From Exoticism to Interculturalism: Counterframing the East–West Binary

Abstract

This essay addresses the need to expand the musical repertory for analysis beyond the western canon, as well as to develop intercultural strategies for analysis that reflect the multicultural subject positions of composers, performers, and theorists. In my area of specialization, discourses on exoticism, transculturation, Orientalism, and globalization have provided frameworks for examining music composed by postwar composers of East Asian heritage, such as Chou Wen-chung, Tōru Takemitsu, Chen Yi, Isang Yun, and others. However, scholarly writings and reception of this music have tended to perpetuate the East–West binary by reinforcing musical stereotypes and familiar labels. Within the music theory, this repertory has been assimilated into the canon and legitimized through application of post-tonal and other formalized models of analysis. Prompted by developments in studies of gesture, semiotics, and East Asian cultural history and aesthetics, I explore analytical approaches that counter-frame the binarism by illustrating culture-specific modes of attending to musical gestures and expressive meanings, as exemplified in recent publications on music by Chou and Chen.