intending to focus on undergraduate students at UCSD between the age of 17 and 24. I can collect information from Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese students during the activities of the Hong Kong Student Union (HKSU) and the Chinese Union (CU), two large student organizations on campus. The following demographic variety will be noted, for they affect the informants’ engagement with Chinese pop music: 1) Length of time that they have stayed overseas 2) Location of their family members 3) Hometown (for the Mainland Chinese students) 4) Level of education attained in their hometown/ country. I shall conduct questionnaire research before the orientation evenings of the clubs (both on October 2, Tuesday). With the help with a couple of colleagues, I expect to successfully finish 20 to 30 questionnaires for each club orientation. Afterward, I will send out online questionnaire through Facebook in attempt to further enlarge the pool of informants, and to ask new questions that evolve from the physical questionnaire interviews. I will then select about 5 students from those I met at the orientation evenings, and conduct individual interviews with them.

       What kind of questions am I going to ask? A detailed draft of the questionnaires shall be submitted by the first week of class. To investigate habits of pop music consumptions, I may draw a list of Chinese pop hits by year, and see what year range does their listening repertoire cover.  I may also draw a list by genre, such as sentimental pop, political pop, rock, hip-hop, and see what they listen to. Some other questions may be:

·      Can you quickly name 5 Mainland Chinese/ Hong Kong/ Taiwanese singers? (I am interested in who they are going to mention. Which generation are the singers from?)

·      What is the one (or two) song that means the most to you? Why?

·      Who is your favorite singer? Why?

·      Do you pay attention to pop song composers and lyricists?

·      How do you access music? Have you ever purchased popular music?

To probe the common grounds and identity markers, I may ask questions like:

·      What are some Chinese popular songs that you would share with a new friend from Hong Kong/ Mainland China in a friendly environment?

·      Are there pop songs that you consider as representative of Hong Kong or Chinese identity (Mainland Chinese students, to my knowledge, usually consider themselves as Chinese, not as “Mainland” Chinese)

·      What are some Chinese popular songs that you would introduce to a new friend from Hong Kong/ Mainland China, if you are to promote Hong Kong/ Chinese culture to them?

·      What is your impression on the Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese popular music scenes? What are their differences?

I do have some expected results in my mind. (Here we go, my biases.) I expect the common ground between Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese students to be Taiwanese Mandopop, the pop rock of Mayday in particular. I guess that most Hong Kong students will not be able to name 5 Mainland China-based singers, and that Mainland Chinese students will name Hong Kong singers who are popular in the 90s (not 2000s). Mainland Chinese students may not be able to name a pop song that introduces Chinese culture, whereas Hong Kong students will have trouble deciding which song they want to introduce to their Mainland Chinese friends.

My conclusion will discuss the extent by which Chinese popular music serve as an emblem of identity between overseas Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese youth in a college where Asians are not a minority. Will the research results be a reflection of the inter-ethnic conflicts/ ambivalence in Hong Kong and Mainland China? Or, does diaspora integrate Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese youngsters? I will be very eager to know.

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[1] This may be ascribed to differences in language, political system, education, lifestyle, etc. One may consult the very rich postcolonial scholarship about Hong Kong. The public opinion program at the University of Hong Kong constantly conducts surveys on issues of ethnic identity in Hong Kong. At no instance in these 15 years do more than 40% of Hong Kongers see themselves as “Chinese citizens.” The latest figure, collected in June 2012, is less than 20%. See http://hkupop.hku.hk/english/popexpress/ethnic/eidentity/poll/chart/eIdentity_chicitizen.gif and http://hkupop.hku.hk/english/popexpress/ethnic/index.html. I have not come across any similar research conducted in Mainland China.

[2] The research results at the UCSD campus cannot be accounted for American college campuses in general. Here, Asians are the majority in terms of race, and the total number of international students from Hong Kong and Mainland China (not counting those who hold American passport) exceeds 400.

[3] My original idea is to include the Taiwanese community as well. But I would rather narrow my focus at the moment.

[4] See Nimrod Baranovitch, China’s New Voices, p. 200.

[5] Baranovitch have speculated the decline of rock music in China in the 1990s, and Jeroen de Kloet shows the blurry boundary between rock and pop in Chinese audiences’ minds. Yiu Wai Chu states that “rock is seen as non-mainstream music” in Hong Kong. See de Kloet, “ ‘Let Him Fucking See the Green Smoke Beneath My Groin’: The Mythology of Chinese Rock” in Postmodernism and China, and Chu, “Before and after the Fall: Mapping Hong Kong Cantopop in the Global Era,” working paper of the David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, at http://eprints.hkbu.edu.hk/74/1/63_Stephen_Chu.pdf.

[6] The reference/ bibliography of the opening essay of the “Musical performance in the Diaspora” issue may be very useful. See Tina K. Ramnarine, “Musical Performance in the Diaspora: Introduction” Ethnomusicology Forum 16, no. 1 (June 2007): 1-17. Bart Barendret, “The Sound of 'Longing for Home': Redefining a Sense of Community through Minang Popular Music” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 158, no. 3 (2002): 411-50.

Feminist Theory and Music Day 3 and Day 4

I came across quite a few student article presentations on day 3 and day 4, and had some observations:

-          The subjects are often more “docile” and less “outrageous”. They tend to work within the boundaries. Surprises do not feature often. (So are papers I wrote before, I felt.)

-          Analyses on feminism or sound sometimes are less in depth. I felt that they tend to stay in a format of quoting and explaining, but there is a lack of fluid flow from one idea to the other.

-          The subjects are, nevertheless, provocative and usually have a lot of potential for further research.

