Music Life As A Method Of Integrating Ethnicity

After China and South Korea establishing diplomatic relationship in August,24,1992, there emerges many South Korean in Shanghai from then on, especially since the 1998 global economic crisis. The South Korean live in a compact community in Hongqiao town, which is a special ethnic phenomenon catches my attention. This paper thus takes the Shanghai South Korean diaspora as subject of study, whose population has reached to about 40,000. This paper is based on a 3-year long "participant observation" fieldwork from 2007 to 2009.The purpose of this paper is to find out the meanings in diasporic traditional music life. In that I have been studying from the perspective of "ethnicity and music identity". In order to find out the meanings, I have investigated and studied the subjects, including person, family, music society, institution, school, and religious'organization, focusing on their diasporic musical experiences in order to explain the relationship between music and diasporic individual ethnic positions, its construction, maintenance and adjustment, and to discover the reason further.The Shanghai South Korean economic diaspora is a new ethnic phenomenon in the context of globalization, most of which are businessmen and their family defendants. When still at home country, the Shanghai South Korean diasporic music life was dominated by Western art music. When "the elite" (that is Shanghai South Korean diaspora) came to Shanghai under the drive of globalization, they began to change their music life style, which has been dominated by Korean traditional music, including localized Christian and Catholic music life. I think there are two reasons behind the unusual phenomenon:on one hand, some of them found they have been facing strong cultural differences and in that they generated accordingly a sense of "anti-discrimination". On the other hand, some of them have been facing problems in the process of social adaptation, which aroused from the Shanghai migration policy and related, and from the situation of fierce economic competition that was the key to the South Korean "economic diaspora". In that, traditional "ethnicity" resurged.Because the most powerful method to identify, construct and maintain the ethnic boundary or ethnicity is South Korean traditional music and religious music, then the South Korean diaspora began a new style of traditional and religious music life. On one hand,60% of Shanghai South Korean adopted a hostile attitude to cope with the conflict aroused from the process of cultural adaptation, claiming their strong cultural and ethnic position. They thus used traditional music as a method in identifying or expressing cultural differences. What they have been maintaining was traditional music identity. On the other hand,40% on the contrary adopted a compromising attitude in coping with the conflicts aroused from the process of social adaptation for the purpose of expediency. They thus used traditional music as a method to integrate the diasporic economic interests, and also as a method of constructing new social and cultural relationship with the outside local society. They not only maintained the traditional ethnic identity through traditional and religious music life, but also changed it and constructed a new ethnic music identity in order to adapt to specific social and economic reality. Different ethnic positions and their corresponding music life styles form a "music identity continuum", a new concept in my paper.In general, there emerged two demands within the Shanghai South Korean Diaspora. One of it was to use traditional music life to identify the ethnic boundary, the other was to use and change traditional music life to construct ethnic social and economic relationship, together to solve the social and cultural conflict. Meanwhile, because this paper determines to discover the social and cultural meanings in music life, thus it is of academic and practical significance to certain extend.This paper consists five parts. The preface includes the background, concepts, theoretical framework, methodology and sources of data; the second part is an overview on the music life of Shanghai South Korean Diaspora in historic and present context; Chapter one is to propose the issue of study that on ethnic conflict arise in the process of cultural and social adaptation; Chapter two and three then will focus on respectively the cultural differences and social structural inadaptability in their music life, through which maintaining old music life and constructing a new one; The last part is a short conclusion on the meanings, which is traditional music is a valid method in integrating ethnic identity in Korean traditional music life in modern context of Shanghai.