Our Associate Director Professor Henry Johnson, from the Department of Music, Theatre & Performing Arts at the University of Otago, has recently been awarded an external research grant of US$45,000 from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange for a three-year project entitled ‘Chinese Creative Musical Practices in the Making of New Zealand from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the 1980s’. This prestigious international award is for innovative research that will study creative musical practices that have often been hidden from mainstream society, especially when compared with other regions of the world, and will help redefine the cultural heritage of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Early reports of cultural creativity through music making are found mostly in local newspapers, and while these will form a foundation for historical content analysis, the research will offer a rigorous community-engaged and ethically aware approach in its study of written sources, musical instruments, ritual objects, unpublished archival documents, pictures, photographs, film, museum artefacts, community organizations and oral history. This original project theorises that creative musical practices amongst migrant communities are a reflection of both homeland and adopted home. This premise will help reveal internal modification amongst Chinese communities and the dynamic negotiation with the non-Chinese population where cultural difference was often conspicuous, inequitable and challenging. A comprehension of such practices helps contextualize the making of multiculturalism in New Zealand in colonial and postcolonial context.
This research will advance knowledge by producing outputs with significant long-term impact that will contribute to a comprehension of cultural creativity in the making of a nation. The major scholarly outputs for this project will be top-tier refereed journal articles and research presentations, which will uncover and redefine the hidden tangible and intangible creative Chinese cultural heritages that have helped shape New Zealand.
Congratulations Henry!
