MORE THAN PRAISES: CANTONESE CHRISTIAN WORSHIP MUSIC AND HONG KONG IMMIGRANTS IN THE GREATER TORONTO AREA
ERIC KING CHUNG CHONG
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1*1 Canada ABSTRACT
Based on field research done in one of the largest Chinese Christian churches in the Greater Toronto Area, this thesis explores the extra-religious meanings of worship songs performed in this faith community of immigrants. It posits that the church's worship music conveys diasporic identities of the church's members in two main aspects. Firstly, the practice of singing worship songs in multiple languages mediates multiple sociolinguistic identities. Secondly, the church's worship music reveals a special kind of nostalgia; despite the close connection between the church's members with Hong Kong in the present, their music making alludes anachronistically to the memory of Hong Kong in the 1970s and 1980s and an idealistic identity of being "Hong Kong people."
IV TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page (i) Copyright (ii) Statement of Authenticity (iii) Abstract (iv) Table of Contents (v)
Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Organization of the Thesis 12
Chapter 2: The Transnational Hong Kong Immigrant Community in the Greater Toronto Area 14 Introduction 14 The RHCCC and Its Neighbourhood 16 The Church Community 19 The RHCCC and Transnational Christianity 22 The Hong Kong Diaspora in the GTA 25 Musical Culture of Hong Kong and Its Diaspora in the GTA 35
Chapter 3: The Worship Music of the Richmond Hill Christian Community Church: Social Organization, Repertoires, Sounds, and Concepts . 42 Introduction 42 A Thanksgiving Service 44 Social Organization of Worship Music 50 Four Song Repertoires 61 Traditional Hymns 66 Cantonese Contemporary Christian Songs 73 Mandarin Contemporary Christian Songs 79 English Hymns and Contemporary Songs 82 The Role and Function of Worship Music 84
v Chapter 4: Contemporary Cantonese Christian Songs, Early Cantopop, and Diasporic Identities 92 Multiple Languages in Singing and Sociolinguistic Identities 92 Religious Texts and Religiously Neutral Music 103 Cantonese Christian Song's Allusion to Early Cantopop 108 Multilingualism, Multiple Identities, Musical Nostalgia and the Experience of Transnational Migration 125
Chapter 5: Conclusions 133 Finding the Extraordinary within the Ordinary 133 Hybrid Music and a Manifestation of an Alternative Modernity 136 Seeing the Homeland through Diasporic Music Making 139
Works Cited 144 Discography 150
VI Chapter 1 Introduction
Communal music making is an uncommon activity among Chinese communities
living in big cities. This is true for people living in Hong Kong as well as Hong Kong
immigrants who have moved to metropolitan areas around the globe, including the
Greater Toronto Area (GTA). In a typical community of Hong Kong immigrants, while
children in relatively affluent families are generally encouraged to learn musical
instruments and music prodigies are celebrated, the interest in making music is usually
stifled by academic and career pursuits once these young city-dwellers reach their
adolescence. In adulthood, engagement with music is more about consumption than making music in a participatory manner. Musical experiences are often limited to
entertainment in the forms of listening to music CDs, going to concerts, and watching music videos. For urban people of Hong Kong origin now living in Canada, the most
familiar kind of music making would probably be singing in karaoke lounges or in one's
own bathroom.
Against this background, the kind of participatory music making often found at
Chinese Christian churches appears remarkable. From small congregations of a few
1 dozen people to megachurches of over a thousand members, these people of faith spend time singing together at worship services every week without exception. Depending on the size and tradition of individual churches, the time spent on communal singing in a service may vary from fifteen minutes to an hour. Even more time is put in by musicians and worship leaders for practice sessions and rehearsals before each service. Judging from the amount of time and effort devoted to music making in churches, Chinese church music is no doubt an important part of the contemporary music culture among Chinese communities.
This thesis provides a community-based case study of this important music making activity by exploring the musical culture of a Chinese Christian church in the GTA.
Fieldwork for this study was conducted during 2006 to 2011 among Cantonese-speaking members of the church, the majority of whom are immigrants from Hong Kong. Most of my fieldwork was conducted in the form of participant observation. I have been participating in the services and the social network of this church since I settled in the
GTA in 2006. As an immigrant from Hong Kong, I enjoyed the privilege of sharing with my informants the same language and cultural background which gave me easy access to the insiders' perspective of this diasporic community. Moreover, my informants'
2 recognition of my status as a graduate music student/researcher allowed me to initiate
conversations concerning personal music tastes in general and worship music in particular, which were not usual topics of the community's daily conversations. My potentially invasive gestures of taking audio and video recordings of worship services
were also kindly permitted. Besides immersing myself in Sunday services as both an
observer and a worshipper, I also participated in leading "singspirations" - a term used
by evangelical Christians to refer to singing in worship - as singer and pianist at smaller
church gatherings on several occasions. To supplement my findings from participant
observation, I interviewed a number of informants in a more formal and structured
manner. These interviews included conversations with the church's ministers, musicians,
worship leaders, and lay members.
