1
Postmodernism’s Hybrid and Orientalist Turn within Classical
Music: An Analysis of Vanessa Mae and Lang Lang, 1990-2010.
Name of the student: Aikaterini Prodromidou Student number: S2995115
2
Table of Contents
Abstract ... 3
Introduction... 4
Chapter 1: Cultural ‘Postmodernisms’ ... 10
Chapter 2: Vanessa Mae 2.1.Introduction ... 15
2.2.Hybridization... 16
2.3.The debate of high art and mass culture... 18
2.4.Video clip analysis ... 21
Chapter 3: Lang Lang 3.1.Introduction ... 26
3.2.The music industry ... 27
3.3.Musical expression ... 30
3.4.Musicological analysis ... 36
Chapter 4: Summary ... 41
Conclusion ... 50
3 Abstract
4 Introduction
‘Once the old essentialist self has been discarded as impossible to found the thirst for new experiences and constant self-enlargement can become the ethical justification for life: aesthetics becomes the ethical criterion for good life’ (cited in Featherstone, 1995)1.
This phrase can be found in Featherstone’s (1995) essay ‘Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity’, drawing upon the work of the philosopher Rorty, in an attempt to explain the shift from the old essentialist self, i.e. a world of modernism and Eurocentrism to the self-enlargement of postmodernism and the emergence of a hybrid set of cultural representations. It reflects upon the central topic of this research, the shift from modernism to postmodernism and the subsequent shift from traditional forms of culture to the international expansion of popular culture which stimulated radically new performance genres and mediums. To reach this point, I will first reflect upon how culture was perceived traditionally and what meaning it has nowadays. Then I will argue core concepts drawn from postmodern theorists in order to better understand such profound changes.
Drawing upon Williams, Stuart Hall (1997) explains that culture was traditionally thought of as ‘the sum of great ideas as represented in the classical works of literature, painting, music and philosophy-‘the high culture’ of an age’2. Nowadays, culture refers to ‘‘the widely distributed forms of popular music, publishing, art, design and literature or the activities of leisure time and entertainment which make up the everyday lives of the majority
1Featherstone, M. (1995). Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (Theory, culture &
society). 1st ed. Sage Publications.
2
5 of ‘ordinary people’-what is called the ‘mass culture’ or the ‘popular culture’ of an age’’ (Hall, 1997).
The shift from traditional to popular culture can be thought of as the result of the technological and economic developments in the 20th century, which gave rise to a far reaching process, the globalization process. Globalization, as a concept, can be defined in multiple ways regarding the field it affects; for example, Shuker (1998) explains that globalization is the result of the world being shrunk into one communication system, dominated by international media conglomerates (Shuker, 1998). In this definition, though, it is not easy to understand what globalization means to the core because we need to explain further the term popular culture, which will be discussed thoroughly later in the research. For now, we will turn our attention to other scholars who offer a more general approach to globalization, such as Giddens’ (1990) sociological view of the concept:
‘Globalization refers essentially to that stretching process in so far as the modes of connection between different social contexts or regions become networked across the earth’s surface as a whole. Globalization can thus be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles and vice versa’ (Giddens, 1990: 64).
6 no more of a static entity but a mix of spheres bound together. It is within this way of thinking about culture, that culture can be justified as a hybrid set of practices inflicted by global and local trends (King, 1997; Featherstone, 1990).
For Giddens (1990), globalization can also be considered as a theory of Westernization which reflects the problems of Eurocentrism3. Eurocentrism refers to the fact that European culture, for many centuries, has been the dominant culture, and as such it expanded rapidly in other countries. For example, during the colonial rule of the 15th century, countries such as Portugal, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK explored India, Japan, and China in an attempt for exploitation of economic opportunities. In doing so, an acculturation process started, and the exchange of products and knowledge led to the closer relation of Western and Eastern culture. Through this closer relation, Europe established its cultural dominance, which was called the ‘Westernization’ process4. Tomlinson (1991) observes, drawing upon Williams, that because of this process, culture was a concept closely connected to the 19th century English usage in reference to colonial rule. Later, in the 20th century, culture was closely related to the development of modern capitalism5.
The industrialization process in Europe, called modernism, was followed by the spread of capitalism. During the years of modernism, a technological and economic boom was observed in western countries. In this period of time, the Western elite or else the ‘Enlightened’ turned to science and infused the whole world with a scientific way of thinking. It is during this time period, that we observe new technological developments, such as the television, the radio, and other industrial products which we call nowadays the mass media6.
The industrialization process was imposed as a major signifier of economic
3
Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. 1st ed. Stanford: CA: Stanford University Press.
4 Cotterell, A. (2013). Western Power in Asia. 1st ed. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. 5
Tomlinson, J. (1991). Cultural Imperialism. 1st ed. London: Pinter.
7 development from western countries. The impact of this process resulted in countries in the East implementing western practice:
‘Nationalist policies that equated science and technology i.e. modernity with greater economic opportunities and sovereignty promoted the convention to the ‘scientific’ rigor of Western music, with its rationalized nation, theory and industrialized instrumental production. Having assimilated associations of classical music with bourgeois ideals of refinement and gentility, the expanding middle classes of the post-war era readily adopted the foreign music as a marker of social distinction’ (Yang, 2007: 3).
Mina Yang (2007), in her postcolonial research, explains the interest of Asian countries towards the West, with the tendency of East-Asian populations to perform Western music. In general, she supports the view that this interest is currently reflected in the fact that the classical music field has changed and as a result there has been an influx of Asian-Americans in the conservatories and concert halls7. By this example, we might argue that cultural exchange was evident between the West and the East.
Around the 1990s, though, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent military and technological advantage of the US, important economic and social changes occurred in the world8. During the post-war years, as Jacques (2004) observes, the US won an undeniable superiority and was perceived of as a ‘hyper-power’. In the next section, I will elaborate on how these technological and industrial developments led the US to promote its cultural imperialism which was expressed by a massive production of cultural commodities. First, however, an analysis is given of the role cultural imperialism in the twentieth century.
7 Yang, M. (2007). East Meets West in the Concert Hall: Asians and Classical Music in the Century of
Imperialism, Post-Colonialism, and Multiculturalism. Asian Music, 38(1), pp.1-30.
