L9 Music, Migration, Mobility

Music of the Chinese Diaspora

Frederick Lau
Department of Music
 Music, Migration, mobility
• Traditional music study: place based
• Mobility- Movement

• Ability to move physically

• Transportable
• From one place to the next
• Mobile device: phone, MP3, tablet
 Migration
• Moving from one place to another
• Result of Globalization
• Economic reason
• War
• Ethnic conflicts
• Status seeking
 Results of Migration
• Acculturation
• Nostalgia He :B 'RE
• Cultural entrenchment
• Cultural Isolation
• Create New culture
• Cultural sharing
 Migration:
• movement of people
• movement of culture
• movement of commodity
• movement of ideas
 Migration: movement of people
Movement of culture and music, cultural practices
Globalization: creates different scapes
enhance the process

• Arjun Appadurai Global Cultural flows:

• Ethnoscapes--people
• Mediascapes--media
• Technoscapes—internet, communication
• Finanscapes—money and capital
• Ideoscapes--ideas
• Migration—age-old phenomenon
• Starting with the Jewish-exodus

• Diaspora: dispersion of Jews

--scattered/living outside homeland
, ,
Applied to all ethnic groups
 Kinds of migration
• Political
• Economic
• Ideology

• Sojourner-- , hoping to return

• Immigrant-- , living permanently in a
country that is not their own
• Ways of understanding music and place:

• Based on assumption of location and place or

origin
Presumed a sense of Authenticity
– What about Germans in Japan?
– What about Chinese in the USA?
– What about Japanese in Brazil?
 Remember:

• Music is socially meaningful and culturally

significant
• Music to present a social world
• Seeger: A society can be conceived as
something happened in music

• Place or locale, Anthony Giddens, as a physical

setting of social activity as situated
geographaically
 Martin Stokes-UK ethnomusicologist
• Stokes argues: music provides a means by
which people recognizes identities and places
and the boundaries separates them
• Music "evokes" and “organizes" collective
memory and present experience
EÉEE
• Music is a means to transcend and construct
trajectories ¥07k
• Not only a marker by a means by which spaces
can be transformed
 Rethink Authenticity
BREAK
• Authenticity is a discursive trope of great
persuasive power--this what is significant
about the music, this is what makes us
different from others, the way authentic is
structured, defined, and employed in
discursive contexts
• PLACE constructed through music involves
notions of difference and social boundaries. They
also organizes hierarchies of a moral and political
order.

• Music symbolizes social boundaries—music does

not simply provide a marker in a preconstructed
social space, but the means by which space can
be transformed.
•
• Music is a means by which social space is
constructed/transformed
• Music (not only as static symbolic objects) is
patterned context within which other things
happen: Waterman s Yoruba study marking
names and sentiments of a culture.—
empower ritual
 2
# Case study
Lisa Ono
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MbEIGrp7Ko
 Japanese in Brazil
• First Japanese immigrants arrive in 1908.
• In 2000, the population is around 1.5 million.
• Concentrated in San Paulo.
• First worked in coffee plantation.
• For decades, Japanese were considered non-
assimilable and despised. ARBER
100 Years of Japanese Immigration (in Brazil)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7j6N5-Ajl0&pbjreload=101
 Shohei Hosokawa
• promoted the preservation of the Japanese
language
• the expression of Japanese sentiments
• the cultivation of Japanese virtues.
¥-11810
• "Japanese-ness" could be theatrically and
musically over-communicated,
• promoting strong affective experiences of
belonging amongst participants.
 Repertory
• 1. western pieces
• 2. Japanese art songs
• 3. Arrangements of classic Japanese tunes

• Popularized from the 1950s to 1970s

 1945 to 1953
• Japanese immigration was resumed - was
decisive in bringing about this shift in issei
• identity changed from "Japanese overseas"
(kaigai doho, Japanese settlers abroad) to
"Japanese-Brazilians (nikkei or nikkei
burajiru)
• Cultural events: save the Japanese immigrants
from their collective anxiety.
 Nodojiman: NHK Amateur singing contest
started in 1946
• Nodo: throat Jiman: boast
• One of the major institutions through which
the contours of Japanese-Brazilian identity
were forged
• Contributed to defining "Japanese-
Brazilian-ness
• Created spaces for the performance of ethnic
sentiments.
 Competition
• Music contests promote the music employed
in them
• Establish aesthetic standards and sociocultural
networks.
• Contest are linked to issues of ethnicity:
– institutionalize the emblems of the group
– idealize their mode of expression. Within the
competitive
• Identity can be performed and affectively
experienced
• Heightening the participants' sense of
belonging
 Competition songs
• "kayokyoku" (popular song)
• "minyo"(folk song)
• shoka (school song)
• "kakyoku" (lied), referring to Japanese "art" songs
• Being Japanese, sing in Japanese
• Japanese songs promoted affective experiences
which enhanced their sense of ethnic identity
• "Japan's excellent culture" - including its
"good music" - was meant to refer to Japanese
traditional arts, benevolence, honesty,
diligence of character and other presumed
Japanese virtues.
• Perseverance, one of the most fundamental
moral principles in Japanese
• traditional arts
• The first singing contest in Brazil actually to be
called a nodojiman took place on 27 January
1952.
• Influenced by NHK s nodojiman.
• Formation of local orchestras:
– Continental Orchestra 1946
– San Paulo Music Association 1949
• Singing, therefore, can generate affective
• experiences which heighten people's
engagement with and commitment to the
• social world with which the singing is
associated.
• evoke images of the homeland and express
their longing to return to Japan
Lisa Ono
Lisa Ono
 Lisa Ono
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAW3Ir7gyLQ&pbjreload=101
 2
# Case study

