WE’RE ALL APPLIED ETHNOMUSICOLOGISTS NOW : THE CASE OF THE CHINESE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT COLLECTION AT THE CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG AND ITS DATABASE PROJECT
It is commonplace to acknowledge that musical instruments provide an important and unique source for ethnomusicological studies, making it essential for us to document, research, and learn to perform during our fieldwork. But what should we do if we inherit a stock of instruments at our home institute that were not collected from the field, yet remain undocumented and unstudied systematically? No doubt one would suggest beginning work on them as soon as possible, but the question is ‘how?’ By using the Chinese instrument collection in the Music Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong as an example, this paper shows how studying instrument collections in our own institutions can offer valuable information as well as stories about a historical past that may have been previously unknown. At the same time, it raises a challenge to, and a critical question about, our ethnomusicological nature: how can we balance or make sense of the ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ aspects of the field? The instruments embody not only an individual agenda and research idea, but also the collective memories and histories of institutions, captured through the process of collecting. This paper reports on several stages and outcomes of a project that involved our own students and department members contributing collectively to a project revolving around the instrument collection. The plan included a postgraduate seminar, a catalogue publication entitled Captured Memories of a Fading Musical Past: The Chinese Instrument Collection at the Music Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2010), individual and group research, and an online database. The case touches on several research issues including the preservation, interpretation, translation and knowledge transfer of ‘musical culture’ in the age of globalisation, and the associated knowledge produced by academic institutions by means of musical instruments. This study explores a case of applied ethnomusicology; that is, researchers not thinking ‘for’ the community but putting ourselves ‘in’ the centre of the community. It further encourages us to consider how to make ethnomusicology not merely a discipline for the study of distant indigenous cultures, but one that is meaningful for our own institutions and for ourselves.
목차
Abstract ‘Applied’ Ethnomusicology and ‘Pure’ Ethnomusicology The Chinese Instrument Collection at CUHK and the Recent Project Project Plan and Design Project Outcomes and Sustainable Future Chinese Musicology and Applied Ethnomusicology Are we all ethnomusicologists now? Conclusion References
저자
TSAI TSAN-HUANG [ Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. ]
아시아에서 벌어지는 모든 음악활동을 연구합니다.
특히 아시아에서 일어나고 있는 유럽 음악 편중의 음악상황을 아시아음악 중심으로 전환하기 위한 연구와 운동을 합니다. 아시아음악은 아시아인이 가장 잘 연구할 수 있다는 점에서 아시아음악학 연구는 아시아 학자에 의하여 주도되어야 한다고 생각하는 사람들의 모임입니다.
이러한 목적 달성을 위하여 아시아음악의 역사 이론 연주를 연구합니다. 이 연구 성과는 Asian Musicology라는 영문 저널을 발행하고 있습니다.