8 Tomlinson (1991), drawing upon Williams, argues that there has been a development in the way that we think about culture, which can be traced to the ideas of the 18th century German Romantic Johann Herder: ‘To speak of cultures in plural is to dispute the idea that there is one ‘correct’ pattern of human development- as is implicit in the Eurocentric notion of ‘civilization’9
. Indeed, “pluralism introduced by the sense of ‘a culture’ as a distinct way of life of a collectivity is of major importance in modern (Western) thought. Much of the opposition to cultural imperialism is implicitly founded in the liberal values of respect for the plurality of ‘ways of living’’’ (Tomlinson, 1991). Imperialism or else the domination of Western power associated with ‘empire’ is linked to the domination and colonial rule of the past and the economic relations imposed by today’s global capitalism.
Between such claims, there is a reality worth noting. Due to the globalization process, the closer social and economic relations of the developed and the developing world moved the ‘engines’ of the latter, which were influenced by the technological and industrial advantages of the 21st century10. As Jacques (2014) reports, countries such as China and Japan showed significant development, which we can observe in the rapid growth in terms of economic size: ‘in 2001 those countries accounted for over half of the world’s GDP compared with around 60 per cent in 1973’ (Jacques, 2014). Featherstone (1995), using his own observations for this development, reports that ‘there is a shift in the global balance of power away from the West to the extent that it cannot now avoid listening to the ‘other’ or assume that the latter is at an earlier stage of development’11
. It is within this shift of global power that we can argue that cultural plurality potentially exists. What we need to explain is how cultural plurality is perceived through the eyes of the ‘other’ or else the ‘Orient’.
9Tomlinson, J. (1991). Cultural Imperialism. 1st ed. London: Pinter.
10Jacques, M. (2014). When China Rules the World. 1st ed. New York: Penguin Books. 11
Featherstone, M. (1995). Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (Theory, Culture &
9 Edward W. Said (1978), in his influential work on the Orient, ‘Orientalism’ (1978), claims that in cultural discourse and exchange within a culture what is clear is that there is no truth that is known, but what is true is the representations of this culture12. In this sense, ‘if Orientalism makes sense at all depends more on the West than on the Orient and this sense is directly indebted to various Western techniques of representation that make the Orient visible’ and as he continues ‘one aspect of the electronic postmodern world is that there has been a reinforcement of stereotypes by which the Orient is viewed. Television, films, and all the media resources have forced information into more and more standardised molds’ (Said, 1978).
What Said (1978) suggests here is that cultural plurality in today’s society might be an illusion; the Orient will always be thought of in relation to the dominant culture and even if it gains power, it exists because of what the West has made of the ‘Orient’. To better understand this ‘edgy’ argument, we need to explain how cultural values can be represented as ‘different’. Stuart Hall (1997) offers an explanation which suggests that ‘difference’ matters because it is essential to meaning, from a linguistic perspective. This is the positive side of Bakhtin’s theory, as he argues, but the negative side is that therefore meaning cannot be fixed and that one group can never be in charge of meaning13. The fact that meaning cannot be fixed but produced to create meaning is what Said (1978) observed as the reinforcement of stereotypes.
To examine the above argument, this research will be focused on the unusual performance practice of two Asian classical music performers famous since the 1990s, who have either incorporated Othering or Orientalising themes in their work or have been represented by others with such imagery. This analysis aims to better understand issues such
12 W. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. 1st ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
13 Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. 1st ed. London: SAGE
10 as essentializing or stereotyping and how they impact the ‘politics’ of such performances. This research is therefore guided by the following question: What impact has ‘Orientalist’ imagery or representation strategies had upon the performance styles and reception of two internationally famous classical music performers with an Asian background active in classical music since the 1990s? To answer the question, first, I will analyse how the emergence of popular culture, since the 1990s, was associated with the creation of unique forms of cultural representation; the economic aspects of the postmodern culture and the elements of its by-product, popular music, will be discussed. Through this analysis, I will examine the ‘politics’ of representation in today’s society and how such contexts have created stereotypes pervasive within media representations. Secondly, the two artists providing these case studies are Vanessa Mae, a violinist from the UK, and Lang Lang, a pianist from China. I will look at both video material and provide musicological analysis of recordings. In this way, I will argue how each medium both represents and impersonates the ‘Oriental’ by making connections to their origins but also because they offer an important opportunity to closely observe practices of stereotyping and examine issues of ethnicity, genre and class.
Chapter 1: Cultural ‘Postmodernisms’
11 In this respect, Jameson (1991) in his essay ‘Postmodernism, or the Late Logic of Capitalism’ explains that culture is one of the main signifiers of tracking the postmodern and that culture has become a product on its own: ‘the immerse dilation of its sphere (the sphere of commodities), an immense and historically original acculturation of the Real, a quantum leap in what Benjamin still called the ‘aesthetization’ of reality’14
. To understand the meaning that Jameson (1991) gives to culture, we first need to understand how culture works in today’s society and how it is represented through media.
Featherstone’s (1995) observation, for example, provides an understanding for the commercial side of culture, by describing culture as one of ‘signs and images’15
:
‘In effect a consumer society was seen as a culturally saturated society in which production was geared to consumption with the circulation of a ‘surfeit of signs and images’ giving rise to both a Disneyland simulational culture and a ‘stylish promiscuity’ which overloaded the traditional cultural sphere literary and artistic production’ (Featherstone, 1995: ix)
In Featherstone’s (1995) view of culture, thus, as in Jameson’s (1991), culture is identical to consumption and as he suggests it is a simulational one, a ‘stylish promiscuity’ which reminds us of the term that Jameson used before, as the ‘aesthetization’ of reality.
To add to this point, the work of another postmodern theorist, who has commented on the ‘aesthetization’ of reality and called it ‘hyperreality’, will be discussed. Baudrillard (1983) is the theorist in concern and he argues that the postmodern is a blurring of the lines between human beings and machines, a blurring of the lines between reality and image. It is, as he
14 Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. 1st ed. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
15
Featherstone, M. (1995). Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (Theory, Culture &
12 further argues, a grouping of the world in which the reality can be simulated and copied16. Simulacra is the product of this process and it creates the deterritorialization and distortion of reality and the real ‘is produced from command models and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times’ (Baudrillard, 1983).
According to Baudrillard (1983), the media, as part of the capital, contributed to the annihilation of the real equilibrium of production, which lead to the growth of manipulation and the hysteria of production. In this regard, the goods and commodities of production have lost their values in the way that they currently represent the restoration of the real as an end to itself. That is the main reason why the ‘material’ production itself is hyperreal (Baudrillard, 1983). The material production, as described through the work of Baudrillard, is what relates culture to the realization that it has become an economic product.
