Element contents
Chinese Street Music
Complicating Musical Community
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2021
Summary
Musical community is a notion commonly evoked in situations of intensive collective activity and fervent negotiation of identities. Passion Square shows, the daily singing of Chinese pop classics in parks and on street corners in the city of Wuhan, have an ambivalent relationship with these ideas. They inspire modest outward signs of engagement and are guided by apparently individualistic concerns; singers are primarily motivated by making a living through the relationships they build with patrons, and reflection on group belonging is of lesser concern. How do these orientations help complicate the foundations of typical musical community discourses? This Element addresses community as a quality rather than as an entity to which people belong, exploring its ebbs and flows as associations between people, other bodies and the wider street music environment intersect with its various theoretical implications. A de-idealised picture of musical community better acknowledges the complexities of everyday musical experiences.
- Type
- Element
- Information
- Online ISBN: 9781108913232Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication: 29 April 2021
References
7 References
Anderson, Benedict (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Baker, Geoff (2011). ‘Cuba Rebelión: Underground Music in Havana’, Latin American Music Review 32(1): 1–38.Google Scholar
Baker, Geoff (2012). ‘Mala Bizta Sochal Klu: Underground, Alternative and Commercial in Havana Hip Hop’, Popular Music 31(1): 1–24.Google Scholar
Baranovitch, Nimrod (2003). China’s New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender and Politics 1978–1997. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Barber, Karin (1997). ‘Preliminary Notes on Audiences in Africa’, Africa 67(3): 347–62.Google Scholar
Bates, Eliot (2012). ‘The Social Life of Musical Instruments’, Ethnomusicology 56(3): 363–95.Google Scholar
Booth, Gregory and Kuhn, Terry Lee (1990). ‘Economic and Transmission Factors as Essential Elements in the Definition of Folk, Art, and Pop Music’, Musical Quarterly 74(3): 411–38.Google Scholar
Boretz, Avron (2004). ‘Carousing and Masculinity: The Cultural Production of Gender in Taiwan’. In Women in the New Taiwan: Gender Roles and Gender Consciousness in a Changing Society, edited by Farris, Catherine, Lee, Anru and Rubinstein, Murray, pp. 171–98. London: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Born, Georgina (2013). ‘Introduction’. In Music, Sound and Space: Transformations of Public and Private Experience, edited by Born, Georgina, pp. 1–16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chau, Adam Yuet (2008). ‘The Sensorial Production of the Social’, Ethnos 73(4): 485–504.Google Scholar
Chernoff, John (1979). African Rhythms and African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
China News Service (2014). ‘Wuhan gongyuan li de “caogen wutai”’ [A Wuhan Park’s ‘Grassroots Stage’]. Zhongguo xinwen wang, 3 May 2014, www.chinanews.com/tp/2014/05-03/6126786.shtml (accessed 12 April 2020).Google Scholar
Clayton, Martin (2013). ‘Entrainment, Ethnography and Musical Interaction’. In Experience and Meaning in Music Performance, edited by Clayton, Martin, Dueck, Byron and Leante, Laura, pp. 17–39. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Clayton, Martin (2017). ‘The Ethnography of Embodied Music Interaction’. In The Routledge Companion to Embodied Music Interaction, edited by Lesaffre, Micheline, Maes, Pieter-Jan and Leman, Marc, pp. 215–22. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Clayton, Martin, Dueck, Byron and Leante, Laura (2013). ‘Introduction: Experience and Meaning in Music Performance’. In Experience and Meaning in Music Performance, edited by Clayton, Martin, Dueck, Byron and Leante, Laura, pp. 1–16. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cole, Ross (2019). ‘On the Politics of Folk Song Theory in Edwardian England’, Ethnomusicology 63(1): 19–42.Google Scholar
Dueck, Byron (2007). ‘Public and Intimate Sociability in First Nations and Métis Fiddling’, Ethnomusicology 51(1): 30–63.Google Scholar