Other perspectives have informed the interpretation of this fieldwork. As a relatively
new member of this church and of the Hong Kong diaspora in the GTA, my own
enculturation in the practice of Christian church music and in diasporic culture is not
totally identical with those of the church community. My own immigration experience in
Canada started well after the climax of Hong Kong emigration in the early to mid 1990s;
thus I had the opportunity of living through some of the changes in the city's postcolonial
3 history after 1997. Before living in the GTA, I was involved in the music making of
Chinese Christian churches in Hong Kong and Vancouver, British Columbia. These experiences provided the frame of reference by which the diasporic experience and music making in the GTA's Hong Kong diaspora were interpreted.
Based on this fieldwork, this thesis explores how transnational exchanges, both human migration and cultural traffic, have shaped Christian worship music in the Hong
Kong diaspora in the GTA. In particular, it asks what this music reveals about the diasporic experiences of these music makers. Through its focus on contemporary
Christian music that is based on popular music, a major part of this thesis also concerns how the popular music of Hong Kong has influenced the music of Hong Kong diasporas, particularly Cantonese Christian music.
The primary question addressed by this thesis concerns how diasporic identities have been mediated through contemporary Christian church music among Hong Kong immigrants in the GTA. This, in turn, requires an understanding of the implication of the word diaspora. In his article "Diaspora in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and
Return," William Safran (1991) offered a landmark understanding of "diaspora." His definition of diaspora, for which the prime example is the history of Jewish migrants,
4 emphasizes people's experience of being displaced from their traditional living place and the migrants' strong desire of returning to, or avowing allegiance with, their homeland.
James Clifford supplements Safran's idea with the need to consider the cultural dynamics between immigrants and their host societies in accounting for diasporas (1997). Others have offered other perspectives for understanding diasporas and diasporic cultures. For instance, Arjun Appadurai describes the late twentieth century as a time of deterritorialization, characterized by movements including but not limited to people. His model of global cultural economy identifies five domains of global flows: ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes (Appadurai 1996). The impact of accelerated global movements of people, information, technology, capital, and ideologies sheds light on the formation and characteristics of diasporas in the late twentieth century.
In this thesis, the term "Hong Kong diasporas" is used to refer to the totality of immigrant communities in many cities around the globe with origins in Hong Kong. In my usage of the term, the great physical distance separating these immigrant communities from their common homeland is emphasized. But the emotive and analytical implications of the term may not match exactly those implied in other more specialized
5 analysis of diasporas. For example, I find Safran's classic definition of diasporas does not describe very precisely the experience of Hong Kong immigrants with respect to emotions, because most of the stories of these immigrants do not centre in a longing for return due to a sad history of involuntary migration. From my experience of living among
Hong Kong immigrant communities in Canada, most of these immigrants have left Hong
Kong voluntarily and have not gone through imminent political and economic hardship in the homeland. Therefore, this thesis uses the term diaspora as a descriptive category referring to people living away from their country of origin. When the singular noun
"diaspora" is used in this thesis, therefore, it refers to a single community within this diasporic network living in a definite place outside the homeland: for example, the Hong
Kong diaspora in the GTA. Chapter Two of this thesis, building on Appadurai's concept of transnational cultural flows and Clifford's emphasis on immigrant-host relationships, will provide more emotive and analytical substance to the term diaspora in the context of the global network of people dispersed from Hong Kong.
In ethnomusicology, the relationship between music and diasporas has increasingly captured scholars' interest since the 1990s. Mark Slobin's survey on ethnomusicological writings concerning diasporas shows that, while diaspora as an analytical concept eludes
6 a precise definition among ethnomusicologists, exceptional affinity exists between diasporas and ethnomusicological research in qualities such as multiplicity and fluidity in subject position, and hence diaspora has been established as one of the discipline's major themes (2003). Furthermore, many writings on diasporic music associate diasporas with the question of identity, which in itself is another major theme in the discipline (see Rice
2007 for a survey on ethnomusicological writings on music and identity). For example,
Thomas Turino states that "diasporas depend on expressive cultural practices for their very existence" because cultural practices, including music, provide "subjectively recognized and objectively articulated cultural similarities," which are essential for constructing distinctive diasporic identities (2004:4). Slobin suggests that "[m]usic is central to the diasporic experience, linking homeland and here-land with an intricate network of sound ... people identify themselves strongly, even principally, through their music" (1994:243). Slobin also points out that musical preference is important for constructing differentiations between "them" and "us," here and there, and now and then
(1994). These differentiations are crucial for the construction of identities in diasporas.
