Musical Minorities

Musical Minorities PDF

Author: Lonán Ó Briain PhD

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-02-01

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0190626984

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Musical Minorities is the first English-language monograph on the performing arts of an ethnic minority in Vietnam. Living primarily in the northern mountains, the Hmong have strategically maintained their cultural distance from foreign invaders and encroaching state agencies for almost two centuries. They use cultural heritage as a means of maintaining a resilient community identity, one which is malleable to their everyday needs and to negotiations among themselves and with others in the vicinity. Case studies of revolutionary songs, countercultural rock, traditional vocal and instrumental styles, tourist shows, animist and Christian rituals, and light pop from the diaspora illustrate the diversity of their creative outputs. This groundbreaking study reveals how performing arts shape understandings of ethnicity and nationality in contemporary Vietnam. Based on three years of fieldwork, Lonán Ó Briain traces the circulation of organized sounds that contribute to the adaptive capacities of this diverse social group. In an original investigation of the sonic materialization of social identity, the book outlines the full multiplicity of Hmong music-making through a fascinating account of music, minorities, and the state in a post-socialist context.

Imperial Decision-making and Communication in Early China

Imperial Decision-making and Communication in Early China PDF

Author: Enno Giele

Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9783447053341

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The emerging Chinese empire was faced with a dilemma typical for empires, be they Roman, Mesopotamian, or Carolingian. The realm was "won on horseback, but could not be ruled from horseback," as an advisor of the Han dynasty put it. Military conquest had to be buttressed by a convincing legitimation of the supreme rule, including certain forms of power sharing, as well as by the establishment of a courtly protocol and a bureaucracy that provided for both a smooth operation of government and checks and balances. Here, the communication to and from the imperial court attained a crucial role. This study identifies the characteristics of different types of documents - imperial edicts as well as memorials, petitions, etc. - that helped to shape imperial policies. It contrasts a classification of documents by the famous intellectual Cai Yong (second century A.D.) with the remnants of courtly communication in the received sources and is able for the first time to make sense of the terse explanations that have long baffled historians of ancient China.

Explorers and Scientists in China's Borderlands, 1880-1950

Explorers and Scientists in China's Borderlands, 1880-1950 PDF

Author: Denise M. Glover

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2012-09-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0295804513

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The scientists and explorers profiled in this engaging study of pioneering Euro-American exploration of late imperial and Republican China range from botanists to ethnographers to missionaries. Although a diverse lot, all believed in objective, progressive, and universally valid science; a close association between scientific and humanistic knowledge; a lack of conflict between science and faith; and the union of the natural world and the world of "nature people." Explorers and Scientists in China's Borderlands examines their cultural and personal assumptions while emphasizing their remarkable lives, and considers their contributions to a body of knowledge that has important contemporary significance. Essays are devoted to D. C. Graham, Joseph Rock, Reginald Farrer and George Forrest, Ernest Henry Wilson, Paul Vial, Johan Gunnar Andersson and Ding Wenjiang, and Friedrich Weiss and Hedwig Weiss-Sonnenburg. Richly illustrated with historic photographs, this collection reveals the extraordinary lives and times of these remarkable people.

More Songs and Stories of the Ch'uan Miao

More Songs and Stories of the Ch'uan Miao PDF

Author: David Crockett Graham

Publisher: Harrassowitz

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783447110013

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"David Crockett Graham (1884-1961) was an American Baptist minister who went to China as a missionary in 1911. He was stationed at Siufu (Xufu) in Sichuan Province where he became acquainted with the local Chuan Miao, an ethnic group within the Miao people. Having obtained a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago in 1927 he seriously studied their culture and folklore and collected and translated 752 songs and stories. Besides being a pioneering expert on the Chuan Miao, Graham also was an archaeologist of note and an outstanding zoological collector who assembled a huge amount of species for the Smithsonian Institution. This collection covers the same wide spectrum as the published collection and is a valuable complement. It comprises a more explicit, informative introduction, legends, mythological tales, religious chants, love and marriage songs, stories and folk-tales. The material was annotated by Wolfram Eberhard, the well-known Berkeley anthropologist"--