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17 - Chinese Music Performance in Australia

from Part III - Diversities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2024

By
Nicholas Ng ,
Lu Liu  and
Catherine Ingram
Edited by
Amanda Harris  and
Clint Bracknell
Amanda Harris
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
Clint Bracknell
Affiliation:
University of Western Australia
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Summary

The performance of ‘Chinese music’ in Australian has a long and varied history. Performances of sonic arts which display a Chinese origin or connection range across various genres including classical, folk, opera, popular and sacred music. The performers are and have been equally diverse, including immigrants, international students, visiting artists and cosmopolitans from mainland China, the Sinosphere and the population of ‘Chinese overseas’, as well as people born or permanently residing in Australia of both Chinese and non-Chinese heritage. This chapter focuses on contemporary practice of different genres and on ethnographic examples from our own experience, but as space and historical records allow, we also look back in time. Our discussion illustrates some of the main ways that music has served to enhance social connections within and beyond Australia’s Chinese community, including within an Australian sociocultural fabric that has increasingly acknowledged and valued cultural diversity and multiplicities of cultural identity.

Keywords

Chinese musicAustraliaAustralian ChinesehistoryWhite Australia Policygold rushChinese operaChinese folk musicChinese classical musiccontemporary and intercultural musicnew connections
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Music in Australia , pp. 261 - 279
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

Fitzgerald, J., Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Ingram, C., Liu, L. and Ng, N., ‘Falling Leaves and New Roots: Informed Practice within the Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s Chinese Music Ensemble’ in Reid, A., Da Costa, N. Peres and Carrigan, J. (eds.), Creative Research in Music: Informed Practice, Innovation and Transcendence (New York: Routledge, 2021), pp. 73–81.Google Scholar
Liu, L., ‘Innovative Compositional Practice: A Discussion of the Processes of Intercultural Collaboration Involving the Chinese Pipa’, Journal of the Society for Asian Humanities, 54 (2023), 60–85.Google Scholar
Miles, S. B., Chinese Diasporas: A Social History of Global Migration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ng, N., ‘Engaging with a Genre in Decline: Teochew Opera in Western Sydney’, Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology [The Value of Ethnographic Research on Music], 22 (2021), 162–83, https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2021.1923794.Google Scholar
Ng, N., ‘“Sounds Chinese”: Musical Meetings with China in Contemporary Australia’ in Ng, N. (ed.), Encounters: Musical Meetings between Australia and China (Toowong: Australian Academic Press, 2013), pp. 92–112.Google Scholar
Wang, Z., Chinese Music in Australia, Victoria: 1850s to Mid 1990s (Melbourne: Australia Asia Foundation), 1997.Google Scholar

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