Developing a Sense of Place through Minorities' Traditional Music in Contemporary China

Abstract

Looking back over the past nearly 70 years since the People’s Republic of China was established, it seems that the meaning of ‘place’ has varied and changed, especially since the turn of the millennium. ‘Place’ usually refers to a specific geographical area, but it can also reference an imagined space – that is, a sense of place is assembled through experience, feeling, perception and identification. To date, Chinese scholars have paid more attention to the close relationship between traditional music and its locale, or the place in which its original owners resided, but there has been little research that moves beyond a geographical conceptualization. However, the dimensions of place in China are more complex when we consider ethnic minorities rather than the majority Han Chinese: minority musicians represent themselves through their music, while the central government emphasizes the integration of diverse cultures within the Chinese nation. Representations of place, and how these relate to music, therefore differ. This chapter examines, using Feld’s and Basso’s (1996) term, what the ‘sense of place’ is for minority musicians, and how within contemporary China musicians and the state have developed different ‘senses of place’.