Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music (review)

Born in New York, raised in Tokyo and California, and studying piano intensively from the age of three until she changed course to major in American Studies (which she now teaches at the University of Hawai‘i), Mari Yoshihara is perfectly situated to turn a critical and highly informed eye on the world of the East Asian performers of Western classical music who fill the music schools and orchestras of North America and Europe. As she notes in the Preface (xii):

When I first began this project . . . I thought I would rely on the familiar academic concepts and categories, such as class, race, gender, imperialism, and hegemony, to analyze Asians’ investment in classical music.

However, the direction and focus of the project soon evolved:

As I watched Asian musicians dedicate themselves to music despite constant disappointments, frustrations, and self- questioning, as they pursued their artistic goals, and as I heard the passion with which they talked about their relationship to music and their audience, I had to question the relevance of those academic categories to what the musicians really do . . . the profound and real connections that music—and musicians—create among people of different parts of the world seemed irreducible to categories like race, nation, and imperialism.

(xii)

The end result is a balanced study that is simultaneously empathetic and critical, one that should be welcomed not only by specialists in Asian music, but also to a wide variety of scholars and students in ethnomusicology, Asian and Asian American studies, anthropology, and cultural studies.

Chapter 1 (“Early Lessons in Globalization”) traces the history of Western music in East Asia, from Mateo Ricci and Commodore Perry through modern-day music education, leading to what Yoshihara calls the “reverse flow” from Asia to the West, represented by the Suzuki Method, Yamaha pianos, and the ascendance of Asian performers to the world stage. The historical background provides a context for understanding the increasing numbers of Asian students who populate schools of music such as Juilliard, Manhattan, and Mannes; the remaining chapters are devoted to an ethnography based primarily on interviews conducted in New York City (at the three schools just mentioned, along with NYU). Each of the four ethnographic chapters focuses on a single theme (“roots and routes,” gender, class, and individuality), but they are nicely interconnected both in the many extended passages devoted to the voices of performers and in Yoshihara’s analysis. While the vast majority of the performers encountered here are of East Asian descent, their backgrounds and nationalities are quite varied:

The musicians discussed in this book include Asian Americans who were born and raised in the United States; Asian- born musicians who came to the United States to advance their careers; children of Asian parents whose careers and lives cross national boundaries; Asian musicians who have lived in parts of the world other than Asia and the United States, such as Oceania, Europe, or Latin America, and thus have multiple cultural identities; and those of mixed, part- Asian ethnic heritage.

(7–8)

In selecting the performers whose voices and ideas appear in the book, Yoshihara has achieved a good balance among musicians of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese ancestry, but given her Japanese cultural and linguistic background, it is inevitable that the contextual and historical commentary related to Japan is sometimes richer and more detailed than similar passages on the other regions. As she correctly explains, the vast majority of “Asian” performers of Western classical music in the United States are of Japanese, Chinese, or Korean ancestry. Singaporean pianist Margaret Leng Tan provides one of the few glimpses of a more expansive notion of “Asia,” suggesting that her familiarity with gamelan music has been extremely advantageous in her interpretation of John Cage’s works for prepared piano (166–70).

To those who have interacted extensively with Asian classmates, students...