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Framed by a century and a half of racialized Chinese American
musical experiences, Claiming Diaspora explores the thriving
contemporary musical culture of Asian/Chinese America. Ranging from
traditional operas to modern instrumental music, from ethnic media
networks to popular music, from Asian American jazz to the work of
recent avant-garde composers, author Su Zheng reveals the rich and
diverse musical activities among Chinese Americans and tells of the
struggles of Chinese Americans to gain a foothold in the American
cultural terrain. She not only tells their stories, but also
examines the dynamics of the diasporic connections of this musical
culture, revealing how Chinese American musical activities both
reflect and contribute to local, national, and transnational
cultural politics, and challenging us to take a fresh look at the
increasingly plural and complex nature of American cultural
identity.
Claiming Diaspora explores the thriving contemporary musical
culture of Asian/Chinese America. Ranging from traditional operas
to modern instrumental music, from ethnic media networks to popular
music, from Asian American jazz to the work of recent avant-garde
composers, author Su Zheng reveals the rich and diverse musical
activities among Chinese Americans and tells of the struggles and
creative searches by Chinese Americans to gain a foothold in the
American cultural terrain. In doing so, she not only tells their
stories, but also examines the transnational and racialized
experiences of this musical culture, challenging us to take a fresh
look at the increasingly plural and complex nature of American
cultural identity. Until recently, two intersected models have
dominated studies of Asian American cultural expressions. The
notion of "claiming America" has been a fundamental political
strategy for the Asian American movement; while the Americanization
model for European immigrants has minimized the impact of the "old
country" on immigrant life and cultural expression. In Claiming
Diaspora, Zheng critically analyzes the controversies surrounding
these two models. She unveils the fluid and evolving nature of
music in Chinese America, discussing current cultural struggles,
while acknowledging an unavoidable connection to a history of Asian
exclusion in the U.S. Furthermore, Zheng breaks from traditional
approaches which have portrayed the music of non-Western people as
rooted and immobile to examine the concept of "diaspora" in the
context of Asian American experiences and cultural theories of
space, place, and displacement. She calls into question the
contested meaning of "Asian American" and "Asian American cultural
identity" in cultural productions, and builds a comprehensive
picture of community and cultural transformation in Chinese and
Asian America. Zheng taps unpublished historical sources of
immigrant narrative songs, extensive fieldwork in New York City and
China, in-depth interviews in which musicians narrate their life
stories and music experiences, and her own longstanding involvement
as community member, musician, presenter, and cultural broker. The
book delineates the introduction of each music genre from its
homeland and its subsequent development in New York, and explains
how Chinese Americans express their cultural longings and
belongings. Ultimately, Zheng reveals how Chinese American musical
activities both reflect and contribute to local, national, and
transnational cultural politics.
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