Contemporary Sounds of Southern China

Zoom Webinar

With a booming economy and abundant opportunities, Guangzhou has become a magnet for internal migrants seeking better job prospects as well as global corporations hoping to gain a foothold in one of the world’s largest economies. This openness and energy have led to a thriving popular music scene that expresses the region’s unique cosmopolitanism.

In Sonic Mobilities: Producing Worlds in Southern China, ethnomusicologist and Assistant Professor of Music at The Chinese University of Hong Kong Adam Kielman explores the relationships between musical circulations, emergent forms of musical creativity, and an evolving geography of contemporary China. He offers an ethnographic account of musical cosmopolitanism in Guangzhou as a process of knowledge making, connected both to much older forms of cosmopolitanism and routes of exchange and to contemporary experiences of mobility, migration, and urbanization.

In this program, Professor Philip Bohlman, Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History, Music and the Humanities of the University of Chicago, will host author and Professor Kielman to introduce Sonic Mobilities and discuss the changing economics, politics, and aesthetics of popular music in Guangzhou and throughout the Mainland.

May 26, 2022
9:30pm              Japan | South Korea
8:30pm              Hong Kong | Beijing | Singapore
6:00pm              Delhi
2:30pm              Paris
1:30pm               London
7:30am              Chicago

Speaker

Adam Kielman
Assistant Professor, Ethnomusicology
Department of Music
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Moderator

Philip V. Bohlman
Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History, Music and the Humanities in the College
Associate Faculty, Divinity School
The University of Chicago

About /pɒp/Asia

The UChicago Yuen Campus /pɒp/Asia series will address topics that originate, revolve around and affect the Asia-Pacific Region. From music and anime to tattoos and the exploding interest in crypto currencies, we’ll explore the cultural goings-on in deep corners around the region and how they are influencing the rest of the world. Read more.