Everyday Singing And Cultural Identity: An Exploration Of Chinese Narratives In Malaysia

When music plays, people listened or sang, practised and experienced in the music of his (or her) national, ethnic and cultural identity. How the practice of daily singing affects human action, how the meaning given to action, and how generational differences are shaped, these are the focus of research topic in this paper. As an ethnographic narrative writing, through the detailed descriptions of generational differences in daily singing of Malaysian Chinese, this paper is to explore the correlation between daily singing and the pattern of community cultural identity; seeking agreement and breakthrough with the contemporary cultural identity theories in the framework of interpretation which conducted by consciousness, emotion and cognitive.Empirical analysis of this study compared generational differences between elderly, middle-aged, youth and children in daily singing and cultural identity of Malaysian Chinese, and the main findings are:(1)Innocent and passive consciousness and emotion of children rendered their daily singing passive, organized, trained and pedagogical, while inherited "our" cultural identity "conveniently", place their daily singing and cultural identity into "dangerous" and "empty" phase; (2)Active consciousness and emotion set the cultural identity and daily singing of middle-aged and youth in a "free" and "transitional" phase, moving constantly in various of movement, construct and reconstruct a variety of self, pursuit the autonomy in the practice of daily singing. (3)While for the elderly, the belongingness of their consciousness and emotion set them to a relatively "safe" and "perfection" phase, where the identity are almost complete with consciousness and emotion that are hardly changed, and nostalgic singing preferences. Meanwhile, the study also found that education may act as intermediate mechanism connected daily singing with the national, ethnic and cultural identity.The basic axis of narrative in this paper is:attribute daily singing and cultural identity into a mutual relationship, which is, the interaction of intergenerational differences in daily singing and cultural identity through a mechanisms of consciousness, emotion and cognitive. Through daily singing, the pattern of cultural identity in social structure for generations of Malaysian Chinese are embedded in collective memories, while memories awaken or strengthen varying degrees of their national, ethnic and cultural belongingness; the other hand, various identity of different dimensions have different degrees of affection on daily singing.As for methodological, "Narrative Inquiry" are carried out through fieldwork on generations of Malaysian Chinese in daily singing and cultural identity, where "narrative" is to emphasize the changing nature of the experience, while "inquiry" is to emphasize the active and initiative inquiry of the construction of theories taken into everyday life. Qualitative data that provided from participant observation, text analysis, and so forth, are narrative inquiry-presented; and in the narrative discussion, the conclusion came to respond the contemporary and the constructional theories. Narrative provides a perspective and carrier from a more detailed view to the trivial daily life, reveals experience of man as a man. On this account, this paper are trying to take the narrative inquiry as the best way to present and understanding the continuous daily life experience.