Recent technology and the hybridisation of Western and Chinese musics

Abstract

Although the hybridisation of Western and Chinese musics has been progressing for over a century, many early attempts tended to treat Chinese material in a rather superficial manner. This resulted in mere ‘Orientalist’ Western pieces and rather bland pentatonic/romantic ‘Chinese’ music that simply harmonised the basic outline of popular Chinese melodies with Western chord progressions. The use of recent technologies has greatly accelerated the pace and depth of this hybridisation and solved many of its artistic problems. Technological advances now make it possible and practical to incorporate the subtle but essential elements of traditional Chinese music, and of course other world musics, in works that seem satisfying for Western and non-Western audiences. This paper presents a brief historical overview of the hybridisation of Western and Chinese musical traditions, examines common pitfalls of many early attempts, and reviews how these issues are addressed compositionally and technically in the author's recent electroacoustic pieces, Li Jiang Etudes No. 1, 2 & 3.

The North Indian Sarode and Questions Concerning Technology

“…There is a small but growing discourse on electroacoustic music using non-Western instrumentation. This discourse ranges from broad surveys in an Asian context (He, Kapur and Carnegie 2014) to more specific cases dealing with traditional Chinese instrumentation (Keyes 2005), Japanese sonic aesthetics (Ishii 2018), collaborations involving traditional instruments from areas such as Brazil (De Souza 2005), Malaysia (Blackburn and Penny 2014) and the electronic extension of traditional Persian and Jewish instruments (Gluck 2004(Gluck , 2005(Gluck , 2007(Gluck , 2008. These discussions range in their scope and focus but one thing that they have in common is a challenging of assumptions that the aesthetics of electroacoustic music transcends cultural boundaries (Gluck 2008).…”

“…Much of the existing scholarship on electroacoustic music and non-Western instruments is influenced by Said's interpretation of cultural borrowing. Primarily, electroacoustic music discourse in this area falls into two categories: either a critique of sonic appropriation from a Western composer's viewpoint (Keyes 2005) or alternatively the use of technology by 'native' performers (Ishii 2018). This kind of discourse sets up a cultural dichotomy where musical traditions are viewed as discreet monoliths and it does not account for the hybrid nature of cultural genesis.…”

Contemporary Practices of Extending Traditional Asian Instruments Using Technology

“…Other composers who have been working in the realm of electroacoustic composition include: Jin Hi Kim, Yoichi Nagashima (Nagashima 1999), Alesandro Cipriani (Cipriani 2002), Christopher J. Keyes ( The Li Jiang Etudes 2004) (Keyes 2005), Luca Bonvini (Bonvini 2009), David Rosenboom (Rosenboom 2010), Larry Polansky, Leah Barclay, Sandeep Bhagwati, Mei Han and Miya Masaoka.…”

Between, Within and Across Cultures

“…Issues of culture have recently become an increasing focus of interest in electroacoustic music (De Souza 2005;Fischman 1999;Gluck 2005cGluck , 2006aGluck , 2006bKeyes 2005;Whalley 2005). This reflects a departure from earlier assumptions that the aesthetics of this field transcended cultural boundaries, despite the European and North American aesthetics characteristic of its founding era of the 1950s and 1960s.…”