As Jameson (1991) further observes:
‘Postmodernism is the consumption of sheer commodification as a process. The lifestyle of the superstate, therefore, stands in relationship to Marx’s ‘fetishism’ of commodities at the most advanced monotheisms to primitive animisms or the most rudimentary idol worship; indeed any sophisticated theory of the postmodern ought to bear something of the same relationship to Horkheimer and Adorno’s old ‘Culture Industry’ (Jameson, 1991: x).
With this observation, Jameson (1991) questions the motives behind the consumption of commodities as being part of the postmodern world and links it to late capitalism. To support his argument, he refers to the ‘Culture Industry’ (1944), which we find on the influential essay called the Dialectic of Enlightenment, which includes a critique for today’s music industry. Adorno and Horkheimer (1944), in their essay, support the view that factories produce goods
13 in the same way as industries of popular culture create and deliver artefacts. In this sense, the music industry manipulates people when producing standardized products, a fact that creates limitation to the consumer’s identity17
.
The analysis of one of the most significant by-products of cultural ‘postmodernisms’, popular music, can help us understand this time the social part belonging to culture. Many scholars have provided a description for popular music, but as we will observe, the term cannot be tied down to one specific definition but it can be analysed by examining the social aspects of it. In this respect, Negus (1996) explains:
‘Popular music is broader and vaguer in scope and intentions. The moving media image can be traced to particular social and technological developments within a particular period of history and this provides a boundary for study in a way that has no parallel in popular music studies’ (Negus, 1996:5)
In another view of popular music, Rojer (2011) states that, ‘popular music is a type of communication involving bargaining and transaction around types of narrative belonging through which performers and audiences recognize and communicate information and develop means by which to represent it’. With this observation, Rojer (2011) refers to the emotional voltage that popular music creates to the audience and through this it feels connected to the artist and in this way the artist enjoys social recognition. This is an important aspect of popular music because as we will observe, the artist influences the audience and attracts a big part of the population, or what is often referred to as ‘the masses’18. Popular music, as Rojer (2011) explains, reflects on historical moments and the political, social and cultural ideas of a time and as such the masses can easily relate to them.
17 Anderton, C., Dubber, A. and James, M. (2013). Understanding the Music Industries. 1st ed. Los Angeles:
SAGE.
14 Rojer (2011) suggests that popular music is the articulation of wider social, cultural and economic forces. As such, one could argue that popular music can be used as a cultural tool for the promotion of social, economic and cultural strains. In this respect, Frith (1996) observes that popular music has to do with sociability and its interpretation is a matter of argument, understanding wrought from social activity. To interpret it, we need to concentrate on the aesthetic values that go with the artistic activity19. For example, the representation of popular artists in the media is a consequence of the authenticity and the value of music genres associated with particular ethnic groups. With the right strategy of representation, the artists attract their audience, and promote cultural meaning. Attracting the ‘masses; is a major signifier of popular culture and social theorists in the 19th century and 20th century were critical for the emergence of mass culture; they used the term ‘mass audiences’ alarmed at the attraction of new media for millions of people20.
It is the articulation of wider social, cultural and political ideas, that makes today’s culture a ‘transparent’ medium, with which issues of ‘politics’ in representation can be better understand in terms of how the reinforcement of stereotypes work. In doing so, I will provide an introductory section for each of the next chapters, in which theories of representation will be examined to justify the unusual performance practices of Vanesa Mae and Lang Lang.
On the one hand, Vanessa Mae, the violinist from the UK, offers a great example of a controversial performance because of the hybrid aesthetics used in her video clip ‘Toccata and Fugue’ (1995), in which a mixture of popular aesthetics combined with classical sounds can be observed. Her unusual performance raises criticisms from the classical music world and in order to give context on how to think of such criticisms, I will examine the debate of high and mass culture. At the end of this section, with a scene-by-scene interpretation of the generated
19
Frith, S. (1996). Performing Rites. 1st ed. Cambridge, Mass. [u.a.]: Harvard Univ. Press.
15 images in her video clip, I will uncover the messages behind its imagery to assert some conclusions on her cultural representation, which leads to a broader discussion of stereotyping.
On the other hand, with the opportunities that the new technologies offered for musical expression, Lang Lang is a performer with a very unique and singular performance practice, in the way he is using his expressiveness and emotionality in Chopin’s etude Op. 10 No. 3. His unique performance practice lies in the fact that he objects to stereotypes of nationality and in a section-by-section analysis of the temporal and dynamic variations of the etude mentioned above, I will argue that his mass appeal is connected to his intense emotional and expressive performance style.
Chapter 2: Vanessa Mae
2.1. Introduction
‘People have asked me recently, Vanessa Mae, do you want to be a serious classical musician or just a pop star and that implies that all popular music is just light weight and flippen and that’s not the case at all. I have always had a cosmopolitan upbringing; from the age of 5 I was listening to Michael Jackson and went downstairs and played Mozart and Mendelssohn on the piano and violin {sic}’21.
16 With the above statement, Vanessa Mae reveals one of the main concerns of this chapter: the interaction of popular music with classical music and the creation of a hybrid set of practices informing her visual performance spectacle. The performer in concern is a British violinist born in Singapore to a Singaporean mother and a Thai father. Since she was five she grew up in the UK. Both her parents encouraged her to pursue a career in the classical music field, and thus during the early 1990s, at the age of 16, she released a crossover album under the title The Violin Player (1995). What follows is a set of appearances in television shows, worldwide concerts and popular video clips but also criticisms from the classical music world because of her unique performance practice22. As reflected by the comments for her video clip, which will be discussed in the next section of this chapter, she appears as an object of eroticism with techniques borrowed from the popular world23. Further, the visual representation in this video clip provides a good example through which theories of hybridization can be adopted but also help in an understanding of how the ‘Orient’ is represented in today’s popular culture.
2.2. Hybridization
In the work of the famous ethnomusicologist David Hesmondhalgh (2000) is an overview of how a hybrid set of cultural practices are produced24:
“All are increasingly dependent on the dynamics of the recording and entertainment industries and marketing and market-oriented thinking have become prevalent in
22 Maysan, M. (2017). Vanessa-Mae - vanessamae.com - The Red Hot Vanessa-Mae Homepage (VMH). [online]
Vanessamae.com. Available at: https://www.vanessamae.com/index.shtml.
23 YouTube. (2017). Vanessa Mae - 16 - Documentary- 1995 - (Classical / Pop Violin). [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9YE07mYAq8&t=182s.
