Title: Even in the Rain: Uyghur Music in Modern China

Time: 4:30 – 6:00 pm
Venue: LG04, Hui Yeung Shing Building

Delivered in English, all are welcome

Synopsis:
In this talk I will discuss my recent book on Uyghur music. Drawing from nearly two decades of ethnographic and archival research, Even in the Rain: Uyghur Music in Modern China explores music as constitutive of Uyghur cultural and social life where subaltern experiences of ethnicity/race and nationhood are indexed. I look at how Uyghur music has been minoritized under the pretexts of Chinese multiculturalism and cultural enlightenment during much of the last century and beyond. Local musicians and audiences, I suggest, adopt a vast range of performing and listening approaches as they engage assimilation, mass incarceration, and other grim realities of everyday life.