He further outlines a framework for exploring diasporic music by considering different aspects of music making in diasporas: the superculture (the overarching cultural,
7 governmental, and commercial systems in which diasporic music exists), the subcultures of diasporic communities, transnational diasporic networks, the flexibility of music-cultural definition, individual musicians who perform the role of cultural activists and the degree of oppositionality between diasporic culture and the dominant culture
(Slobin 1994).
Recently, Tina Ramnarine reflected upon ethnomusicology's approach to studying diasporic music in the light of postcolonialism. She problematizes the mapping of types of music to ethnic groups, a tendency of essentializing discrete cultures thought to be neighbouring one another in a multicultural environment. Instead of looking for homologies between music making and diasporic identity, she suggests ethnomusicologists pay attention to contradiction and disjuncture between identity representations in music making and diasporic reality. Such contradiction and disjuncture may reveal important power relations and identity politics in diasporas (Ramnarine
2007). These ethnomusicological writings echo the importance of identity for people in diasporas as expounded by scholars of diasporic cultures in other disciplines. For instance, Stuart Hall has written extensively on the negotiation of cultural identities in the diasporic situation. In addition to pointing out that identities are not innate essentials
8 given at birth but are the result of continuous psychological and social processes, he proposes that artistic culture, including music, is a particularly important site for identity construction (Hall 1994). As identities are constructions in our imagination, artistic culture is crucial in forming and mediating identities since this is where socio-political phenomena and imagination intersect; some "imagined subject" is always present in the arts (Hall 2005).
The body of research mentioned above forms the main intellectual background for this thesis's orientation of seeing music making as an important medium for identity construction and expression in diasporas. In particular, through studying Christian worship music of Hong Kong immigrants, this thesis posits that these identities are constructed by the interaction of multiple cultural forces including popular culture of
Hong Kong, Christian beliefs and musical practices, and cultures of Chinese and Western origin.
In addition, this thesis is informed by musical scholarship about the music of
Chinese immigrants in Canada. This includes the work of Margaret Chan on the affects evoked by the Yellow River Concerto among Chinese immigrants (1996) and Huang
Jinpei's and Alan Thrasher's (1993), as well as Stephen Li's (1987), research on
9 Cantonese Opera enthusiasts in Vancouver and Toronto respectively. This thesis supplements the existing literature on Chinese diasporic music in Canada by adding to it the study of a musical genre that is based on popular music, since these previous works focus mainly on traditional Chinese music or compositions by Chinese composers in the
Western art music tradition. This thesis is also related to the body of research that focuses on diasporic musics of other immigrant groups in Canada. The Chinese diaspora in
Canada shares with other ethnic communities common themes regarding music making and the experience of living in Canada as immigrants. These common themes include memory and nostalgia, negotiation and performance of identity in shifting transnational settings, the significance of music to different generations within an ethnic community, and music as representation of place (see Wrazen 2005 and 2007; Warwick 1996).
Research on the musical culture of Chinese immigrants in the United States, the closest diasporic neighbours to the subjects of this thesis, also offers background information on the global network of Chinese diasporas and valuable insights into the analysis of Chinese diasporic music. For example, Su Zheng's work on Chinese musicians in the United States (1994) illustrates the dynamics among transnational diasporic networks, both at the individual level and the institutional level, in establishing
10 a musical subculture for displaced music and displaced people. Deborah Wong has written on music making and music reception in Asian American, including Chinese
American, communities. Her research critically foregrounds the politics of ethnic identities mediated through music making. Instead of defining the "essence" of Asian
American music, she proposes that it is more important to ask who is making the music and to examine the performance process: "... I have gravitated toward the position that any music being performed or created by Asian Americans is Asian American music ... I want to understand why some Asian Americans make music, and what sounds they make and for whom" (Wong 2004).
