Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-07T22:12:00.971Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Troubling genre, ethnicity and geopolitics in Taiwanese American independent rock music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2013

Wendy F. Hsu
Wendy F. Hsu*
Affiliation:
Center for Digital Learning & Research, Occidental College, 1600 Campus Road, Los Angeles, CA 90042, USA E-mail: hsuw@oxy.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines the performances of Taiwanese American Jack Hsu and his New Jersey-based progressive erhu-rock band The Hsu-nami, in transnational contexts fraught by ethnonationalism and race. Through an ethnographic approach, this paper highlights the band's depoliticising practice to deflect the geopolitics across the Taiwan Strait. It also discusses how Hsu adapts the musical and gender ideologies in rock music culture to diffuse racial ideologies surrounding his ethnicity and instrument. Finally, an analysis of the band's deployment of cultural diplomacy discusses pragmatic multiculturalism, a mode that reflects the tension between rock music's ostensibly counter-cultural front and its commercial foundation.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 32 , Issue 1: East Asian popular music and its (dis)contents , January 2013 , pp. 91 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Beckerman, J. 2008. ‘Beckerman: Jersey band makes Olympic cut’, Northjersey.com, 9 August. http://www.northjersey.com/betterliving/Jersey_band_makes_Olympic_cut.html (accessed 13 January 2010)Google Scholar
Chthonic. 2007. UNlimited ChthoniC, UNlimited Taiwan. http://chthonic.org/unlimited/ (accessed 7 January 2010)Google Scholar
Coates, N. 1997. ‘(R)evolution now?: rock and the political potential of gender’, Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender, ed. Whiteley, S. (New York, Routledge), pp. 50–64Google Scholar
Commission for the Admission of Taiwan to the United Nations. ‘About us’, updated. http://unfortaiwan.org/ (accessed 2 November 2009)Google Scholar
Feld, S. 2000. ‘A sweet lullaby for world music’, Public Culture, 12/1, pp. 145–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frazier, D. 2007. ‘ChthoniC: a heavy metal alloy of music and politics’, New York Times, 16 August. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/arts/16iht-metal.1.7136846.html (accessed 17 November 2009)Google Scholar
Garofalo, R. 1993. ‘Whose world, what beat: the transnational music industry, identity and cultural imperialism’, The World of Music, 35/2, pp. 16–32Google Scholar
Hernandez, D.P., L'Hoeste, H.F., and Zolov, E. (eds.) 2004. Rockin Las Américas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latin/o America (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hsu, J. 2008. Interview by author. AOL Instant Messenger, 21 DecemberGoogle Scholar
Hsu, J. 2009a. Interview by author. Google Chat, 3 JuneGoogle Scholar
Hsu, J. 2009b. Interview by author. Google Wave, 8–11 DecemberGoogle Scholar
Hsu, J. 2010. Interview by author. Google Wave, 8–9 FebruaryGoogle Scholar
Hsu, W., and Sargent, C. 2008. ‘Rocking out between the local and the global: transnational independent music industry in Taiwan’, Amalgam: The Virginian Interdisciplinary Graduate Review, 2/1, pp. 39–52Google Scholar
Hsu-nami, The. 2008. Biography. http://hsu-nami.com/home/biography/ (accessed 15 October 2008)Google Scholar
Jung, E.Y. 2010. ‘Playing the race and sexuality cards in the transnational pop game: Korean music videos for the US market’, Journal of Popular Music Studies, 22/2, pp. 219–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kao, C. 2007. ‘IOC's rules don't apply to public at any events’, Taipei Times, 14 September. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/09/14/2003378706 (accessed 14 January 2010)Google Scholar
Kao, P. 2008. ‘Unlimited band’, Taipei Review, 8 January. http://taiwanreview.nat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=25065&CtNode=128 (accessed 20 November 2009)Google Scholar
Keightley, K. 2001. ‘Reconsidering rock’, in The Cambridge Companion of Pop and Rock, ed. Frith, S., Straw, W. and Street, J. (New York, Cambridge University Press), pp. 109–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khiun, L.K. 2003. ‘Limited pidgin-type patois? Policy, language, technology, identity, and the experience of Canto-pop in Singapore’, Popular Music, 22/2, pp. 217–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kun, J. 2005. Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (Berkeley, University of California Press)Google Scholar
