Across the Pacific: the strategic citizenship of Chinese musicians

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since the 1990s, the world has seen an incredible surge of Chinese performers in Western classical music. Unknown to most outside of Chinese musical networks, these musicians often began their training as young children, learning from parents who lost musical ambitions during the Cultural Revolution and who hoped to realise them through their only child. However, as children rapidly developed musical skills and entered conservatories, other career paths became eliminated. Drawing from anthropologist Aihwa Ong’s work on ‘flexible citizenship’ and ethnographic fieldwork in Mainland China, Canada, and the United States, I theorise the ‘strategic citizenship’ of these students and their families. I do so to argue that the strong presence of Chinese instrumentalists in Western classical music has resulted from a desire, even a desperation, amongst many families to negotiate intergenerational traumas and acquire socio-economic stability in the neoliberal age. In this process, transnational Chinese musicians must also contend with issues of precarity and Orientalisms abroad.