24
17 concert organizations, music education and new music institutions. A unifying propositions that we are witnessing unparalleled and intensifying aesthetic crossovers between popular, non-Western and arts musics, a relativizing and decentred ‘will to hybridity’ evident in the trans-global movements of musicians and sounds” (Hesmondhalgh, 2000: 19).
As Shuker (1998) furthers Hesmondhalgh’s (2000) argument, the hybrid aesthetics observed, do not belong to earlier hierarchical practices and do not have asymmetrical relations of representation. This is to explain that difference is being levelled and hybridity becomes a practical and creative way of cultural articulation and reappearance from the margins (Shuker, 1998). He supports this argument by referring to artists from the modern era, whose work has been inspired by the different aesthetic properties of non-Western and popular arts. For instance, Picasso had an admiration for African sculptures, Debussy was fascinated with the music of Indonesia and Japan and Ive had an admiration for New England’s popular musics25
. With this observation, it is clear that great artists have been sensitive to ‘difference’ and have created hybrid forms of music. Then we might ask if hybridity was something common in music, how is it perceived nowadays since popular culture emerged?
Featherstone (1995) makes an observation about hybridity today26:
‘At a general level hybridity concerns the mixture of phenomena which are held to be different, separate. Hybridization then refers to a cross-category process. (...) The categories can also be cultures, nations, ethnicities, status groups, classes, genres and hybridity by its very existence blurs the distinctions among them. Hybridity functions as part of a power relationship between centre and margin, hegemony and minority
25
Shuker, R. (1998). Key Concepts in Popular Music. 1st ed. London: Routledge.
18 and indicates a blurring, destabilization or subversion of that hierarchical relationship’ (Featherstone, 1995: 55-56).
I will argue that Vanessa Mae’s offers a convincing example of a performer who promotes hybridization. This is because in her cross-over album The Violin Player (1995) and her video ‘Toccata and Fugue’ (1995), the lines between classical and popular music are blurred. The video contains elements from popular culture; such images are reinforced by their social context. Yet other stereotypes are promoted such as images of sensuality, eroticism and ‘exoticism’ which relates to the representation of ‘difference’ as argued with Stuart Hall in the introduction; in this respect, the director plays with the identity of Vanessa Mae in order to object such ‘stereotypes’.
But before analysing scene-by-scene her video clip ‘Toccata and Fugue’ (1995), I will justify why Vanessa Mae offers a unique example of a hybrid performance practice. In doing so, the debate of high and mass culture will be addressed, in order to understand why a cross-over album, with classical and popular elements, can be such a contrcross-oversial issue.
2.3.The debate of high and mass culture
The popular is people’s music, the kind of music that attracts the masses27
. Classical music, on the contrary, represents the exact opposite; it is part of the high culture tradition, which is an essentially conservative one:
‘High cultural tradition encompasses a defence of a narrowly-defined high or elite
19 ‘culture’ (…) this is an artistic conception of culture: the only real and authentic culture is art against which everything else is set. It offers a mass society thesis in which the valued civilized culture of an elite minority is constantly under attack from the majority or mass culture which is unauthentic and a denial of life’ (Shuker, 2001: 17).
To understand such claims it is important to understand how mass society emerged for a better overview of how and why high cultural tradition is emphasized in relation to mass culture. A good argument towards this direction is Frith’s (1996) observation of how to think about this debate, drawing upon the work of Fiske, Shusterman and Bourdieu28:
‘If social relations are constituted in cultural practice then our sense of identity and difference is established in the processes of discrimination. And this is important for popular as for bourgeois cultural activity, important at both the most intimate levels of sociability and at the most anonymous levels of market choice’ (Frith, 1996: 18).
The process of discrimination can be understood through a discussion of the social groups and how they have changed since popular culture emerged. During the 19th century the dominant class was the ‘upper-class’ and included the aristocrats, monarchs and others who ruled. Next is the ‘middle-class’ which refers to what Marx called the bourgeois or else those entrepreneurs, capitalists and professionals who owned property and culture. At the bottom of the social ladder there was the ‘working class’-that majority defined by their labour power (Joyce, 1995; Cannadine, 2000)29. During the 20th century there was a rapid population growth and urbanization which caused a shift in the way wealth was created and this is the reason why efficient technologies emerged. There was also social change as the new mercantile middle classes (bourgeois) and the new urban working class established forms of
28
Frith, S. (1996). Performing Rites. 1st ed. Cambridge, Mass. [u.a.]: Harvard Univ. Press.
20 democracy by extracting power from the elite group and helped to forge a modern capitalist economy (Long, P. and Wall, T.,2014).
In Reading the Popular, Fiske (1989) observes that popular culture was made exactly by this struggle of the large groups of urban populations and as he states ‘popular culture was made by various formations of subordinate or disempowered people out of the resources, both discursive and material that are engendered by the social system that disempowers them’30
. This is an interesting observation with a hidden paradox. Although the larger groups have won the power to express themselves, Fiske (1989) observes that ‘popular culture is made by subordinated peoples in their own interests out of resources that also contradictorily serve the economic interests of the dominant’ (Fiske, 1989).
To support this view, I will first examine how power is exercised by the media. The media operates by presenting messages that are conveyed to the masses. If we look at those messages, we can observe that they are strong enough to influence people by operating at an emotional and psychological level, affecting behaviour in some manner31. Since the media are part of the capitalistic system, they are bound up in the exercise of power of the dominant groups in society. This is the negative side of so-called ‘mass media’. On the positive side, the ‘masses’ also use the media to extract meaning for their lives, engaged in a social that provokes a more democratic way of thinking.
For instance, since popular culture emerged, what was once thought of as the ideal way of expressing oneself with ‘high culture’ nowadays belongs also to the ordinary people or the ‘masses’. This way of thinking about the ‘masses’ was proposed by a British post-war theorist, Williams, whose work on culture explains this more positive way of thinking about the ‘masses’.
30
Fiske, J. (1989). Reading the Popular. Boston: Unwin Hyman.
21 What Williams suggests is that there are no masses but ‘only ways of seeing people as masses’. With that he suggests that if a way of thinking about culture is that it is created by an especially talented or exceptional group of individuals, automatically one thinks that culture belongs to this elite group of people; and when culture belongs to a larger group of ordinary people then one starts to think that this is bad for society. Although there is a middle ground to think about the masses, for example, as Williams proposes, meaning, significance and creativity when we think that culture belongs to all people, are more widespread and democratic than those limited selections that make it into art galleries and libraries (Long, P. and Wall, T., 2014).