Movie and music studies, and popular music studies by different people sometimes sound monotomous. The topics of irony (although in more than half of the cases they didn’t mention it) recurs. I think more effort can be devoted to music that reflects cultural problems, and how music actively shaped the cultural problems. That will make musicology useful for other disciplines. I also felt that many papers can be presented in other non-music conferences, especially ones that are related to violence.

The two papers on Diamanda Galas, done by professors in the UK and Germany, are puzzling. They tried to describe Galas’s music as unspeakable voice and weapon, but they metaphor failed to come through (to me, at the very least). There were a lot of quotes, interviews and descriptions, but the arguments were not clear and cogent enough.

That leads me to ask (again), is musicology “describing music”? This is an overly simplistic definition.

A quick note on skype article delivery: get good connection, and read slowly. Even better, try to ask the organizer to test the connection and speaking quality before the presentation. Read the article for about 10 minutes in the test, to see if the connection is stable. Sometimes it runs well in the first 5 minutes, but then it may just turn bad for some reasons.

The final speech by Judith Tick was inspiring. Her survey of feminist theory and music was efficient, and her wish-list for future musicological ambitions are practical and, necessary for the healthy development of the field.

I felt that there is a strong bonding between the scholars in the meeting. People are so genuine! It is perhaps because they have endured a long period of time where feminist musical criticisms have been suppressed. They now have their voice heard, but the potential is clearly not totally fulfilled.

Feminist Theory and Music '11 Day 2

If I didn't come to this conference, I wouldn't have known so much about the problems in academia.
The keynote speech this morning by Julia Koza was a something between thoughtfulness and painfulness (as the Chinese saying goes, the pain of cutting your skin). It was incredible that UW Madison had done research showing tenureship rates in the Arts is the lowest among different faculties in a university, and that in women is significantly lower than men. Sometimes I'm sick of feminists quoting heavily on discriminative speeches done/ passages written by men; but Koza put a compelling argument, and also avowed to act to help her fellows who have not gotten tenureship. It is also worth noting that less than 20% of women professors are able to have a child plus have tenureship at the same time by the age of 40. The percentage of men achieving those is significantly higher (Koza has the stats; it's my bad that i forgot.) After-panel discussions included stories of UCLA and UIUC, and how university trustees may affect tenureship policies.

The topic is, of course, related to Hong Kong, too. Not only people are looking for tenureship; the shelter of tenureship also enables members of the faculty to speak up, not like, as Koza says, "it's not a good time to die, now". Especially when the freedom of speech is in risk with mainland Chinese political influence, scholars in most cases will not speak against the government, or make political statements, if they do not have tenureship. As a result, there will be no meaningful musicological articles on post 1949 music in China. (Yes, I dare make this statement.)

A few presentations today focused on forgotten female contributors to music. Johann Strauss's Jr's wives (Zoe Lang), Jutta Hipp (Ursel Schlicht), Pauline Viardot (Natalie Emptage Downs). They successfully argued their importance, but I think we need another person to show us how they can be inserted to textbooks. Now we only know they should be in there. Another question would be about the ethics of writing history: writing history is what each and every musicologist is doing.

The paper session concerning E.T.A. Hoffman is of intense interest for me, since it deals with literature and music. The two papers on Hoffman broadened my sight on how we can write about them. My question would be how relevant the papers will be, to society? 1. A suceesful paper does not need to have this link; 2. Literature is innately tied to society, I know. But the link has to be outlined in each case, if the author wants to show that link.

Lastly, I would like to point to Elizabeth Gould's paper, offering a lesbian-seduction reading of the Flower Duet in Lakme in a particular performance. I will have to watch the video again to see if I agree with her, but she is definitely provocative and... that's why I love this conference. This is one of the frontiers of musicology!

Feminist Theory and Music '11 Day 1

A one-hour flight feels like 15 minutes and I'm in Phoenix, AZ. I won't regret that I'm here for this fantastic conference. I am basically an outsider to feminist theory, except that I read Susan McClary's book Music and Society (which was published like 20 years ago) and some of Rose Rosengard Subotnik's article. I saw that Phoenix isn't that far away from SD and flight ticket prices are reasonable, so I decided to jump onto the flight!

(Allow me to reveal my ignorance in the following passage, and close the browser if you don't wanna read on,)
The most exciting part, for me, is to see how the NYU violinist Megan Atchley embodied her feminist analysis to her performance. She cogently argued and pursuaded me that the expressiveness of the piano (soft volume) press bow in Saariaho's Nocturne for solo violin has a quality that echoes her identity as a woman. The soft dynamics could have been even softer given the medium-small size of the hall, but I was struck by the quality of both the verbal and musical work she did.
I feel fortunate that I get to know about the three waves of feminist theory movements and how that can be used persuasively, or how dangerous it can be if not cogently argued. It could have been as simple as "women being able to do whatever they like", or "women not doing whatever they like", but it's also much more complicated than that. Scholars always look closely into issues of agents and different views from the three waves of feminist theories.
I also got to know a lot more non-classical music, and how their politics (in the broader sense) is. That includes Bessie Smith, Led Zepplin, Tracy Chapman, Charles Mingus, Sarah Vaughan, cock rock and Spice Girls. Violence (domestic and/or sexual), irony, understanding, commercialization, and politics (in the narrower sense) are great, if sometimes distubing, food for thoughts.
And the post-presentation discussions were also fascinating. Mary Fonow and Susan McClary conducted lively discussions, and Ellen Kostkoff's comments are always trenchant. I didn't participate in any discussion. I think I will at some point, and right now I'm enjoying as a listener, seeing how minds cross.

Website for the conference: http://ftm11.events.asu.edu/
Will look forward to Day 2.