As a genre-specific study, Connie Wong's doctoral dissertation on contemporary
Chinese Christian music is the most relevant reference for this thesis. Her work is pioneering research on the ethnomusicological study of this genre in the context of transnational Chinese communities (Wong 2006). Focusing on a group of Chinese
Christian musicians in the United States who have profoundly influenced transnational
Chinese churches in homelands and diasporas, her research shows that musical hybridity, specifically the fusion of traditional/classical music with secular popular music, plays an important role in the expression of ethnic and religious identities in diasporas. She also
11 discusses how Christian music performance mediates Christian belief in a Chinese
context. Her findings provide an important framework for interpreting the church music
of the community that is the focus of this thesis.
Organization of the Thesis
This thesis consists of five chapters. Following the present introductory chapter,
Chapter Two provides an overview of the Hong Kong diaspora in the GTA. It then proceeds to narrow its focus on the demographic and cultural characteristics of one particular church community. The overall aim of this chapter is to explain the social
context that is essential for the discussions in later chapters.
Chapter Three describes the worship music and music making processes in the
community's religious gatherings. It also discusses contemporary trends in Chinese
Christian music and its relationship with secular popular music. Chapter Four explores
identity construction through the church's worship music. The discussion links the
community's musical preferences and music making practices with the expression of a
Hong Kong identity that is unique to the diasporic situation.
Finally, Chapter Five concludes the main argument of the whole thesis that
12 contemporary Christian worship music in Hong Kong immigrant churches expresses a
Hong Kong identity, a particular telling of the success story of Hong Kong people, which
in turn reveals these immigrants' hopes and dreams of re-creating another success story
in their new homeland. Moreover, in this chapter I suggest that insights gained from
exploring the music in Hong Kong diasporas can in turn provide fresh perspectives for understanding the music of the homeland.
In a sense, the subject matter of this thesis is the concept of minority. Immigrants are
ethnic minorities in their new homes; religious musics are minority genres in largely
secularized cities, both in the West and in East Asia; Cantonese-based Hong Kong culture
is a minority within the Beijing-centred, Mandarin-based global pan-Chinese network;
and Cantonese popular music is a minority in the face of the global dissemination of
Western popular music. My hope is that this thesis will be one of the initial small steps of bringing some presence for these obscured minorities to the global landscape of
ethnomusicological research.
13 Chapter 2 The Transnational Hong Kong Immigrant Community in the GTA
Introduction
The fieldwork for this research was conducted in the Richmond Hill Christian
Community Church (RHCCC), a Protestant Christian community located in the town of
Richmond Hill in the GTA. The history of this community illustrates the migration experience of a significant portion of Chinese immigrants in the GTA, especially their ways of adapting to the new situation of living at the intersection of the wider culture of
Canadian society, the immigrants' Chinese heritage, and their religious culture.
The RHCCC was founded in 1975 by a group of Chinese Christian immigrants, with people of Hong Kong origin comprising the majority of its members. The church has continued to expand during the past thirty-three years as subsequent waves of Chinese immigration to the GTA have brought to it more and more members1. As a community of immigrants, the church's members constantly refer to the values and mores of Canadian
1 In the descriptions about the RHCCC, the terms "members" and "community" refer broadly to all individuals who participate in the church's vanous meetings and programs People with the highest involvement in the church (e g , pastors and deacons) and those with the lowest degree of affiliation (e g , occasional visitor to worship services) are all included For church administration purpose, the RHCCC has a narrower definition for the church's membership an official member needs to have openly confessed his or her belief m Christianity, to be already baptized, to have attended a membership class, and to have satisfactorily passed a membership interview This narrower membership, however, does not necessarily preclude people from participating in music making in the church Therefore, the broader definitions of member and community will be used in this thesis unless otherwise noted
14 society in every aspect of living, in addition to their previous experience from their places of origin. Most of the time, Canada's multicultural ideals, including its respect for different ethnic groups and for different religions, help the church's members develop their sense of belonging as Canadians, and allow ample freedom for the church to develop its unique local culture. But the church also experiences Canadian culture as a challenge, especially when the generally liberal and secular spirit of Canadian society conflicts with the core values and habits of Chinese heritage and Christianity. In times when members of the community are acutely aware of their cultural differences from
Canadian society, not only would they emphasize the "otherness" of the host society, but they may also perceive that they are the "other" to the host society. This mutual
"otherness" is a powerful force shaping cultures and identities in a diasporic situation
(Hall 1994 and 2005).
This chapter describes the historical, social, and cultural background of the transnational migrant community extending from Hong Kong to the GTA, as well as the
Protestant Christian tradition in this community. This background information is important for understanding the significance of contemporary Christian music among these Hong Kong immigrants. Towards the same purpose, this chapter also provides a
15 brief introduction to the music of Hong Kong.
