Transmission and Innovation in the Performance of Guzheng in the Age of New Media

Abstract

Chinese musical instrument Guzheng, a twenty-one string, has gone through significant transformations in connection with modernization in the past century. From the mid-2000s, the expanding global social media landscape – the highly interactive mediascape – has exerted increasing influence on Guzheng. In recent decades, Youtube supersedes the traditional locale of concert hall, facilitating an arena for worldwide Youtube video bloggers (vloggers) to vlog Guzheng music online. Amidst this expanding culture of social media use, vloggers are encouraged to present Guzheng through the lens of internationalism, thus performing, transmitting, as well as transforming Guzheng with many innovative elements. In this process as the Guzheng music migrates across cultures, it is no longer the same form in the community of origin. In this article, I concentrate on the Guzheng Youtube vloggers’ practice to deviate from the “Chinese” authenticity of Guzheng, yet to expand its music styles by recreating a number of works which are adapted from popular songs of Asian and Western societies. As a consequence, it gives rise to many variations in styles within Guzheng music scene in contemporary cyberspace. Such observation could be made through the blossom of various adaptations in genres of Pop, Jazz, R&B and others, which are increasingly infused into Guzheng vloggers’ videos. The different types of musical adaptations by vloggers are critically examined. I argue that the diversification of Guzheng adaptations on Youtube showed its considerable kinship with the world pop scene in the age of new media.