Taiwan Humanities Lecture Series |

Sounding Settler Politics:

The Institutionalization of Hakka Music in Postwar Taiwan

Friday, April 7, 2023

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM ET

Room 505

Elliott School of International Affairs

1957 E Street NW Washington, D.C. 20052

RSVP

Hakka is the second largest ethnic group in Taiwan, comprising 20 percent of the total population. An affective medium for meaning construction, Hakka music has not only been adopted by Hakka community to express cultural differences; it has also been appropriated by the state to manifest national characteristics. Despite the prosperous productions of Hakka music in recent decades, archival materials on activities akin to today’s Hakka musical practice published during the first half of the 20th century seldom mention the term “Hakka.” Although some writers noticed the differences between cultural practices of different groups of Han settlers, very few attributed particular musical activities to “the Hakka”, and those that did wrote from an outsider’s perspective.

How did the discourse of Hakka identity and culture emerge in Taiwan from the second half of the 20th century? And how did Hakka music become typified and promoted alongside the battles over identity politics and cultural governance? This lecture addresses the changing social organization of Hakka music in postwar Taiwan, and analyzes the crystallization, objectification, systemization, and decentering of Hakka music discourse and performance.

About

Speaker

Hsin-Wen Hsu is an assistant professor in Ethnomusicology at National Taiwan Normal University. He received his doctoral degree in Ethnomusicology from Indiana University. His research interests center around issues of music making as embodied experience and social action. He has conducted extensive fieldwork and archival research on music cultures of Hakka people in Taiwan and other Sinophone societies, and his works could be found in edited volumes as well as periodicals such as Taiwan Journal of Anthropology, Global Hakka Studies, as well as Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore. In addition to academic knowledge production, he has been engaged in musical activism, organizing events for promoting cultural diversity, equity, and inclusion. During 2012-2015 he curated world music concert series for Taiwan’s National Theater and Concert Hall, and since 2018 he has served as an editorial consultant for The Silk Road, a digital magazine published by Taipei Chinese Orchestra. Supported by a Fulbright Scholar Award, he is currently doing research at Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage as a visiting fellow.

Moderator

Liana Chen is Associate Professor of Chinese and International Affairs at George Washington University. She is the Director of the Taiwan Education and Research Program. Chen is the author of Literati and Actors at Work: The Transformations of Peony Pavilion on Page and On Stage in the Ming and Qing Dynasties (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 2013) and Staging for the Emperors: A History of Qing Court Theatre, 1683-1923 (Amherst, New York: Cambria Press, 2021). Liana Chen’s areas of teaching and research focus on Chinese drama and theatre, Chinese literature of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and Taiwanese theatre, literature and film. Liana Chen’s research has been supported by the Foundation for Development of Chinese Culture (Taiwan), The American Council of Learned Societies, and Sigur Center for Asian Studies.

4/07/2023 | Taiwan Humanities Lecture Series | Sounding Settler Politics: The Institutionalization of Hakka Music in Postwar Taiwan