The RHCCC and Its Neighbourhood
In the past thirty-five years, the RHCCC has grown from a church of less than a hundred people to the present congregation of a few thousand. The church buildings also have gone through several stages of expansion to become a noticeable complex on a major road in Richmond Hill, a municipality within the GTA. The church building complex, with its big concrete cross standing on its roof, has become one of the landmarks of its neighbourhood, and the church congregation has also become a well-known community among Chinese people not only in Richmond Hill, but also among those living in other parts of the GTA. Every Sunday, hundreds of believers and guests flock to the church for its weekly worship services. Help from the local police is needed for regulating the large volume of vehicle and pedestrian traffic in and out of the church complex. The scene is impressive and represents one of the largest public gatherings of Chinese immigrants in the GTA. Recognition of the church from both the mainstream2 and Chinese communities is evidenced by the presence of the mayor of
My use of the term "mainstream" follows the common usage of the term by Chinese immigrants and Chinese media in Canada. The tenn usually refers broadly to the people, institutions, and culture of the host society, except those that may be identified with visible minonty groups In most contexts, the term mainstream has the same meaning as "white" or "Western" in the daily language of Chinese immigrants 16 Richmond Hill and journalists from local Chinese media at the inauguration ceremony of the church's newest sanctuary in February 2008.
Richmond Hill is one of the several municipalities in Canada where a high concentration of Chinese settlement is found. As of 2006, Richmond Hill has a population of 163 000 (Statistics Canada 2007a). According to the government census taken in 2001, about 27 000 residents in Richmond Hill reported as belonging to the
Chinese ethnic group (2002). This is approximately 7% of the total 486 330 Chinese people living in the Toronto metropolitan area3 (Statistics Canada 2007b).
Richmond Hill is a more recent addition to the many "Chinatowns" in the GTA. In the late 1960s, the first Chinatown emerged in downtown Toronto, right next to
Toronto's central business district (Phan and Luk 2007). It was the first area in the GTA where a high concentration of Chinese residences and businesses could be visibly identified. From the 1960s to the present, this urban Chinatown has continued to develop and thrive as a major Chinese ethnic site in the GTA. But at the same time, other sites of
3 Chinese populations in other major areas of Chinese settlement within the GTA in 2001 are as follows. 64 290 in the city of Toronto, 105 195 in the city of Scarborough, 69 155 in the city of North York, 62 355 in the town of Markham (Statistics Canada 2002) A metropolitan area is a standard geographical unit used by Statistics Canada for collecting and compiling census data By Statistics Canada's definition, a metropolitan area is formed by one or more adjacent municipalities centred on a large urban area In this thesis, statistics of the Toronto metropolitan area are taken as representing the demographics of the area generally known as the Greater Toronto Area An official definition of a metropolitan area is available at http //www statcan ca/english/concepts/defimtions/geography htm#2
17 high concentration of Chinese settlement and commercial activities comparable to the original Chinatown - the new Chinatowns - have sprung up in several suburb areas in the
GTA: Scarborough, Markham, Richmond Hill, and Mississauga.
Scarborough was the first suburban Chinatown. Its emergence was a result of the rapid increase of Hong Kong immigration in the mid-1980s (Phan and Luk 2007).
Large-scale Chinese settlements in Richmond Hill and Markham began in the 1990s.
With the increase in the Chinese population, vibrant commercial activities focusing on
Chinese customers have also sprung up in these two municipalities. Compared with the
old Chinatown in downtown Toronto, the new Chinatowns in Richmond Hill and
Markham are "strictly Hong Kong in style and their commercial orientation is more
contemporary and upscale" (Phan and Luk 2007: 305). They consist of "ethnic shopping centres with ample parking spaces. In order to attract the wealthier recent Chinese immigrants, developers created large theme malls offering a diversity of services, retail products and entertainment. These malls often carry names that refer to popular
commercial districts in Hong Kong, China or Taiwan" (Phan and Luk 2007). The majority of these Chinese shopping centres cluster along Highway Seven, a major road running through Richmond Hill and Markham. This concentration of Chinese shops and
18 restaurants has attracted customers from among Chinese residents living in all places in the GTA, and even those from as far as Montreal in Quebec. As a result, this section of
Highway Seven in Richmond Hill and Markham and its proximity has become a hub of
social interaction, cultural activities and businesses for Chinese people living in the eastern part of Canada. The subject of this research, the RHCCC, is located in this important area for Chinese immigrants in Canada.
