for a while, the "strings of history" paper on the yueh-ch'in and folk music pilgrims was on hold. recently, however, i was able to meet with chen ming-chang on the subject of yueh-ch'in and music education. nearly simultaneously, a friend at brown university asked me to submit a chapter to an edited volume on national/ist spectacles. a felicitous coincidence
for the chapter, i will look at the folk music pilgrimage from two different angles related broadly to remediation
first, the folk music pilgrimage remediates pilgrimages and concerts, causing the yueh-ch'in to circulate as "taiwan's national instrument" and its repertoire as "folk music" within spaces of national recognition. in this sense, remediation makes the media the focus of the participants--they will see taiwanese folk music circulate within a nationally appropriate media. second, the folk music pilgrimage provokes ethical work. while in the first instance, the yueh-ch'in circulated as "our instrument" within a media imagined as "international," in the second, the yueh-ch'in becomes "my instrument." in other words, remediation enacts shifts in a musical ontology between "our music" (relatively inalienable but commensurable) and "my music" (absolutely inalienable and incommensurable). it also makes a problem of these shifts for the folk music pilgrims
so far, that's the architecture of the chapter. i will keep updating here as i work
in other updates, i'm working on the "sounds like renqing" paper for asian anthropology. i am also hoping to produce a few podcasts over the next few months