Dueck, Byron (2013). Musical Intimacies and Indigenous Imaginaries: Aboriginal Music and Dance in Public Performance. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, Andrew (2013). ‘Islam, Sound and Space: Acoustemology and Muslim Citizenship on the Kenyan Coast’. In Music, Sound and Space: Transformations of Public and Private Experience, edited by Born, Georgina, pp. 186–202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fairfield, Benjamin (2019). ‘Social Synchrony and Tuning Out: Karen Participation in Music, Tradition, and Ethnicity in Northern Thailand’, Ethnomusicology 63(3): 470–98.Google Scholar
Finnegan, Ruth (1989). The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Freie, John (1998). Counterfeit Community: The Exploitation of our Longings for Connectedness. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Quiñones, García, Marta, Anahid Kassabian and Boschi, Elena, eds. (2016). Ubiquitous Musics: The Everyday Sounds that We Don’t Always Notice. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Graezer, Florence (2004). ‘Breathing New Life into Beijing Culture: New “Traditional” Public Spaces and the Chaoyang Neighbourhood Yangge Associations’. In Making Place: State Projects, Globalisation and Local Responses in China, edited by Feuchtwang, Stephan, pp. 61–78. London: UCL.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Oxford: Polity.Google Scholar
Xiaoyan, Hao, Xiaowu, Wang and Huazhang, Yin (2005). ‘Jiangbian youyuan qidai zhengzhi “zangluancha”’ [Riverside Park Awaiting Restoration of Messy Environment]. Chujing wang Chutian dushi bao, 3 January 2005, http://news.sina.com.cn/s/2005-01-03/07134700623s.shtml (accessed 29 October 2020).Google Scholar
Harris, Rachel (2020). ‘“A Weekly Mäshräp to Tackle Extremism”: Music-Making in Uyghur Communities and Intangible Cultural Heritage in China’, Ethnomusicology 64(1): 23–55.Google Scholar
Harrison-Pepper, Sally ([1990] 2010). Drawing a Circle in the Square: Street Performing in New York’s Washington Square Park. London: University Press of Mississippi.Google Scholar
Herrera, Eduardo (2018). ‘Masculinity, Violence, and Deindividuation in Argentine Soccer Chants: The Sonic Potentials of Participatory Sounding-in-Synchrony’, Ethnomusicology 62(3): 470–99.Google Scholar
Hirschkind, Charles (2006). The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. New York: University of Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Horlor, Samuel (2019a). ‘Neutralizing Temporary Inequities in Moral Status: Chinese Street Singers and the Gift Economy’, Asian Music 50(2): 3–32.Google Scholar
Horlor, Samuel (2019b). ‘Permeable Frames: Intersections of the Performance, the Everyday, and the Ethical in Chinese Street Singing’, Ethnomusicology Forum 28(1): 3–25.Google Scholar
Horlor, Samuel (2019c). ‘Chinese Street Pop and Performing with the Urban Environment’, Sound Ethnographies 2(1): 39–68.Google Scholar
Impey, Angela (2002). ‘Culture, Conservation and Community Reconstruction: Explorations in Advocacy Ethnomusicology and Participatory Action Research in Northern Kwazulu Natal’, Yearbook for Traditional Music 34: 9–24.Google Scholar
Jankowiak, William (1993). Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City: An Anthropological Account. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Stephen (2013). ‘Gender and Music in Local Communities’. In Gender in Chinese Music, edited by Harris, Rachel, Pease, Rowan and Tan, Shzr Ee, pp. 26–40. Rochester: University of Rochester Press.Google Scholar
Ju, Di (2014). ‘Fuqi jianghan lu maichang jiu zi chengguan youqing zhifa zhu qi zhuanchang jiangtan’ [Couple Sell their Song at Jianghan Lu, City Management Enforce Law with Compassion, Assist with Move to River Beach]. Changjiang wang, 16 May 2014, http://news.cjn.cn/sywh/201405/t2473134.htm (accessed 12 April 2020).Google Scholar
Kendall, Paul (2019). The Sounds of Social Space: Branding, Built Environment, and Leisure in Urban China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendon, Adam (1990). Conducting Interaction: Patterns of Behavior in Focused Encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
