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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
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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

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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