The Church Community
There are as many as 250 Chinese Christian churches in Toronto (Nagata 2005:
116). The RHCCC stands out against other Chinese churches as being one of the few
exceptionally large churches - sometimes referred to as megachurches - in the GTA. On
an average Sunday morning, over 3500 people come to the RHCCC for worship
services. These worshippers may choose to attend any one of the five services available: two services conducted in Cantonese5, one in Mandarin6, and two in English. According
4 This number is taken from the RHCCC's New Year special bulletin published 11 January 2009; the number represents the average weekly number of adults, teenagers, and children who regularly attended the church's services in 2008 5 Cantonese is the common dialect of Chinese immigrants coming mainly from the Guangzhou area, Hong Kong, and Macau in south China, as well as some Chinese immigrants from vanous countries in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia 6 Mandarin is the official language in mainland China and Taiwan. It is called Putonghua (nlraltiS), literally the common speech/language, in mainland China The language is the common dialect of most Chinese immigrants from these regions except Hong Kong and Macau It is also the common dialect of some Chinese immigrants from Southeast Asian countnes Thus, Mandarin is the most frequently used Chinese dialect in Chinese communities worldwide 19 to the church members' language preferences, the church is organized into three smaller congregations: the Cantonese congregation comprises 67% of the total number of people in the church community; the English congregation comprises 25%; the Mandarin congregation is comprised of the remaining 8% of the community7.
With the exception of a few ministers in the English congregation, all church members are visibly Asian; most members readily identify themselves as Chinese, as evidenced by the name of the church. Unlike the situation in the United States, where a strong presence of pan-Asian ethnicity (especially among second or later generation immigrant communities) is present (see Wang 2001), the RHCCC community shows little alliance with other ethnic groups in terms of identity formation and ethnic politics.
Two possible reasons may account for this absence of strong pan-Asianism. Firstly, the majority of the RHCCC members are first-generation immigrants for whom a strong boundary due to cultural and linguistic differences tends to separate them from other ethnic groups. Secondly, the Chinese immigrant community in the GTA in general did not experience any large-scale socio-political movement aiming to unite Canadians of
Asian descent and create a shared Asian Canadian identity, as in the Asian American
7 Statistics of service attendance are published each week in the service bulletin The percentage of each congregation is computed from the statistics of 2008 November 23 The distnbution of people attending different services stays fairly constant from week to week
20 movement of the late 1960s in the United States.
Chinese ethnicity is a generic category. The Chinese diaspora in Canada is not
culturally homogenous. A number of subethnicities can be identified; different native
languages, which are closely related to individual places of birth, indicate the basic
cultural identifications among different groups of Chinese people. Globalization and transnational migration have significantly weakened the language barrier between different Chinese groups in recent years, yet each group still tends to maintain its own
cultural practices and identity based primarily on language affinity. Scholars have maintained that it is problematic to conceptualize any Chinese diaspora as homogeneous.
As Ann Brooks points out, the term "Chinese," if used as an all-inclusive descriptor, tends to impose stereotypes and "support an essentialist notion of identity that ignores historical and geographical diversity" (2004: 28). The organization of the RHCCC and its worship services reflects this salient (to people of Chinese diasporas) yet subtle (to
outside observers) differentiation within the Chinese diaspora in the GTA. In the case of the RHCCC, most English service participants are either second or third-generation
Chinese immigrants who are born in Canada or people who have been living in Canada
since they were very young. Most Mandarin service participants are first-generation
21 immigrants from mainland China and Taiwan, and the majority of Cantonese service participants are first-generation immigrants from Hong Kong and Macau. The sizes of these congregations, differentiated through language preferences, reflect the distribution pattern in the heterogeneous Chinese diaspora in the GTA. According to Statistics
Canada, in 2006, 410 865 residents in the GTA claimed that their mother tongue is
Chinese. A more detailed breakdown of the statistics reveals that 166 650 people claimed
Cantonese as their mother tongue while 62 850 people claimed Mandarin8 (Statistics
Canada 2007c). These numbers suggest that Cantonese-speaking Chinese, many of whom have emigrated from Hong Kong and Macau, comprise the majority group within the
Chinese diaspora in the GTA.
The RHCCC and Transnational Christianity
The first Christian congregation in Toronto for immigrants of Chinese ethnic origin was founded in 1905 (Nagata 2005). This is the beginning of a now century-old tradition of founding churches specifically for Chinese immigrants. It also results in the overlapping of ethnicity and religious affiliation. The history of the exclusion of Chinese
8 The remaining respondents of the survey either claimed the Hakka dialect (2 720 responses) as their mother tongue or did not specify the dialects they speak
22 immigration to Canada between 1923 and 19669 accentuated the role of Chinese churches as ethnic institutions that functioned to preserve ethnic identities (Nagata 2005).