King, Ambrose Y.C. (1985). ‘The Individual and Group in Confucianism: A Relational Perspective’. In Individualism and Holism: Studies in Confucian and Taoist Values, edited by Munro, Donald, pp. 57–70. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Komlosy, Anouska (2008). ‘Yunnanese Sounds: Creativity and Alterity in the Dance and Music Scenes of Urban Yunnan’, China: An International Journal 6(1): 44–68.Google Scholar
Kreutzfeld, Jacob (2010). ‘Acoustic Territoriality and the Politics of Urban Noise’, Soundscape 10(1): 14–17.Google Scholar
LaBelle, Brandon (2010). Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life. New York and London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Landau, Carolyn (2012). ‘Disseminating Music amongst Moroccans in Britain: Exploring the Value of Archival Sound Recordings for a Cultural Heritage Community in the Diaspora’, Ethnomusicology Forum 21(2): 259–77.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno (1996). ‘On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications’, Soziale Welt 47(4): 369–81.Google Scholar
Lau, Frederick (1991). Music and Musicians of the Traditional Chinese ‘Dizi’ in the People’s Republic of China. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International.Google Scholar
Lee, Tong Soon (1999). ‘Technology and the Production of Islamic Public Space: The Call to Prayer in Singapore’, Ethnomusicology 43(1): 86–100.Google Scholar
Lena, Jennifer C. (2012). Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lucas, Glaura, Clayton, Martin and Leante, Laura (2011). ‘Inter-Group Entrainment in Afro-Brazilian Congado Ritual’, Empirical Musicology Review 6(2): 75–102.Google Scholar
Lum, Casey Kong, Man (1996). In Search of a Voice: Karaoke and the Construction of Identity in Chinese America. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
McGuire, Colin P. (2018). ‘Unisonance in Kung Fu Film Music, or the Wong Fei-hung Theme Song as a Cantonese Transnational Anthem’, Ethnomusicology Forum 27(1): 48–67.Google Scholar
Mitsui, Tōru and Hosokawa, Shūhei (1998). ‘Introduction’. In Karaoke around the World: Global Technology, Local Singing, edited by Mitsui, Tōru and Hosokawa, Shūhei, pp. 1–26. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Moskowitz, Marc (2010). Cries of Joy, Songs of Sorrow: Chinese Pop Music and its Cultural Connotations. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
O’Grady, Lucy and McFerran, Katrina (2007). ‘Community Music Therapy and Its Relationship to Community Music: Where Does It End?’, Nordic Journal of Music Therapy 16(1): 14–26.Google Scholar
O’Shea, Helen (2007). ‘Getting to the Heart of the Music: Idealizing Musical Community and Irish Traditional Music Sessions’, Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland 2: 1–18.Google Scholar
Parmar, Robin (2019). ‘Sounding the Anthropocene: Rethinking Soundscapes and Nature’, online research paper, http://robinparmar.com/paper-sounding-the-anthropocene.html (accessed 20 April 2020).Google Scholar
Pelczynski, Zbigniew (1984). ‘Introduction: The Significance of Hegel’s Separation of the State and Civil Society’. In The State and Civil Society: Studies in Hegel’s Political Philosophy, edited by Pelczynski, Zbigniew, pp. 1–13. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Post, Jennifer C. (2007). ‘“I Take My Dombra and Sing to Remember my Homeland”: Identity, Landscape and Music in Kazakh Communities of Western Mongolia’, Ethnomusicology Forum 16(1): 45–69.Google Scholar
Ramnarine, Tina K. (2011). ‘The Orchestration of Civil Society: Community and Conscience in Symphony Orchestras’, Ethnomusicology Forum 20(3): 327–51.Google Scholar
Rees, Helen (2016). ‘Environmental Crisis, Culture Loss, and a New Musical Aesthetic: China’s “Original Ecology Folksongs” In Theory and Practice’, Ethnomusicology 60(1): 53–88.Google Scholar
Revill, George (2005). ‘Vernacular Culture and the Place of Folk Music’, Social & Cultural Geography 6(5): 693–706.Google Scholar
Rowe, William (1984). Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796–1889. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Rowe, William (1989). Hankow: Conflict and Community in a Chinese City, 1796–1895. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Rowe, William (1990). ‘The Public Sphere in Modern China’, Modern China 16(3): 309–29.Google Scholar
