Reconsidering cultural politics in the analysis of contemporary Chinese music: The case of Ghost Opera.

Chinese music has received considerable attention in recent scholarship due to the success of the 'New Wave' generation of composers. Despite this apparent bloom in interest, some writers feel that the discourse suffers from a lack of close reading, in favor of identity politics and meta-cultural issues. Using Tan Dun's Ghost Opera as a case study, this article suggests that the issue is less about 'appropriate balance', and has more to do with the type of question technical analysis has traditionally been employed to answer in the scholarship of contemporary Chinese music. Instead of focusing on the degree to which a signifier is 'Chinese' or 'contemporary', analysts should ask why ethnicity is performed when it is not always necessary, and potentially even distracts from the music itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]