Contesting and Appropriating Chineseness in Sinophone Music

Abstract

china perspectives T he first special issue of China Perspectives on "Sinophone Musical Worlds" (2019/3) laid the theoretical foundation for a musical approach to Sinophone studies (Amar 2019).This first issue emphasised the importance of a "place-based" analysis of the global circulation of artistic creations, promoted in the field of Sinophone studies by Shu-mei Shih (2007), and in cultural studies by Yiu Fai Chow and Jeroen de Kloet (2013) as well as Marc Moskowitz (2010), among others.The articles covered a wide range of subjects, each highlighting specific modalities of circulation of sounds, affects, and identities across the Sinophone world, be it in Cantonese-speaking communities with radio broadcasts (Lam 2019), in Xinjiang with musical performances viewed as part of a systemic state policy of cultural re-education (Anderson and Byler 2019), in the Shanghai Conservatory of Music with the adaptation of Western techniques (Grenier Borel 2019), or through an appropriation of Korean pop music in Chinese TV shows (Li 2019).In this second volume on "Sinophone Musical Worlds," the three articles focus on politics and the ambivalent notion of Chineseness in the musical sphere.Several articles in the previous volume also studied how specific Chinese identities conveyed by music revealed political issues, especially in Xinjiang, where since 2016, "Hanness" has been performed by Uyghur musicians in a state-sponsored effort to erase their identity (Anderson and Byler 2019), or in the Shanghai Conservatory, where since 2013, "Chinese characteristics" have been integrated into the internationalisation strategies of Western classical music institutions (Grenier Borel 2019).The articles in this issue underline the political uses of popular music, and how mainstream singers, amateur musicians, and underground artists engage with the "hegemonic versions of Chineseness" (Chow and De Kloet 2011: 59) vehiculated by specific musical styles.The notion of Chineseness allows the authors to expose its different and competing definitions across various Sinophone communities, echoing Gungwu Wang's question: "Does being Chinese always mean the same thing, or does it change from time to time and place to place?" (Wang 2013: 131).This special issue thus insists on the political dimension of music -through its production, consumption, and circulation -but also on the role of music as a technology of the self, as DeNora points out: "The sense of 'self' is locatable in music.Musical materials provide terms and templates for elaborating self-identity -for identity's identification" (2000: 68).These three articles analyse specific musical styles and genres that participate in the definition of a "Chinese" sound in popular music.China Wind (zhongguofeng 中國風) music, peaking in the 2000s and performed by singers from Taiwan and the People's Republic of China (PRC), circulates a popular and apparently non-controversial notion of Chineseness (see Chenyu Lin's article in this issue).Archaic Wind (gufeng 古風) music presents

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