Baatyam: Music, ritual, and Tiashanese transnationalism (China)

The reasons for migration are diverse and often complex. The Taishanese migrant experience offers an example of an entrenched and established diasporic condition that has adapted itself to changing political policies in China and abroad, and has shown itself to be singularly successful over the long term. This migrant experience has long exhibited the defining characteristics of contemporary transmigration.; There are highly complicated reasons for Taishanese migration, many of which can be better understood through a study of music and ritual. This is a multi-site ethnography about musical and ritual life that is based on original fieldwork in rural Taishanese villages and in Manhattan's Chinatown during the years 1997--2003. On one level, it is an ethnography of a specific village ritual ensemble (Yangming Yinyue She), the village of Yangming, and the transnational significance of ritual activities occurring within a 40 kilometer radius of Yangming. On another level, this dissertation uses ethnographic oral histories of village music making, the lives of musicians, and musical aesthetics to explore the historical dimensions of Taishanese migration, and the historical consequences of diaspora. This ethnographic data in turn informs an understanding of shifting Chinese political attitudes towards overseas Chinese, and current Chinese government policies that both endorse and legitimize migration within the context of economic policies of the Pearl River Delta. The multi-site strategy of this ethnography, with its multiple points of entry, aims at an ethnographically rich understanding of what it means to be Taishanese, and the significance of Taishanese migration in the new millennium.