These views, as well as a post-war tendency to emphasize the meaning directed to the masses can be observed in the video of the British violinist Vanessa Mae. To begin, the video ‘Toccata and Fugue’ (1995) displays a strong element of hybridity that contains messages of ethnicity, class, and a playful way of constructing a popular image, deviating from the typical Western representation of classical music performers.
2.4. Video analysis
22
popular world’32
The above phrase describes a scene from Vanessa Mae’s video ‘Toccata and Fugue’ (1995)33 from her album The Violin Player released in 1995 in the UK. It reflects upon the basic concept concerning this chapter, the visual hybridity in the representation of an Asian performer of the postmodern era. To give some context on this matter, first I will discuss the ‘politics’ of representation, depending on the year it appeared. The demographics based on gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class, age, suggest that the representation of Vanessa Mae is very close to the tendency of this year in other video clips famous in the UK. The mid-1990s are an important era for examining the aesthetics of music videos, especially with regards the clothes, the close-ups in specific features, and the role of the body in imparting meaning, as parts of the body are signifiers of hybridity as discussed previously. Before interpreting these signs, I argue that similar patterns of representation belong demographically to the UK, in this period (1995). For example, looking at the 100 most popular videos in the UK34 in 1995, I observe an infusion of different music genres and a visual spectacle of hybrid aesthetic forms. Some of the music videos revealing this tendency are ‘Cotton Eyed Joe’, ‘Fairground’ and ‘Set you Free (N-Trance)’. All songs use elements from popular culture, such as images from the social life, a ‘dressing code’ recognizable for the 1990’s and a mixture of different music genres.
“Toccata and Fugue” (1995) is inspired by Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” or else BWV 565. It is not the first time attempt by an artist to make a self-interpretation of this classical music piece. In 1935, for example, Hermann Hesse wrote a poem about the piece
32
YouTube. (2017). Vanessa Mae - 16 - Documentary - 1995 - (Classical / Pop Violin). [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9YE07mYAq8&t=182s.
33 YouTube. (2017). Vanessa Mae -- Toccata Fugue. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euOu89d3npA.
34
23 and thus it became recognizable35. Recordings that appeared on popular music charts include Sky’s (1981) rock inspired recording and Vanessa Mae’s (1995) violin recording, ranking in 24th the Billboard charts36. Thus, it was already a ‘popular’ classic sound and this might indicate its mass appeal. The music video itself contains important signifiers of its commercial success; strategies borrowed from popular culture which reveal the ‘politics’ of representing images of ‘otherness’. I will clarify such signifiers, scene-by-scene:
Vanessa Mae starts playing her classical violin passionately in scenery that is different from the expected ‘concert hall’ appearance, with clothes that are casual. Behind her there is a sea with clear blue sky- this might be a scene from her everyday life, playing the violin in the backyard of her house for instance. There we can observe an element of popular culture, which suggests that the images that we see in the media have a more realistic social context. For example an ordinary person might be at the same place as Vanessa, enjoying playing the violin while inspired by the natural scenery. It is as a person who can associate with this image and might think that he/she could play the instrument.
In the next scene, there is a transition from a ‘summery’ to ‘wintery’ scenery that captivates the interest of the audience, in the sense that it creates different emotions. In this winter scenery, she pays more attention to the camera and she is dressed in a black dress with an opening. She is smiling and she is being playful to the camera while the director is doing close-ups in her red lips. The image that is generated to the audience is one that transmits sensuality, eroticism and with her ‘exotic’ characteristics she captivates the interest of the audience. Here we might say that the director’s constructed image of Vanessa Mae emphasises her Asian features and is one that reveals the main ‘politics’ of representation in
35Deutschelyrik.de. (2016). Zu einer Toccata von Bach (1935) - Deutsche Lyrik. [online] Available at: http://www.deutschelyrik.de/index.php/zu-einer-toccata-von-bach.html
36
24 her video clip. It provides a clear view of what Said observes as an aspect of the electronic postmodern world with the reinforcement of stereotypes by which the Orient is viewed. In the case of Vanessa Mae, the Orient is represented as something exceptionally beautiful, in outdoor scenery, playing passionately an instrument and a melody, with the contradiction that the melody is a Western one. The ‘exoticism’ of the image lies not only on the Asian features of the performer, but also her playful tone of representation which contradicts with the classical representation of classical music performers in the concert hall.
As Frith (1996) observes, a good classical performance in the classical music world is measured by the stillness, mental concentration and lack of physical distraction of the performer37. On the contrary, the concept of Vanessa’s video clip goes beyond the traditional determinisms of musical taste but also ethnicity. This is because Western music, traditionally, was performed or conducted by the elite of the Western Enlightenment and therefor such images object to the ‘stereotype’, in the way that the ‘Orient’ is viewed as part of a more open-minded image, one that people can associate with and also one that performs Western music while also incorporating popular culture elements. The hybridity of the video-clip, and Vanessa Mae as an impersonation of hybridity, is what creates this objection to ‘stereotyping.’ Through this video, the ‘Other’ is clearly part of the wider social and economic developments of the postmodern world.
In the next scene, a more playful image is projected with close-ups again this time in the lips of the performer. She looks at the camera with joy, happiness, and playfulness. We can refer here to a different representation of the performer, one that mixes up the image of the ‘Orient’ and returns to a more ‘playful’ and girly image, one that Vanessa Mae is represented as just a girl who enjoys music; this image makes the emotions and the audience’s impression change. It is this soft side of Vanessa Mae that makes us remember that she is only
25 16 and here we can observe another political facet of representation. It is one that points to the youth culture of fans, young girls like Vanessa Mae, who dress in a more 1990’s playful way, with many different colours, shorts and crop-top shirts- the ‘dressing code’ of that time. It is again a scene from everyday life, against the image of ‘eroticism’ and the video’s emphasis upon stereotypical Asian references when filming Vanessa Mae.
During the last scene, Vanessa Mae walks into the sea wearing a white dress which becomes transparent, providing, once more, a sense of ‘eroticism.’ One could even argue for the video’s promotion of ‘exoticism’ as she sees herself running away from someone. For the viewer, this creates a feeling of anticipation. It adds to the narrative of the video and the audience can actively use their imagination to interpret why Vanessa looks at herself, as an active form of looking at a scene of a movie. The viewer is motivated to figure out what is happening. This element is taken possibly from the film industry, the action films that use motion to capture the attention of the viewer.
