Some personal reflections on how I keep on doing Western classical music (as an Asian)

  Although this essay is doomed to essentialism (that is, in this case, attributing certain characteristics to a group of people, in the process doing unjustice to some members in the group), I decide to write this up as a personal reflection as an East Asian living in America myself. As one of those who take pride in doing Western classical music, I believe there are a few things that need to be sort out.

1a. Western classical music gives me a set of goals to achieve. I have a list of piano repertoire, ranging from J. S. Bach to Eliott Carter, that I want to finish in my life. On top of this, as an aspiring musicologist, my ultimate goal is to master critical theory and finesse with it. My tactic is to work on the commedia dell'arte character of Pierrot in the classical music tradition. It is through "overcoming" Western classical music - employing this familiar language - that I find self satisfaction. But why classical music, not... Chinese calligraphy?

1b. A scholarly account by Grace Wang (2009)* suggests that Asian moms in the States send kids to learn classical music to improve their social status. In a similar sense, it may be said that in Asia, moms do the same thing to kids, albeit in a somewhat different context (e.g. to choose between erhu and violin, they won't choose the former due to its association with beggars, although situation may have changed in the recent 10 years). However, these account may not be comprehensive. An argument about social structure (as shown above) may be supplemented by material availability. I remember faintly that in the social center I went to when I was 5, activities were limited to drawing, maths class, and piano lessons. I took all, did terribly in drawing, and remained in maths and piano. There were Chinese calligraphy class elsewhere, but I didn't take those. And there was no Chinese calligraphy competition at my primary school, but we do have piano and other musical competitions. I did well in those, and this explains why I continued my relationship with Western classical music. (I gave up maths as calculus comes.) Those who didn't do well there drop out and turn to other interests.

2.  As a classically trained musician, I used to forget or overlook the existence of other musics that can be taken seriously. I listen to pop music in my 21 years in Hong Kong and 2 years at Eastman (USA), but didn't think about it with a scholarly or sympathetic mind. I was a consumer.  Not until I arrived in San Diego 1.5 years ago did I start to pay attention to popular music, rock music, and local music scenes. At UCSD, I realized how conservative scholarship is at CUHK and Eastman. As I visited Hong Kong in December 2012 and early Jan 2013, I played a classical recital, but also re-connected with an old friend from middle school, and attended an Indie band performance by his band Match-box. It is amazing how I, as a classical musician, fail to identify or counter-identify with non-classical musics. It may be a conservatory symptom, but I worked on W. classical music real hard.

3. Western classical music is not solely Western, which also means that the name of the genre "Western classical music" is reductive in its surface meaning. It has an old tradition in the West, but in fact not a short tradition in the East either: it's been more than a century since Japan adopted this genre of music and did mass education on this. In China, people have done so in a variety of ways for almost exactly a century. In a sense, we have naturalized classical music, more widely in Hong Kong and more recently in Mainland China. Look at Chen Kexin's movie. It is an integral part of our culture, and we should not be threatened to reject or evade it by its apparent title of "Western" classical music.


* Wang, Grace. 2009. “Interlopers in the Realm of High Culture: “Music Moms” and the             Performance of Asian and Asian American Identities.” American Quarterly. Vol. 61 (4,             December): 881-903. 

Ref:
http://www.u-gakugei.ac.jp/~takeshik/mused1868j.html