China Seminar | 15 March 2001

Whose Tradition in “Traditional Chinese Music”?

Prof. Frederick Lau is an ethnomusicologist specializing in Chinese music and a musician trained in both western and Chinese styles. He has published on topics related to Chinese music, performed as a professional flutist and conductor, and conducted fieldwork in the PRC related to the development of traditional instrumental music in the twentieth century. Prof. Lau is currently completing a monograph on the relationship between the development of dizi music and post-1949 politics with a focus on the dynamic between social transformation and musical change. In the last several years he has devoted considerable time to studying Chinese music in the diaspora, particularly in Southeast Asia and the U.S. Prof. Lau has received grants from the National Academy of Sciences and the NEH as well as a prestigious award from the president of the California Polytechnic State University. He is currently associate professor of music at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.