26 Chapter 3: Lang Lang
3.1.Introduction
Lang Lang’s unusual expressiveness and emotionality delivered during his live performances is the central concern of this chapter. What will be argued is that the 1990s era technological advantages created new types of mediation and distribution methods such as the music video alongside electronic technologies of reproduction and composition, which have created new mediums of musical representation. In this vein, Symes (1997) observes that new strategies emerged aimed at identifying the market such as demographic characteristics and the specific cultural image of classical music performers for a more attractive product38.
To explain such claims, first I will list some of the technological developments that direct the research to the music industry, and thus I will discuss the role it plays in the representation of the musicians in mediated formats. Evidence from the online representation of Lang Lang will be provided, to explain the discussions of how Lang Lang’s uniqueness in his performance practice can be linked to the more general views of what is considered good performance practice. In this sense, I will explain that the aesthetic criteria by which a performer is judged have changed. One of the now prominent criteria is the extent to which a performer expresses him/herself as an aspect of the live performance’s musical meaning. The critics for Lang Lang’s live performances will be discussed and, in this way, issues of
38
27 ‘stereotyping’ will be revealed. In the last section, I offer a musicological analysis of Lang Lang’s live performance of Chopin’s Op. 10 no. 3 music piece, and I compare it to two other Western representatives to explain how differently emotions can be expressed by a performer in a piece that varies in tempo and offers great challenges for musical expression.
3.2.The music industry
A significant development of the 21st century was the rise of the compact disc (CD). Negus (1992) argues that the technological boom which came hand-in-hand with such developments first created technophobia and generated discussions about the consequences of such technologies to music composition and performance. That is because music, historically, has been shaped by the machines of sound and creation and thus the changes have been rapid. For instance, in Europe, the lute in the 16th century and the pianoforte in the 18th century transformed music and gave it a more rhythmical mode39.
At the same time, the contribution of these instruments was significant because in the quest of new musical expressions, other mediums and instruments emerged such as the piano:
‘It is worth dwelling on the emergence of keyboard instruments and in particular, the piano, as just one example of the way in which instrument technologies have changed the experience of music and shaped the social and cultural contexts of composition and performance’ (Negus, 1992: 29).
New technologies not only created new mediums for musical expression but also
39
28 became part of what we call the music industry. Nowadays, the music industry has been synonymous to the recording industry with major record companies holding a great dominance in the economic field. There are three major companies nowadays, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group40, which include business structures dealing with the management, production, publicity, promotion, manufacture and distribution of cultural artefacts41. For example, Lang Lang has a contract with Sony for whom he has produced 18 CDs, starting with his most recent one, ‘New York Rhapsody’, and his debut album ‘Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 Scriabin Etudes’. He has also recordings from live performances and musical collections such as Best of Lang Lang. Additionally, he paid tribute to his favourite performer, Liszt, with his album Liszt My Piano Hero with a selection of the most famous, virtuosic and poetic solo pieces such as the “Piano Concerto No.1” accompanied by the Vienna Philharmonic and Valery Gergiev42.
In this regard, the production and distribution of CDs is a new strategy for the classical music world, one that makes it easier for people to associate with a type of music that historically was performed in concert halls, for the elite of people who appreciated Western music. All kinds of musical performance, live or mediated, create a link between the performer, the text and the emotions consumers’ experience (Shuker, 1998). If we look back in the history of live performances, the performance was mainly attached to the experience of music. What has changed nowadays is that the audience can have a distance from the actual physical location through the mediated forms of music such as the music video and CD recordings. In addition to that, the representation of musicians in media forms such as the television and the internet has made them more recognizable to a wide range of people and belong in what we now refer to as the ‘star system’ (Shuker, 1998). ‘Stars’ have a
40
"How the Big Four Record Labels became the Big Three". The Balance. N.p., 2017.
41
Shuker, Roy. Key Concepts in Popular Music. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 1998. Print.
29 recognizable and symbolic status which they hold though the image they represent in the mass media. They are regarded as stimulating active esteem and their images are invested with cultural value (O'Sullivan et al. as cited in Shuker, 1998), in a way that people maintain interest in their lifestyle and culture behind their media representations. For example, if we look at the online representation of Lang Lang on his website, YouTube, and documentaries made of his life, we get the following ‘image’:
Lang Lang is in a way unbelievably famous in the West as the Chinese pianist and he is unbelievably famous in China as the pianist who is able to transcend his ‘Chineseness’ and become an international classical music star. He has been very canny in playing the cultures against one another’43
Directly, with this description, one might ask ‘How he does he achieve all of these? Why is he so exceptional as a performer?
In short, the type of information one can find online is included in the following description: ‘Lang Lang is a Chinese pianist who experienced great success in China and the Western world. His career is based on CD recordings, numerous appearances on television, including the 2014 World Cup concert in Rio and sold out concerts all around the world. Moreover, he owns the title of the ‘hottest artist on the classical music planet’ and he is a symbol of youth in China, having influenced more than 40 million Chinese children to play the piano. He is very popular online, with more than 1 million people clicking on his performances on YouTube. It is important to mention that BBC Scotland televised a documentary made about his life highlighting the growing interest in China for classical music in the last decades and his contribution in the popularity of the piano as an instrument to be learned’.
30 What one might ask when reading this description is what exactly in his career is so exceptional that makes his professional life so unique. In the previous paragraphs, it is argued that new technologies have helped in the recognition of the performer but there is more to say about the career of Lang Lang. What I will argue later in this chapter is that Lang Lang, as an artist, is thought to and represented as transcending his ‘Chineseness’ to become an international classical music star because of his unique live performance style. The analysis of this section will begin with a small introduction on what is perceived as a good live performance in the classical music field and how it has changed through the years. After that, I will refer to the stereotype of Chinese people who perform classical music and explain it through the example of Lang Lang’s live performance and a musicological analysis of Chopin’s Etude Op.10 no.3. With an analysis of the emotional voltage that the music piece transmits, I will compare the musical performance of Lang Lang to other Western performers and understand the differences between their emotionality and expressiveness, to get a better understanding of why Lang Lang’s performance is so unique.
3.3.Musical expression
In classical music, a technological development that increased the technique and performance possibilities of musicians was the piano forte. Negus (1992) reports the changes the piano brought to the performance practices such as dramatic performances with arms rose at the end of passages and the embodiment of the dynamics of music:
31 and arranged for the piano and the conventions of performing and aesthetic criteria by which a performer was judged began to change’ (Negus, 1992: 30).
