Course Title：Appreciating Chinese Music, Understanding Chinese Culture and Society

This course is an introduction to appreciating and understanding Chinese music through the lenses of ethnomusicology and cultural studies. It is structured for students of all levels and no musical knowledge is required. The fundamental question is to explore what Chinese music is and how to listen to it? Based on the assumptions that music is socially situated and culturally significant, these approaches go beyond conventional paradigms of music study. Like all domains of culture, music is intrinsically linked to the culture’s philosophy, social values, and aesthetic preference. Music is at once a product and a cultural process. We challenge the notion of treating music as a product or only as high art. This course will present both theoretical framework and case studies that will help students understand the formation of musical traditions, how they change and disseminate. Topics under discussion will range from the idea of “orientalism” in Western art music, globalization of music, to local responses to the arrival of Western and foreign music. The goals of this course are to extend the scope of understanding Chinese music as a cultural phenomenon rooted in philosophical foundation and to expand the idea of musical analysis beyond what is on the printed page.