Earticle

This article aims to examine the perpetuation of negative stereotypes of disabled women within contemporary Chinese society through the vehicle of geju 歌劇, western-style or -influenced opera. I shall show that ableist elements are the main drivers behind the plots of both The White- Haired Girl (Bai Mao Nü 白毛女) and Lucia di Lammermoor (Lameimoer de Luqiya.拉美莫爾的露琪亞), and that these seemingly disparate works are united both by their particular depictions of “mad women.” I shall argue that the perception of both women and people with mental disabilities in general has the potential to stagnate within this art form as long as these works are promoted and performed in the current manner. Furthermore, I suggest that failure to critique geju performances through a disability studies lens may perpetuate both mainland Chinese and western stereotypes in society more broadly. I will first give a brief overview of the contemporary musicological understanding of opera, sexism and ableism. I will then outline the plot and historical contexts of the two case-study works. In my discussion I shall explore how both works are presented in mainland China today, and provide a feminist and disability studies critique of their “meaning” with regards to the status of women in this region now and in the immediate future.

The phrase “gender stratification” highlights a form of inequality permeating every level of social structure: inequality between men and women. Relationships of power and privilege are formed through a complex web of gender- related factors, from attitudes towards women’s participation in the labor force and men’s place in the family to cultural ideologies around kinship, musical competence and economic roles. In bayin seated singing, which is popular among the Buyi ethnic group in the Nanpan River valley in Southwest China, gender is a significant factor in the division of labor in musical activities. This gendered division of musical labor emerges from various music-related notions and behavior expectations that in turn stem from customs and ideas around gender relations in wider Buyi society. Analyzing the characteristics of power relations between men and women in bayin seated singing helps to bring to the surface relationships between traditional music practices and gender stratification.

The Lisu are a trans-border ethnic group found in Yunnan, SW China and also in neighboring states including Myanmar, Thailand, Northern India, and the Philippines. This paper explores the processes through which Lisu in Yunnan create music and dance, and their musical cultural fusions and collisions with neighboring ethnic groups. It asks how Lisu identify themselves in such a multi-ethnic cultural environment, and in the broader contexts of Chinese governmental policies and a dominant Han culture, using case studies from three types of Lisu participant dances: waqi, achi mugua, and gaqie. I illustrate the distinctive characteristics of these three dances and reasons, then discuss how each is identified in its given contexts, and finally examine what dance and music reveal about the spirit and aesthetics of the Lisu people.

This paper will start with the definition of divine song and explain how it developed from an internet slang term to a common term used to describe a certain music genre by presenting and summarizing the development processes and evolution characteristics of two popularly recognized divine songs in China. It will then focus on the case of “The Shepherd of the Cocoto Sea” and explore how this “unlikely case” influenced a primarily middle-aged and elderly demographic. It will analyze the three key figures responsible for its viral rise and two important events that were part of this process, which finally influenced main music applications and music charts in China, and became recognized and popular among various demographic groups, making it a viral phenomenon.

This paper regards internet users who “convene” in moderated groups according to a common interest, social attachment, or other multiple intersected connections as an “imagined” community that surfaces on a social networking platform. The validity of the community, especially when being of an ethnographer’s interest, is argued through a documentation of responses captured and operated as ethnographic data. This is a preliminary study of music culture in the digital age through online survey as virtual ethnography to explore a glimpse of the reality via reactions of an “imagined” community. Through a systematic and critical presentation of the ethnographic data, music culture in the contemporary time is interpreted as a trajectory which significantly essentializes an “imagined community” as genuine as a physical field site in the light of cultural musicology.