The influx of Hong Kong immigrants between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s established a new pattern of subethnic congregations which continued to the end of the twentieth century. Today, there are more than 250 Chinese Christian congregations in Toronto; the majority of them are still comprised of Cantonese-speaking people who identify with
Hong Kong subethnicity (Nagata 2005). The beginning of the twenty-first century saw a new turn in Chinese church development. This new direction tends to downplay Chinese ethnic identity and encourages opening churches to welcome people who speak different languages and who are of a variety of subethnicities. The RHCCC is an example of a church adopting this new trend. Its English congregation serves mainly children and youths who are the second or third-generation offspring of immigrant families, who primarily speak English and are generally more at ease with the dominant culture in
Canadian society than their first-generation immigrant parents. In its attempt to include
9 In 1923, Canadian government passed the Chinese Immigration Act, often referred to as the Chinese Exclusion Act The legislation, which ordered more stringent cntena for Chinese to immigrate to Canada than people of other ethnicities, prohibited most Chinese immigration To protest the legislation, Chinese-Canadians at that time referred to the anniversary of Confederation, I e , July 1st, as "Humiliation Day " It was not until 1947 that the legislation was repealed, because it contravened the United Nations' Charter of Human Rights, of which Canada was one of the signing nations at the end of the Second World War. In the same year, Chinese-Canadians were finally granted the right to vote in federal elections But the effect of the Chinese Exclusion Act in stopping Chinese immigration was not fully reverted until 1967 when Chinese immigrants were admitted under the same criteria as immigrants of other ethnic backgrounds (University of British Columbia Library n d )
23 people of different ethnic backgrounds, the English congregation has also organized programs for people of Indian origin. The RHCCC's Mandarin congregation serves
mainly immigrants from mainland China. During the period when fieldwork for this
thesis was done, the church was considering renaming itself by substituting the ethnically
limiting word "Chinese" with the more universal term "Christian." In 2009, its name was
officially changed to Richmond Hill Christian Community Church (the shortened form
RHCCC has been retained), an action indicating the emergence of a movement towards
constructing a collective identity that centers more on multiculturalism and universal
Christianity and less on ethnicity.
Affiliating with a religious organization also means engaging in a process of
enculturation into the web of layered cultures which the organization embraces.
Christianity may be considered a global religion because of a few basic tenets shared
commonly worldwide by people who claim to be Christians as well as by its global
missions. Besides the few core tenets of faith, Christianity is in fact very diversified, with
numerous streams and denominations which foster different cultures. The RHCCC shares
the basic faith with most Christians, but it is intimately connected with the transnational
cultural network of Protestant evangelical churches, among which churches in the United
24 States are especially influential in shaping practices of other churches in the network. In many areas, such as theological orientation, mission strategies, ethical stances, worship setting, and even worship music, the RHCCC has followed patterns found in Evangelical churches in the United States. On the other hand, the RHCCC also participates in the transnational culture of Chinese churches. Church music in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the
North American Chinese diasporas are important resources for the RHCCC's development of its own musical culture.
The Hong Kong Diaspora in the GTA
This thesis focuses on the largest congregation in the RHCCC, the
Cantonese-speaking congregation, for whom the most intimate cultural linkage is with the city of Hong Kong. The contemporary Hong Kong diaspora in Canada consists mainly of immigrants11 who arrived in Canada in the large-scale immigration between
10 Both Hong Kong and Macau have histones of colonization (Hong Kong was colonized by the United Kingdom, Macau was colonized by Portugal) Due to their close proximity to each other, their common dialect of Cantonese, and due to their similar political situations, the cultures of the two cities show many similarities Because of Hong Kong's more robust economy and more developed media and entertainment industry, the culture of Hong Kong often diffuses to Macau and becomes a dominant culture there Many Macau residents have lived, worked, or studied in Hong Kong Therefore, when talking about diasponc cultural connections in this thesis, I will subsume connections with Macau under the Hong Kong diaspora unless otherwise specified 1' In this thesis, I will follow the common usage in Canada, where landed immigrants are expected to settle in the country permanently, and use the term "immigrants" to refer to Hong Kong people who have moved to Canada However, many Hong Kong people embrace an attitude that regards emigration, or transnational movements, as a temporary or continuous process Instead of moving out from the place of origin and settling permanently in another place, people emigrating from Hong Kong tend to entertain the possibility of returning or moving on to other places at different life stages (see Ley and Kobayashi 2005) Strictly speaking, identifying these people as migrants would be more accurate
