This thesis is a study of the musical genre nanyin, one of the oldest and most prestigious living folk traditions preserved in southern Fujian (Minnan), China. As an emblem of Minnan ethnic identity, nanyin is still actively practised in the Southeast Asian Fujianese diaspora as well. Based on ethnographic investigations in Jinjiang County, this research explores multifaceted nanyin activities in the society at large. The importance of the genre is manifested in its active role in political, socio-economic and cultural spheres, its adaptations to state cultural ideologies in the ebb and flow of different political periods, and its continuity despite changing transmission modes. This thesis consists of eight chapters. Chapter 1 offers an introduction to the genre and centres on an examination of published literature relevant to my approach and my fieldwork objectives. Chapter 2 gives an overview of nanyin and its pivotal role as musical source to other folk performing arts in southern Fujian. Chapter 3 focuses on the historical roots of nanyin, its musical identity, and prestige and gender shifts. Chapter 4 traces the processes of social and cultural transformation and illustrates their effects on shaping musical changes in nanyin in the 20th and 21st centuries. Chapter 5 investigates contemporary nanyin performance contexts in Jinjiang, including examination of how ritual practices are situated in the present state ideology. In Chapter 6, I draw on my field observations to discuss the methods of nanyin transmission in formal and informal contexts. With Westernization and urbanization since the late 19th century, institutionalization of folk music has become common, and nanyin is no exception. Chapter 7 looks at music as cultural capital and discusses diasporic support and government involvement as factors in the preservation of nanyin. Chapter 8 summarizes and reflects on my findings with reference to my research queries, and suggest how these findings supplement existing nanyin studies.

Guoyue. literally "national music", is a hybrid musical genre that originated from mainland China mixing different types of Chinese traditional music. Transmitted to Taiwan in the 1950s, guoyue today manifests considerable creativity and diversity by drawing on expressions of Chinese cultural heritage and Taiwaneseness, while simultaneously ranging in style from traditional to modem through the influence of systemic modernisation, Westernisation and globalisation. Significant changes to politics, society and economics in Taiwan that began in the second half of the 1980s and continue to affect the Taiwanese population pose ongoing challenges to guoyue, such that its musical practices are undergoing negotiation and reconstruction within the context of Taiwan. Moreover, frequent cross-cultural inlluence and exchange have Icd those in the RIIOYlIe system to gradually incorporate aspects of diverse musical cultures and to produce a new musical form, crossover tkuajiei. through diversified and complex systems of cross-cultural and cross-genre interaction. This thesis consists of an introduction and four major chapters. Chapter two assesses the development of guoyue and the Chinese orchestra iguoyue tuani in mainland China. looking at such issues as hybridisation and political and social transformation. Chapter three explores changes in the development of guoyue in contemporary Taiwan with regard to issues of political transformation. This chapter also discusses how musicians in Taiwan utilise guoyue as an expression in shaping their sense or national identity and vice versa. An ethnographic analysis of the current music making of Chinese orchestras in Taiwan is presented in chapter four. linally, I consider the effects of Taiwan's current govemrnental policy through the concept of transculturation, and offer a transnational perspective through the di fferent situations of guoyue in Singapore and Malaysia. Overall, the research shows that the developments of guoyue and Chinese orchestra have continually changed according to political. social and cultural impacts. This research reveals how an ethnomusicological framework can be used to understand the development of guoyue and how those within guoyue cope with the connected and cross-border musical hybridities that characterise the present situation in postcolonial Taiwan.

Jiqing guangchang is a form of amateur music performance event in Wuhan, a major city in central China. Groups of singers take turns to perform well-known Chinese popular songs for a few hours each afternoon and evening in squares, on street corners, and in parks around the city. Audiences take an active part by offering performers cash tips. Certain discourses surrounding contemporary urban life have portrayed experiences with popular music in these modern city contexts as distant from communal meaning. My ethnography of these performances and their surrounding social worlds is geared towards assessing the significance of community here, while also contributing to an understanding of the notion in contemporary urban China. Musical activity in jiqing guangchang is mundane, mainstream and rarely inspires fervent commitment or responses from participants. I analyse material from its spatial and sonic, economic, performative and social sides to look beyond understandings of community that are based on ideologies of kinship and belonging. I develop the discussion towards community’s embodied and material-level foundations, manifest in the mutual orientation and coexistence strategies of participants, their modes of sociability, and the designation and sharing of social territories. Thus, various limitations in current discourses of music and community can be transcended, particularly those tied to binary understandings of community’s position in relation to society, individualism, and several other key concepts. I aim to highlight that in contemporary urban situations, music’s ability to engender collective meaning is not only tied to ritualised contexts or those where divisive identity issues are prominent. Instead, my analysis of jiqing guangchang brings to the fore underlying and everyday modes of collective engagement that may be of deep-seated significance in interpreting all kinds of musical contexts.

