A Cross-Culture Study on Chinese Music in the United States

Abstract

Since 1979, China has been promoting development strategies such as “outward and inward”, “one belt, one road” and “enhancement of national cultural soft power.” Today, with internationalization and diversification as driving forces, Chinese music has become a primary avenue for China’s “cultural confidence” in foreign lands. Being the country with the highest number of Chinese students studying in the USA as international students, the impact of Chinese music and culture in the American colleges and universities cannot be underestimated. It is noteworthy that in almost all studies exploring the dissemination of music culture in departments of Asian Studies in American institutions of higher learning, Chinese music culture is very broad in scope to include Chinese folk music, regardless of the historic variety that Chinese music encapsulates. The modern Chinese music seemingly disrupts the continuity and lineage of traditional Chinese music history, yet the traditional Chinese music and modern Chinese music indeed belong to the same family. The major differences include contemporary Chinese music genres such as people’s music, professional music, and popular music have been deliberately excluded from the propagation of Chinese music culture in curriculum. Furthermore, few scholars in Chinese academic circles pay attention to these genres at present. Therefore, this paper tries to explore the phenomenon of deliberate erasure of Chinese music culture in the U.S. This paper also intends to study the overseas dissemination of Chinese music in a cross-cultural context, combining the overview and strategies of Chinese music culture dissemination at home and abroad. Last but not least, this paper attempts to construct a unity of the historical and humanistic aspects of Chinese music culture dissemination overseas.