Refashioning Pop Music in Asia: Cosmopolitan Flows, Political Tempos, and Aesthetic Industries (Consumasian Book Series (Richmond, England).)

238 Pages·2004·1.37 MB·English

by  B. Shoesmith

ii
Refashioning Pop Music in Asia
With its examination of the cultural, political, economic, technological and institu-
tional aspects of popular music throughout Asia, this book is the first comprehensive
analysis of Asian popular music and its cultural industries. Concentrating on the
development of popular culture in its local socio-political context, the volume
highlights how local appropriations of the pop music genre play an active rather than
reactive role in manipulating global cultural and capital flows.
Unlike many studies on globalisation, which highlight functional disjunctures of
‘cultural imperialism’, Refashioning Pop Music in Asia stresses that it is the local context
which imbues specific meanings for different audiences, in turn allowing a creative
synthesis that makes pop music a unique channel through which cultural identity,
political resistance, social expression and personal desire can be experienced. Popu-
lar musical expression in Asia – its meaning and its practice – cannot be reduced to
the state, market, tradition or to a simple appropriation of Western forms. Rather, it
is at the juncture of the local and global that an aesthetic refashioning of traditional
and pop music genres emerge.
Broad in geographical sweep and rich in contemporary examples, this work will
appeal to those interested in Asian popular culture from a variety of perspectives,
including students of political economy, anthropology, communication studies,
media studies and ethnomusicology.
Allen Chun is Research Fellow in the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica,
Taipei, Taiwan. Ned Rossiter is Lecturer in Communications and Media Studies
at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Brian Shoesmith is an Associate
Professor in Media Studies at Edith Cowan University, Australia and Head of the
Centre for Asian Communication, Media and Cultural Studies.
ConsumAsiaN book series
Edited by Brian Moeran and Lise Skov
The ConsumAsiaN book series examines the way in which things and ideas about
things are consumed in Asia, the role of consumption in the formation of attitudes,
experiences, lifestyles and social relations, and the way in which consumption
relates to the broader cultures and societies of which it is a part. The series consists of
both single-authored monographs and edited selections of essays, and is inter-
disciplinary in approach. While seeking to map current and recent consumer trends
in various aspects of Asian cultures, the series pays special attention to the inter-
actions and influences among the countries concerned, as well as to the region as a
whole in a global context. The volumes in the series apply up-to-date theoretical
arguments frequently developed in Europe and America to non-Western societies –
both in order to analyse how consumption practices in Asia compare to those found
elsewhere, and to develop new theories that match a specific Asian context.
Women, Media and Consumption in Japan
Edited by Lise Skov and Brian Moeran
A Japanese Advertising Agency
An anthropology of media and markets
Brian Moeran
Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture
Edited by John Whittier Treat
Packaged Japaneseness
Weddings, business and brides
Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni
Australia and Asia
Cultural transactions
Edited by Maryanne Dever
Staging Hong Kong
Rozanna Lilley
Asian Department Stores
Edited by Kerrie L. MacPherson
Consuming Ethnicity and Nationalism
Edited by Kosaku Yoshino
The Commercialized Crafts of Thailand
Hill tribes and lowland villages
Erik Cohen
Japanese Consumer Behaviour
From worker bees to wary shoppers
John L. McCreery
Adult Manga
Culture and power in contemporary Japanese society
Sharon Kinsella
Illustrating Asia
Comics, humour magazines, and picture books
Edited by John A. Lent
Asian Media Productions
Edited by Brian Moeran
Asian Food
The global and the local
Edited by Katarzyna Cwiertka and Boudewijn Walraven
Refashioning Pop Music in Asia
Cosmopolitan flows, political tempos and aesthetic industries
Edited by Allen Chun, Ned Rossiter and Brian Shoesmith