Chinese in Thailand
• Oversea Chinese—huaqiao, Chinese living
elsewhere temporarily

• Definition of Chineseness

• What has the authority to define?

14% of population of 70 million

Teochew: Chaozhou
Cantonese: Guangdong
Hokkien: Fujian
Hainanese: Hainan
Mandarin: Yunnan, Shandong,
Zhejiang and Thaiwan

Migration Before 1979: Red Lines

Migration After 1979: Green Lines
• Chinese in Thailand—16th & 17th century

• Teochew (Chaozhou)
• Hainanese
• Hakka
• Hokkien (Fujian)
• Cantonese
• King Taksin (1767-82)
-

q
– Believed to be Chinese

– Teochew—majority group
– 1918-1939 over 55% Chinese were Teochew
– 1930s rice trade, business, trading
• Teochew organizations:

•
•
•

• 1950s over 60% Chinese were Teochew

• 1980s over 80% Chinese were Teochew
 HE :p
• Teochew loan words in Thai
• Kuaytiao—rice noodle
• Daowhu—bean curd
• Jeh—vegetarian food
• Jek--uncle
• Murals of Chinese operatic scenes back to the
Ayuthaya period (1350-1767)

• 19th century—Teochew music club in Shantou

•
•
•
• In Bangkok
– Several amateur music clubs

– Hanyue ( )
– Teochew yinyue ( )—

– Amateur ideal—marks one s taste, class, social

status
• Hanyue or ( )

– Also known as waijiang

• Related to qinqiang of the Ming Dynasty

• Since 1920s, Hanyue or

became popular
Teochew association
Music clubs
Teochew singing
Teochew music in Thailand
Teochew Music Club in Thailand
TEOCHEW MUSIC CLUBS CHINESE NAME
1. Daklakpu Guoyuezu
2. Guangzheng Guoyushe
3. Guilin Chahuiyueshe
4. Klong Tuey Lianyihui Guoyueshe
5. Luanxing Guoyueshe
6. Pusi Guoyueshe
7. Tongyue Yeyu Chaozhou Ruyueshe

8. Xinxin Sizhushe
9. Nanxun Sizhushe
10. Yeyun Ruyuexuan Quyituan
• Erxian
• Erhu
• Pipa
• Yangqin
• Sanxian
• Qinqin
• Rise of Teochew people
– Big banker
– Businessmen
– Transnational business
• Musicians—two names (Thai, Chinese)

– Zheng Xian Cheng

– Suraphon Phongphisalakul
• Two languages (Thai, Teochew)
• Behavior (tea, smoke, foot)
 History towards Chinese
• Business—tax, tattoo

• Discrimination towards Chinese during 1930s

• 1970s Communist

• 1980s Good to be Chinese, business,

Mandarin
• Lookjin—mixed Thai and Chinese

• Assimilation model?
• Double identity?
AT PRESENT:
RELIGION MUSIC, MUSIC
INSTRUMENT SHOP IN
CHINATOWN BANGKOK
 Thai: Wat Mangkon Kamalawat
Founded in 1871
Founder: Sok Heng )
Techeow: Wat Leng Noei Yi
Mandarin: Long Lian Si
English: Dragon Lotus Temple
Dragon Lotus Temple old China town

• Music in hungry
ghost festival
• Hungry Ghost
Festival:
Chinese
worshiping
ancestors and
other ghosts
• Pudu
ceremony
• Teochew Musicians Fang
brothers and the percussion
 Music instrument Shop

• Music instrument shop Kwang

Jie Sia in Chinatown Yaowarat
• 80 years
• Instruments in the shop
• Owner of
the shop:
Mr. Lau
Teochew Opera in Urban Bangkok
Teochew Opera in
Urban Bangkok
• Sai Yong Hong Troupe
performed during the Chinese
new year 2019 (three photos
on the left) and post of hungry
ghost festival 2020 (the one on
the right)
• Ngiu Thai Opera:
Thai language
Teochew opera
• Meng Boba troupe
and Zhuang
Meilong
 Conclusion
• IDENTITY IS:

• Situational
• Time-sensitive
• Strategic essentialism

• Sojourn—immigrant PROCESS, SITUATION

 Gayatri Spivak:
“Strategic essentialism”

END