A fascinating look at how the popular musical culture of Guangzhou
expresses the city's unique cosmopolitanism.
Guangzhou is a large Chinese city like many others. With a booming
economy and abundant job opportunities, it has become a magnet for rural
citizens seeking better job prospects as well as global corporations
hoping to gain a foothold in one of the world's largest economies. This
openness and energy have led to a thriving popular music scene that is
every bit the equal of Beijing's. But the musical culture of Guangzhou
expresses the city's unique cosmopolitanism. A port city that once
played a key role in China's maritime Silk Road, Guangzhou has long been
an international hub. Now, new migrants to the city are incorporating
diverse Chinese folk traditions into the musical tapestry.
In Sonic Mobilities, ethnomusicologist Adam Kielman takes a deep dive
into Guangzhou's music scene through two bands, Wanju Chuanzhang (Toy
Captain) and Mabang (Caravan), that express ties to their rural
homelands and small-town roots while forging new cosmopolitan musical
connections. These bands make music that captures the intersection of
the global and local that has come to define Guangzhou, for example by
writing songs with a popular Jamaican reggae beat and lyrics in their
distinct regional dialects mostly incomprehensible to their audiences.
These bands create a sound both instantly recognizable and totally
foreign, international and hyper-local. This juxtaposition, Kielman
argues, is an apt expression of the demographic, geographic, and
political shifts underway in Guangzhou and across the country. Bridging
ethnomusicology, popular music studies, cultural geography, and media
studies, Kielman examines the cultural dimensions of shifts in
conceptualizations of self, space, publics, and state in a rapidly
transforming the People's Republic of China.