Refashioning Pop Music
in Asia
Cosmopolitan flows, political tempos and
aesthetic industries
Edited by Allen Chun, Ned Rossiter
and Brian Shoesmith
First published 2004
by RoutledgeCurzon
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by RoutledgeCurzon
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2004 Allen Chun, Ned Rossiter and Brian Shoesmith selection and
editorial matter; individual chapters the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to
the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any
legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Refashioning pop music in Asia: cosmopolitan flows, political tempos,
and aesthetic industries/edited by Allen Chun, Ned Rossiter, and Brian
Shoesmith.
p. cm. – (ConsumAsiaN book series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Popular music–Asia–History and criticism. 2. Popular
music–Social aspects–Asia. 3. Popular music–Political
aspects–Asia. I. Chun, Allen John Uck Lun, 1952– II. Rossiter, Ned.
III. Shoesmith, Brian. IV. Series: ConsumAsiaN book series (Richmond,
England)
ML3500.R44 2004
781.63(cid:1)095–dc22 2003020296
ISBN 0-203-64183-3 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-67868-0 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-700-71401-4 (Print Edition)
Contents
Notes on contributors ix
Preface xii
BRIAN SHOESMITH
Acknowledgements xvi
Introduction: cultural imaginaries, musical communities,
reflexive practices 1
ALLEN CHUN AND NED ROSSITER
PART I
Musical cultures and culture industries 15
1 Capitalism and cultural relativity: the Thai pop industry,
capitalism and Western cultural values 17
MICHAEL HAYES
2 Popping the myth of Chinese rock 32
DAVID STOKES
3 World music, cultural heteroglossia and indigenous capital:
overlapping frequencies in the emergence of cosmopolitanism
in Taiwan 49
ALLEN CHUN
PART II
Local appropriations: from nation-building to happy pop
and folk resistance 61
4 The imagined community of Maa Tujhe Salaam: the global and
the local in the postcolonial 63
RANGAN CHAKRAVARTY
viii Contents
5 Global industry, national politics: popular music in
‘New Order’ Indonesia 75
KRISHNA SEN AND DAVID T. HILL
6 The case of the irritating song: Suman Chatterjee and modern
Bengali music 89
SUDIPTO CHATTERJEE
PART III
Travelling theories, syncretic exoticisms, or diffusion by any
other name? 109
7 Magical mystical tourism (debate dub version) 111
JOHN HUTNYK
8 ‘Love Never Dies’: romance and Christian symbolism in a
Japanese rock video 127
CAROLYN S. STEVENS
9 Japanese popular music in Hong Kong: what does TK present? 144
MASASHI OGAWA
PART IV
Colonial desire, social memory and popular sensuality as
performance genres 157
10 Raising the ante of desire: foreign female singers in a
Japanese pop music world 159
CHRISTINE R. YANO
11 Pop music as postcolonial nostalgia in Taiwan 173
JEREMY E. TAYLOR
12 Popular music and interculturality: the dynamic presence
of pop music in contemporary Balinese performance 183
ZACHAR LASKEWICZ
References 198
Index 212
Contributors
Rangan Chakravarty has worked in corporate and development communication
for nearly 25 years. Since completing a PhD in Media Studies at Sussex Univer-
sity, Rangan has worked as a media producer and a communications consultant,
conducting communications workshops in a number of countries including
Egypt, Yemen and the Netherlands. He is also an editorial consultant for the
Bengali daily, Anandabazar Patrika.
Sudipto Chatterjee is currently an Assistant Professor of Department of Theater,
Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He
received his PhD in Performance Studies from New York University and has
taught as an Assistant Professor of Drama at Tufts University. With parallel
interests in theatre, film and music, Sudipto has been the Artistic Director of Epic
Actors’ Workshop and Choir in New York. In 1997, he made Free To Sing?, a
feature-length documentary on Suman Chatterjee, which has been screened at
various international venues. Many of his articles have appeared in international
anthologies and theatre journals. Sudipto is also the author of 14 plays and
translations in Bengali and English, most of which have been performed in the
USA and India. He is currently working on two books on Indian theatre.
Allen Chun is Research Fellow in the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica,
Taipei, Taiwan. His current research interests include historical anthropology,
postcolonial theory, Chinese societies and the cultural sociology of the state.
Allen has published articles in Theory, Culture & Society, Dialectical Anthropology,
Journal of Historical Sociology, History & Anthropology, Ethnic & Racial Studies, Culture &
Policy, boundary 2, Current Anthropology, Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, Toung Pao
and Late Imperial China. He has recently published Unstructuring Chinese Society: The
Fictions of Colonial Practice and the Changing Realities of ‘Land’ in the New Territories of
Hong Kong (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Press, 2000).
Michael Hayes teaches in the Human Rights and Social Development programme
at Mahidol University, Thailand. He researches issue of media, human rights
and development in South East Asia.
David T. Hill is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Murdoch University,
Perth, Western Australia, where he is also a Fellow of the Asia Research Centre.