Lee, R. 1999. Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia, Temple University Press)Google Scholar
Lucid Culture. 2009. ‘Concert reviews: The Hsu-nami at the Passport to Taiwan Festival, Union Square, NYC 5/23/09’, lucidculture, 26 May. http://lucidculture.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/concert-review-the-hsu-nami-at-the-passport-to-taiwan-festival-union-square-nyc-52409/ (accessed 30 May 2009)Google Scholar
Lum, C.M.K. 1996. In Search of A Voice: Karaoke and the Construction of Identity in Chinese America (New York, Routledge)Google Scholar
Mahon, M. 2004. Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race (Durham, Duke University Press)Google Scholar
McHugh, M. 2008. ‘Jersey's Hsu-nami getting Olympic airplay’, NY.com, 11 August. http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/08/north_jersey_band_hsunami_gett.html (accessed 13 January 2010)Google Scholar
Moon, K. 2005. Yellowface: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s–1920 (New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press)Google Scholar
Nguyen, M. 2001. ‘Tales of an Asiatic geek girl: Slant from paper to pixels’, in Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life, ed. Nelson, A. and Tu, T.L.N. (New York, New York University Press), pp. 177–90Google Scholar
Palumbo-Liu, D. 1995. Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Front (Palo Alto, Stanford University Press)Google Scholar
Palumbo-Liu, D. 2002. ‘Multiculturalism now: civilization, national identity, and difference before and after September 11th’, Boundary 2, 29/2, pp. 109–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinard, A., and Jacobs, S. 2006. ‘Building a virtual diaspora: hip hop in cyberspace’, in Cybersounds: Essays on Virtual Music Culture, ed. Ayers, M. (New York, Peter Lang Publishing)Google Scholar
Prashad, V. 2001. Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity (Boston, Beacon Press)Google Scholar
Purkayastha, B. 2005. Negotiating Ethnicity: Second-Generation South Asian Americans Traverse a Transnational World (New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press)Google Scholar
Schoel, G.F. 2003. ‘Filling in the blanks: lessons from an Internet blues jam’, in Japanese Cybercultures, ed. Gottlieb, N. and McLelland, M.J. (New York, Routledge), pp. 75–91Google Scholar
Stock, J. 1992. ‘Contemporary recital solos for the Chinese two-stringed fiddle erhu’, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, 1, pp. 55–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stokes, M. 1997. ‘Place, exchange and meaning: Black Sea musicians in the west of Ireland’, in Ethnicity, Identity, and Music: The Musical Construction of Place, ed. Stokes, M. (Oxford, Berg)Google Scholar
Taylor, T. 2003. ‘A riddle wrapped in a mystery: transnational music sampling and Enigma's “Return to Innocence”’, in Music and Technoculture, ed. Lysloff, R. and Gay, L. (Middletown, Wesleyan University Press), pp. 64–92Google Scholar
Tringali, J. 2005. ‘Love guns, tight pants, and big sticks: who put the cock in rock?’, Bitch Magazine, 28 (Spring), pp. 76–82Google Scholar
Wong, D.A. 2004. ‘Karaoke, mass mediation and agency in Vietnamese American popular music’, in Speak It Louder: Asian Americans Making Music (New York, Routledge), pp. 69–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wu, F. 2003. Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White (New York, Basic Books)Google Scholar
Yang, M.M.H. 2002. ‘Mass media and transnational subjectivity in Shanghai: notes on (re)cosmopolitanism in Chinese metropolis’, in The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader, ed. Inda, J.X. and Rosaldo, R. (Malden, Blackwell Publishers), pp. 325–49Google Scholar

Discography

The Hsu-nami, Entering the Mandala. Self-released. 2008Google Scholar
The Hsu-nami, The Four Noble Truths. Self-released. 2009Google Scholar
Pong, Hsin-Chang and Hanshin Chinese Folk and Dance Ensemble, Music from China and Taiwan: Han Shin Chinese Folk & Dance Ensemble. EUCD, 1734. 2002Google Scholar