As he further observes, both the conductor and the performer took advantage of this technological development: the composer could create music that was more rhythmic and the performer received the role of individual virtuoso44. This was an important change in the way music expression was perceived and the emotional effect became the new aesthetic form of musical performance. Expression, as an aspect of musical meaning, can correspond to the emotional gesture of the protagonist of an event and the performer’s interpretation helps to define the character of the protagonist - he/she has the freedom to shape its moods (Rink, 1995).
As Rink (1995) argues, shaping expression and the choice of expressive features such as timing, dynamics, timbre, and articulation is partly associated with the performer. The concept of musical narrative suggests that the performers unconsciously use the physical gestures associated with emotional states to shape musical expression (Shaffer, 1992)45. Arguably, the semiotic perspective is the most complete for the interpretation of music expression, with C.R. Pierce reporting three kinds of signs: the index, the icon, and the symbol (Negus, 1992). In the musicological analysis provided above, I will concentrate on the iconic signification of music. The analysis will be focused on the following description:
‘The iconic signification can be illustrated with a performer’s use of tempo variation to convey phrase structure in music the basic relationship being that phrase boundaries marked by a decrease in tempo in proportion to the phrase boundary’s structural importance. Thus a large-scale sectional break will typically be approached with a
44 Negus, Keith. Producing Pop: Culture and Conflict in the Popular Music Industry. 1st ed. New York:
Routledge. Chapman and Hall, Inc, 1992. Print.
45
32 greater degree of slowing than a small-scale group boundary an effect which can be heard particularly in performances of nineteenth-century music piano’ (Rink, 1995: 27).
In this sense, the tempo constitutes an expressive parameter with which we can approach musical performance. To show an example of this kind of performance, I will analyse one of Chopin’s etudes. Chopin’s etudes are indifferent than the other etudes (Czerny, Hanon etc.) because they do not only repeat the same general pattern of notes as such etudes do, but they are an actual art form. Each of the etudes (27 in total) has its own musical story to tell and the emotional aspect is clear throughout the music piece. The popular Etude op. 10 no. 3 is special in the way that it varies in tempo which offers great challenges but also variety in how emotion is expressed from the performer. There is a technical part in the music piece, in which the right-hand plays the melody, the left hand plays the accompanying notes and there is a third 16th note accompaniment ‘between’ the melody and the bass46.
In this section, I will mostly discuss the emotional aspects of the piece focusing on the tempo changes and dynamic variation. Lang Lang’s performance offers a great example of how expressiveness and emotionality can be generated through the live performance of a classical music piece. This is because Lang Lang is famous for being one of the most expressive performers of his age. He admits that: ‘No matter how good technique you have, if you don’t have emotions you are just a machine and the world doesn’t need another machine pianist. Every time you look into a score, you learn new things (…) I am trying to set the mood right. That’s a good thing about music, there is always a new way of representing it, to bring it into a different dimension. If you are always thinking at the same way of interpreting music then you are out’. Daniel Barenboim, one of the most famous conductors and piano players of his time supports also the view of Lang Lang and confirms that expressiveness is
33 one of his talents: ‘He has an extraordinary facility, a very unusual sensitivity of how he reacts to harmony changes, to mood changes’47
.
With these positive comments for his talent, also come criticisms from the classical music world. For example, for some critics, although they agree that he is one of the most popular and gifted performers nowadays, his performances, they believe, are exaggerated. For instance, the online article of Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times, points to the expressive side of Lang Lang:
‘Like a hammy actor he has a penchant for interpretive exaggeration. His playing can be so intensely expressive that he contorts phrases, distorts musical structure and fills his music-making with distracting affectations. In recent years, he has sought mentors, working with eminent musicians like the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim and collaborating with strong, experienced conductors’48
.
In this observation, Tommasini argues that although Lang Lang has been critiqued for interpretive exaggeration, there is an interest towards his talent, one that has been mentored by successful pianists and conductors. This proves that even though there are negative impressions of his artistry, he shows willingness to improve his performance. It is what Anne Midgette reports for the Washington Post in her review on a Sunday’s live concert that Lang Lang gave in Kennedy Centre:
‘Lang Lang can spin a line of music up the keyboard in a single, slender, shimmering, ribbon, getting smaller and smaller, touching on dynamic nuances beyond what you thought it was an accident. Indeed, I can never stop listening when Lang Lang plays; he makes sure you follow along, I may not like what he is doing but I surely do hear
47 "Imagine... - Do or Die: Lang Lang's Story (Winter 2012) [BBC]". YouTube. N.p., 2012. Web. 48
Tommasini, Anthony. "The Pianist Lang Lang’s Technique and His Memoir of an Emotional Childhood".
34 that he’s doing it. I have always taken this as a sign of his populism: his playing is so transparent; he’s making sure he spells it out for the crowd’49.
The journalist, previously in the article, criticizes Lang Lang’s performance and the way he exaggerates Mozart’s piano piece with the following words: ‘On Sunday, he swayed over the keys, conducted his own playing by gesturing with whatever hand happened to be free, dragged out, Adagio’s melodramatically. This is too overdone for Mozart, some of us say and dismiss him as exaggerated, a sell-out’. But as she continues ‘the crowds continue to come’. As she explains at the end of her article, the reason why he is so popular might be his originality but not only that. Clifford Conan, writing for the Independent, gives the essence of his popularity and uniqueness by describing that Lang Lang goes beyond the stereotypes of low emotionality of Asian artists and his emotional interpretation might be the key to his success:
‘He suffers none of the inherent shyness that plagues the country’s big names when they leave to work abroad. Part of this is because of his excellent English but a lot is down to his vivacious personality. Asian artists are still accused of being big on technique but low on emotion, but Lang Lang abilities fly in the face of this stereotype. A restless figure, Lang Lang brims with self-confidence almost bravado, but he is truly in his element when playing the piano’50
.
