A Study On The Social Roles Of Musical Practitioners In Modern China

This paper takes the musical practitioners in modern China as an object of research, tries to analyze the social roles of three kinds of musical practitioners that appear in different periods and different cultural context in Chinese society, with the theory from sociology and ethnomusicology.People used to call a person who is engaged in music as a "musician". However, actually "musician" is pointed to a very professional and authoritative talent wherever in China or in western countries. In the real life, there are a lot of other people who is engaged in music but not so professional and authoritative. Especially during the Chinese modern history, the author found that, in according to the particularity of musical practitioners in different periods and different cultural context, there are other two appellations besides "musician", that are "musical worker" and "musical person", these two appellations are only appeared in China, with different cultural signification."musician" is pointed to those people who has professional knowledge and technology of music; "musical worker" is an appellation that appeared in a very particular period in Chinese history, who "work" (composed and performed) under a strong political ideology; "musical person" is the production of industrialization, who can compose, product, perform and distribute music production in an integrated system.Those appellations represent different social relations and have different social functions. Nowadays people can use the three appellations in different cultural context. This paper focus on the topic of social roles of these three different appellations, expatiates their social functions, social relations and social status in different cultural context.