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Chaoxianzu is the Chinese official name for the Korean minority nationality who predominantly resides in Northeastern provinces of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This study examines Chaoxianzu music created by composers who are based in the two government performing arts organizations: the Yanbian Song and Dance Troupe and the Yanji Chaoxianzu Arts Troupe. The Yanbian Song and Dance Troupe has represented Korean cultural identity in and outside of their autonomous region since 1940s. The Yanji Chaoxianzu Arts Troupe was established in 1981 coinciding with awareness to retrieve Chaoxianzu cultural identity much of which disappeared throughout the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). While both organizations have contributed to the construction and reformation of Chaoxianzu music, they are distinct in terms of the organizational structure, ideology, and definition of Chaoxianzu ethnic performing arts. By comparing and contrasting composers of the Song and Dance Troupe and Chaoxianzu Arts Troupe, and their musical works, I illuminate how individual musicians creatively interject their own projection of Chaoxianzu ethnicity into their compositions. By analyzing their compositional style, I show how these composers are creating a discursive space to articulate their hybrid identities of being Chinese, Korean, and Chaoxianzu.

In the suburbs of Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, U.S.A, sits the Sri Venkateswara Temple, the oldest Hindu Temple constructed in the Penn Hills section of Pittsburgh in 1976. Living on the opposite side of the globe, diasporic Indians in Pittsburgh reconstruct their “home” surroundings and rigidly follow the Indian religion, tradition, and culture—especially inside the Sri Venkateswara Temple. In fact, the temple is a small version of “India” itself; things that are experienced in daily lives in India are reproduced and materialized by priests and devotees every day inside the temple. Immigrant Indians often feel alienated from their host society, and attending rituals, music and dance concerts, lectures and language classes in the Sri Venkateswara Temple provide diasporic Indians not only psychological consolation, but an aid to construct their identities as Indian. In Indian traditions, the boundary between “sacred” and “secular” is vague, and diasporic Indians usually express their Indian identities through “performing” their tradition. In this essay, I focus on Indian-Americans’ (especially Hindu Tamils) perceptions of religion and culture by examining a musical performance during a ritual ceremony and a children’s Sunday school session based on field research from 2006 and 2007. I address the following question: What roles do ritual ceremonies and musical practices play in constructing notions of “India” in Pittsburgh? My findings show how essentialized notions of culture are central to identity construction in diasporic communities.

On August 13, 1999, the Japanese government enacted a law to designate the country's de facto national flag and anthem, known respectively as Hinomaru and Kimigayo, as its official national symbols. Regardless of their legal status or lack thereof, the Japanese have tacitly approved Hinomaru and Kimigayo as representations of their nation-state in both official and unofficial capacities for over a century. Nevertheless, there were considerable misgivings over the official endorsement of Hinomaru and Kimigayo and what they signify as national symbols at the end of the twentieth century. The legislation opened up heated debates on anachronism and outdated imperial references of these historically charged signs and their appropriateness as national symbols for today’s democratic Japan. Although most of the discussion concerning Kimigayo focused on the anthem’s lyrics, its semantic meanings and connotations, this essay examines the anthem as a musical composition and what its “official” arrangement based on the 1888 score acoustically embodies. Three different renditions of recent Kimigayo performance that attempted to deviate the composition from the standardized military band rendition—the unisonous collective singing (seishô) in Japanese school ceremonies; the rare gagaku (Japanese court music ensemble) rendition in the 1998 Nagano Olympics’ opening ceremony; and a variety of solo performances (dokushô) by celebrity singers and musicians in widely broadcast athletic event—will be analyzed in their respective contexts. I shall discuss how these examples “undid” Kimigayo and the collective voice it embodied in its sonority, and the implications of such procedures.