This thesis explores the connection between music and politics in post reform China from the point of view of mass communication, and within the fields of politically influenced folk music in Xinjiang, the rapid development of the ‘Chinese Piano Dream’, and the popular music on the central stage of the China Central Television Spring Festival Gala. This is preceded by an introduction to the political, economic and cultural changes since the implementation of the Reform and Opening Up Policy in 1978, which have not only challenged China’s traditional culture but have also altered her self-image and relationship with the outside world. Chinese politicians have realized that communal value and national identity are no longer based only on closed borders and a strong political ideology. Meanwhile, music remains a propaganda tool since the establishment of the Communist Party of China, and continues to serve the mainstream media, interacting with politics to further the Communist agenda and maintain a favourable image of the Party. As a native fieldworker from Xinjiang, I enjoy dual identities and perspectives (‘emic’ and ‘etic’) as insider and outsider to apply to the research of new folk music in Xinjiang: how it is decoded, disseminated and interpreted by its audience, and how it conveys political messages. With China’s rapid economic growth, Western classical music became a new channel of communication between East and West. The renowned pianist Yundi Li is not only a household name but is moreover a symbol of the response to President Xi Jin-ping’s call to the nation to chase the ‘Chinese Dream’ and he also represents China’s ‘soft power’ internationally. My fieldwork with Yundi stemmed from the largest music tour in Chinese history, entitled ‘China Piano Dream’ (2013), and the ‘Emperor - Fantasy’ tour (2014), which gave me a unique insight into how Chinese musicians negotiate the political and social expectations placed on them. Finally, a new crossover resulting from collaborations between well-known musicians from Mainland China and Taiwan has had a significant impact on the most viewed television programme in the world: the China Central Television Spring Festival Gala. Mass communication models, audience reception and a semiotic approach to the analysis of musical extracts are applied to interpret the political meaning of the performance.

In this doctoral thesis, I examine the influence of multi-ethnic cultures and heritage of East and Southeast Asia on my compositional development. Although the imitation of the outward features of other cultures is an important part of the attempt to compose cross-cultural pieces, such imitation is only one part of the learning process. The most difficult task is to make a meaningful cultural confluence out of these influences. My original contribution to music lies in the way in which I have activated the legacy of my multicultural Malaysian heritage and combined a strong focus on Chinese cultural traditions with a wider Malaysian context that involves theatre, philosophy, rituals, and spirituality. Over the past few years, I have composed cross-cultural works for traditional East and Southeast Asian and Western instruments, collaborating with multiple musicians in Asia, the United States, and Europe. The compositions discussed in this thesis reveal the various elements of my writing for Chinese instruments that are at once original and eclectic. I am particularly interested in incorporating various East and Southeast Asian musical practices such as Chinese dialect folk songs (especially Hakka storytelling and mountain songs), Gamelan music from South East Asia, Indian ritual and ceremonial music, ancient Chinese court music, and chanting of classical Chinese poetry, Korean Pansori music, and Japanese Gagaku music to create my own compositional techniques and languages. Using my compositions as examples, I illustrate the incorporation of East and Southeast Asian vocal and instrumental techniques into Western musical languages. In the first two chapters, I focus more on the importance of Chinese sources of poetry and philosophical thinking in a number of large-scale works. In the third chapter, I examine the key compositional roles played by elements such as sonic mobility and spatialisation, the interplay and interchange of roles in instrumental writing, and the concept of “living ornamentation” in creating heterophony and vocalisation, and present a detailed analysis of one of my works Yuan-Liu (2009). I explain how sonic mobility and spatialisation, as realised through unique instrumental setups in my compositions, are deeply informed by my childhood experience of listening to the acoustics of nature in the woods. In the concluding chapter, I discuss how I use the concepts of time, narrative, and cultural confluence in my music.

The twentieth century saw the spread of Western art music across the world as Western ideology and values acquired increasing dominance in the global order. How did this process occur in China, what complexities does it display and what are its distinctive features? This thesis aims to provide a detailed and coherent understanding of the Westernisation of Chinese music in the 20th century, focusing on the ever-changing relationship between music and social ideology and the rise and evolution of national identity as expressed in music. This thesis views these issues through three crucial stages: the early period of the 20th century which witnessed the transition of Chinese society from an empire to a republic and included China's early modernisation; the era from the 1930s to 1940s comprising the Japanese intrusion and the rising of the Communist power; and the decades of economic and social reform from 1978 onwards. The thesis intertwines the concrete analysis of particular pieces of music with social context and demonstrates previously overlooked relationships between these stages. It also seeks to illustrate in the context of the appropriation of Western art music how certain concepts acquired new meanings in their translation from the European to the Chinese context, for example modernity, Marxism, colonialism, nationalism, tradition, liberalism, and so on.