This is to explain that there has been a stereotype that follows Chinese people who perform Western music, one that can be discussed by the research of Mina Yang. Yang (2007) explains from the view of the Asian immigrants in the United States, that there has been a discrimination in the way they perform classical music which is associated to their race. To support her argument, she conducted a survey to understand how the Asian-Americans have
49 "Lang Lang’s Unique Style, Good and Bad, Offers Originality". Washington Post. N.p., 2012. Web. 50
Beijing, Clifford. "Why China's First Olympic Superstar Will Be A Pianist Called Lang Lang". The
35 perceived this differentiation from their western counterparts. What the students reported was that the Asian-Americans were expected to be technically perfect in the sense that they are more mechanical than musical. Another example that Yang (2007) uses, to explain the stereotypical view of Chinese people as being more technical than emotional in their performance, is the successful documentary From Mao to Mozart (1979) with Isaac Stern. Indeed, the documentary offers a great opportunity to understand how musicality is perceived from the Chinese people and as Yang (2007) reports, even they go along with the judgment of Isaac Stern that they do not understand the music and play fast and noisy, when teaching them, in the documentary, how to play the violin. With the above mentioned, we understand that a stereotypical view of Chinese people exists but what is more interesting than this observation is that this idea is ‘planted’ in the minds of the Chinese as well.
36 3.4.Musicological analysis
First, I will give an overview of what is expected to be expressed through the original indications of dynamics in the music piece. Then, I will explain Lang Lang’s interpretation with the temporal and dynamic variations he is using. After this analysis, the performances of the two performers, namely Freddy Kempf and Valentina Lisitsa, will be discussed and compared with Lang Lang’s interpretation for the indications of the music piece. At the end of this section, some conclusions will be made.
The original tempo of the music piece is lento ma non troppo. This indication means that the tempo has to be slow but not too much. The first section starts with piano legato indicating that the phrasing should be smooth with no silence between the music notes. In the middle section, there is a rhythmic and dynamic variation with a crescendo followed by
stretto and ritenuto. The performers have the choice to take a small ‘breath’ before the crescendo and gradually start phrasing by increasing the volume. A rhythmic differentiation
37 In the second section, there is a significant stylistic, dynamic and temporal variation, which if used properly from the performers can create a unique emotional surge for the audience. In the temporal and dynamic indications of this section, each performer differently interprets the crescendo, stretto, diminuendo and piano rallentando.
38 Lang Lang, in the first section of the music piece, starts with a slower tempo and continues with a clear crescendo in the next phrase, mainly to emphasize his passage from the one phrase to the other. In the middle part of this section, he has a more relaxed approach to the indications with a minor rhythmic variation between the phrases and by using only a small
stretto and ritenuto.
In the second section, he continues to interpret the music indications in a more sensitive way. He starts with a minor crescendo and in the next phrase he is using wisely the
stretto to emphasize later the ritenuto con forza, followed by a forceful crescendo with
emphasis on the tenuto note. Lang Lang’s interpretation in this section creates a dramatic tone and a strong emotional reaction to music. After increasing the dynamics, he softens the next phrase with a diminuendo and nobly ends with a double piano rallentando, gradually slowing down. What Lang Lang achieved with his performance, in this section, is to create a ‘moody’ atmosphere with great intensity.
39 impression by using a faster tempo. Also, because he is famous for his technical skills, he expresses himself in an intense and noticeable way. Thus, his unique technicality in combination with the emotional sections created a highly evocative and original performance.
In the next paragraphs, I offer a comparison of Lang Lang’s performance to two other Western performers, to understand the different use of the temporal and dynamic variations. Freddy Kempf, in the first section, starts with a quicker tempo compared to Lang Lang’s and uses a clear stretto and ritenuto. One might argue that the quicker tempo steals some of the emotionality of the piano legato which in the case of Lang Lang had a better effect for expressiveness with a slower tempo. Valentina Lisitsa’s tempo, in the same section, is stable and does not have a significant dynamic variation between the phrases. She is using a small
crescendo, no stretto but at the end of the last phrase, there is a big ritenuto and a dramatic
transition to the next section. I believe that the way she interpreted the first section was with a reserved and noble way of keeping up with the original temporal and dynamic indications of the piano piece and she only uses the last part of the phrase to show her expressive skills. In the second part of the piece, Kempf uses a small crescendo and small stretto followed by a
crescendo and a small ritenuto to emphasize the tenuto, similar to Lang Lang’s ritenuto and a diminuendo gracefully reaching the end of this part.
40 In the third part, Kempf starts with a rather fast tempo in comparison to Lang Lang’s tempo in the same section but he did not accelerate much to give emphasis on the chromatic fourths neither uses personal stylistic forms-he is loyal to the original music indications. Lisitsa, as promised in the previous sections, greatly emphasises the dynamics of the chromatic fourths with a quick tempo, a great ritenuto and she brilliantly ends this section with a slower tempo, extensive diminuendo and a smorzando to create a dramatic feeling.
41 Chapter 4: Summary
In the introduction, I examined how musical cultural practices have changed through the years. I gave a definition of the meaning traditionally connected to our understanding of (high) culture, with the work of Stuart Hall (1997), and how culture is perceived nowadays within the realm of popular culture. I argued that the globalization process was associated with the shift from traditional forms of culture to popular culture, and Giddens’ (1990) definition for globalization was one that reveals that the intensification of worldwide social relations caused by the process, affects the cultural spheres of other countries. In this respect, with Featherstone (1995), I observed that culture can be thought of as a hybrid set of practices inflicted by global and local trends.
I refer to two definitions of culture, one that is linked to the colonial rule of Europe in the Eastern countries, in the 19th century, and the other one is linked to the development of capitalism. I concentrate my interest in the industrialization process of the 20th century in the Western countries, which influenced the countries of the East. To support this argument, I adapted concepts from the postcolonial work of Mina Yang (2007) to claim that nationalist policies in East-Asian countries utilized science and technology for greater economic opportunities and embracing Western music was one of them.
42 whether cultural plurality is possible nowadays, I discussed the views of Said on the ‘Orient’, drawing upon his argument that the fact that Orientalism exists depended on the West and the Western techniques of representation to make the ‘Orient’ visible and possible. With this observation, I drew from research on theories of cultural representation to understand such claims. With the work of Stuart Hall, I explain that differences exists because it is essential to meaning and the fact that meaning cannot be fixed, such meaning often reinforces stereotypes. To prove that stereotyping is present in cultural representations nowadays, I discussed the ‘politics’ of such representations by reading the texts of two Asian classical music performers. In doing so, I explained what impact the ‘Orientalist’ imagery or representation strategies had upon the performance styles and reception of two internationally famous classical music performers with an Asian background active in classical music since the 1990s. To answer the question, I first analyse how the emergence of popular culture, since the 1990s, was associated with such representations and created a hybrid form of cultural activity. In doing so, I analysed the economic aspect of culture, through the work of prominent postmodern theorists to better contextualize the way we talk about cultural representations nowadays.
