Soundtracks of Asian America: Navigating Race through Musical Performance

by Grace Wang

In Soundtracks of Asian America, Grace Wang explores how Asian Americans use music to construct narratives of self, race, class, and belonging in national and transnational spaces. She highlights how they navigate racialization in different genres by considering the experiences of Asians and Asian Americans in Western classical music, U.S. popular music, and Mandopop (Mandarin-language popular music). Her study encompasses the perceptions and motivations of middle-class Chinese and Korean immigrant parents intensely involved in their children's classical music training, and of Asian and Asian American classical musicians whose prominence in their chosen profession is celebrated by some and undermined by others. Wang interviews young Asian American singer-songwriters who use YouTube to contest the limitations of a racialized U.S. media landscape, and she investigates the transnational modes of belonging forged by Asian American pop stars pursuing recording contracts and fame in East Asia. Foregrounding musical spaces where Asian Americans are particularly visible, Wang examines how race matters and operates in the practices and institutions of music making.

Genres: Music

272 pages, Hardcover

First published December 10, 2014

About the author

Grace Wang is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Soundtracks of Asian America: Navigating Race through Musical Performance .

Reviews

[hala · Rating 4 out of 5]

(I read this as research for a project in an Asian American Studies class on media representation)

Soundtracks of Asian America is a thorough and fascinating discourse on the role of music and how it impacts race and class narratives from an Asian American perspective.

I especially enjoyed the chapter on Mandopop. It’s not an industry i’m especially familiar with so it was cool to get a glimpse of the cultural impact both on Chinese people living in Asia, and on ethnically Chinese people in the United States. Also now I have some new music to check out ;)

Admittedly the formal and academic writing style is difficult to get through at times, but if you can handle that I highly recommend this book.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this book because someone I follow on Twitter was reading it. If you are involved with classical music and/or the Asian-American community, this is critical reading. It also delves into the racial aspects of YouTube "stardom" and the ways that Americans have become involved in popular music in China.

It's an academic work, written in dense prose, but it's worth the careful time it takes to read through it. Seems to me that Professor Wang has put outstanding amounts of research and time into this work.

The book discusses Asian-Americans: within classical music, on YouTube as singers/musical artists of popular music, and ABC (American Born Chinese) in the world of Mandopop in China and the diaspora - with a particular focus on superstar Wang Leehom.

I found it highly educational, eye-opening, fascinating, and it gave me a lot to think about in my work in classical music and in my life as a person.

[Hubert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A seminal volume examining the ways in which Asian American musicking can operate within racialized social structures of present-day America. Focuses on various case studies: classical musicians-in-training at Julliard, early As. Am. YouTuber singer-songwriters, and diasporic pop megastars including Leehom Wang.

The complexities and contradictions of involved in expressing Asian American identity through music are well outlined, and Prof. Wang's analyses of her ethnographic interviews are thorough, precise, and nuanced.

[Mills College Library]

781.89 W2463 2015