Schechner, Richard (1988). Performance Theory, rev. and expanded ed. Routledge: New York and London.Google Scholar
Seetoo, Chiayi and Zou, Haoping (2016). ‘China’s Guangchang Wu: The Emergence, Choreography, and Management of Dancing in Public Squares’, TDR/The Drama Review 60(4): 22–49.Google Scholar
Shelemay, Kay Kaufman (2011). ‘Musical Communities: Rethinking the Collective in Music’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 64(2): 349–90.Google Scholar
Shue, Vivienne (1995). ‘State Sprawl: The Regulatory State and Social Life in a Small Chinese City’. In Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China, edited by Davis, Deborah, Kraus, Richard, Naughton, Barry and Perry, Elizabeth, pp. 90–112. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stock, Jonathan (2002). Huju: Traditional Opera in Modern Shanghai. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stokes, Martin (1994). ‘Introduction: Ethnicity, Identity and Music’. In Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place, edited by Stokes, Martin, pp. 1–27. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Taylor, Timothy (2007). ‘The Commodification of Music at the Dawn of the Era of “Mechanical Music”’, Ethnomusicology 51(2): 281–305.Google Scholar
Titon, Jeff Todd (2015). ‘Exhibiting Music in a Sound Community’, Ethnologies 37(1): 23–41.Google Scholar
Titon, Jeff Todd and Pettan, Svanibor (2015). ‘An Introduction to Applied Ethnomusicology’. In The Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology, edited by Pettan, Svanibor and Titon, Jeff Todd, pp. 3–68. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tönnies, Ferdinand ([1887] 2001). Community and Civil Society, edited by Harris, Jose, translated by Jose Harris and Margaret Hollis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Torp, Claudius (2017). ‘Missionary Education and Musical Communities in Sub-Saharan Colonial Africa’, Itinerario 41(2): 235–51.Google Scholar
Tuan, Yi-fu (1982). Segmented Worlds and Self: Group Life and Individual Consciousness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Turino, Thomas (2008). Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor (1969). The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
UNESCO (2018). Basic Texts of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Paris: UNESCO, https://ich.unesco.org/doc/src/2003_Convention_Basic_Texts-_2018_version-EN.pdf (accessed 26 October 2020).Google Scholar
Wakeman, Frederic (1993). ‘The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture’, Modern China 19(2): 108–38.Google Scholar
Ying-Fen, Wang (2003). ‘Amateur Music Clubs and State Intervention: The Case of Nanguan Music in Postwar Taiwan’, Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore 141: 95–167.Google Scholar
Wenger, Etienne (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cuncun, Wu (2004). Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China. Abingdon: RoutledgeCurzon.Google Scholar
Feng, Xu (2008). ‘New Modes of Urban Governance: Building Community/Shequ in Post-Danwei China’. In The Chinese Party-State in the 21st Century: Adaptation and the Reinvention of Legitimacy, edited by Laliberté, André, and Lanteigne, Marc, pp. 22–38. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui (1994). Gifts, Favors, and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Chunlin, Yuan (2014). ‘Huajia fuqi wanju juankuan jietou maichang jiu zi’ [Retired Couple Gracefully Declines Donations, Performs on Street to Save Son]. Daqing wang, 6 May 2014, www.dqdaily.com/shishi/2014-05/16/content_2042911.htm (accessed 24 February 2016).Google Scholar
Zhang, Wenzhao (2020). ‘Tonight, We Are All Wuhan-ers: Reimagining Urban Subjectivities, Space, and Music Healing’, Association for Chinese Music Research Newsletter 25(1): 13–16, https://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10524/63250 (accessed 27 October 2020).Google Scholar
Xun, Zhou and Tarocco, Francesca (2007). Karaoke: The Global Phenomenon. London: Reaktion.Google Scholar
- 6
- Cited by