Faces of Tradition in Chinese Performing Arts

Abstract:The following introduces a special issue of the Journal of Folklore Research (55–1) examining the roles played by individuals in the development of traditional Chinese performing arts and how "faces of tradition" have come to represent and reconfigure broader fields of cultural production. The authors look at the performance, scholarship, and teaching of instrumental music, folksong, and classical dance, focusing on ways in which CD albums, singing competitions, representative works, and textual anthologies come to serve as discursive spaces where individuals engage with and redefine larger traditions and themselves. Here I, the issue's guest editor, introduce concerns about representation and individual agency as they relate to studies of the mutual relationship between individuals and traditions—a topic that has (re)emerged in recent years among the disciplines of ethnomusicology, folklore studies, and dance ethnology. By focusing on specific mechanisms through which multiple individuals have made their marks, the articles in this special issue point to tangible ways in which individuals and traditions interact.