25 the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s. Between 1980 and 2001, 380 000 Hong Kong people arrived in Canada (Ley and Kobayashi 2005). Hong Kong immigrants landing in Toronto and Vancouver represented the largest group of immigrants to Canada during the period from 1989 to 1997 (Preston et al 2006). This massive migration has most often been attributed to the agreement signed between the United Kingdom and China in 1984 to hand over Hong Kong,12 then still a city that had been under British colonial rule for more than a century, back to China on 1 July 1997. Apprehension about political and economic instability, which was aggravated by the Tiananmen Square massacre in
1989,13 caused hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents to leave the city, many of whom eventually came to Canada. Of equal or perhaps greater weight than political uncertainty, the pursuit of a better quality of life, familial considerations, and better education opportunities for children are also reported as important motivating forces behind this wave of mass migration (Preston et al 2006). Due to their middle-class background, above-average education, and relative affluence, the majority of Hong Kong
12 The Sino-Bntish Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong, signed on December 19, 1984 13 On June 4, 1989, the army of the People's Republic of China was ordered to drive out protesters, mainly college and university students and other civilians, from the Tiananmen Square in Beijing Until that day, these protesters had been staying in the square for about a month for a peaceful demonstration against corruption, demanding political reform within the Chinese Government The demonstration was eventually quenched by a military operation and deaths and injuries of protesters had been reported This incident shocked many Hong Kong residents and overseas Chinese, and it is believed to be a major factor that caused massive emigration from Hong Kong m the following years
26 immigrants to the GTA have settled in middle-income suburbs such as Markham and
Scarborough in the GTA. In recent years, many settlers from Hong Kong have started to move into other newer suburban areas such as Richmond Hill.
Hong Kong immigrants in Canada prefer settling in large urban centres, and the
GTA is particularly favoured. From 1980 to 2000, the GTA received 45 percent of a total of 162 361 Hong Kong immigrants and ranked first among metropolitan areas in Canada in this regard (Wang and Lo, 2005). The GTA, as a metropolis, offers convenience, job and financial opportunities, diversity in entertainment and cultural activities, and the material abundance of living in an urban centre. These advantages are especially attractive to Hong Kong immigrants, who are accustomed to a metropolitan style of living. As the population of Hong Kong immigrants has been growing in the past two decades, the GTA has become an important node in the global network of emigrants from
Hong Kong.
For many first-generation Hong Kong immigrants settled in the GTA, Hong Kong remains a source of social bonding and cultural nourishment. The global diasporic network connecting the immigrants in the GTA with Hong Kong, the "homeland," exemplifies connections and affiliations based on the global flow of people, money,
27 technology, information, and ideology explored by Arjun Appadurai (1996). Since the late twentieth century, the increasing ease and frequency of transnational movements within these five areas, which Appadurai calls the five "scapes,"14 have freed many local cultures from their geographical and political boundaries. George Lipsitz points out how these transnational movements change our experience: they "[allow] us to inhabit many different 'places' at once" (1994: 5). For Hong Kong immigrants, this development in the global cultural economy means that they can be virtually living in both the GTA and
Hong Kong at the same time.
The relationship between Hong Kong immigrants and the city of Hong Kong is immediate and palpable, despite the great distance separating the place of residence and the homeland. For these immigrants, their homeland does not exist only in collective memory, vision, or myth, as William Safran has found to be true in many classic diasporas of dispersed minority communities, for instance, Jewish and Armenian diasporas (1991). In the cases of these latter diasporas, the diaspora communities are usually completely disconnected with their homelands due to forced displacement, hostile political situations, and dire economic conditions. These diasporic communities may
14 Appadurai calls the global flow of people "ethnoscapes," of money "financescapes," of technology "technoscapes," of information "mediascapes," and of ideology "ideoscapes" (1996).
28 create myths of their homeland including the idea of returning to "solidify ethnic consciousness and solidarity" (Safranl991: 91). Their relationship with their homelands is mainly in their memory and imagination. For Hong Kong immigrants, however, the homeland exists more in present lived experiences than in nostalgia and imagination.
Through rapid transnational flows in Appadurai's five "scapes," the environment in which the immigrants had originally been living is transferred over thousands of kilometers and injected into the immigrants' lives now in the GTA. Material consumption, social networks, and media-transmitted information and images are key elements contributing to the fusion of "here" and "there."
In material consumption, the large-scale transplantation of a Hong Kong style of living to the GTA involves the transnational movements in the ethnoscapes (e.g., chefs and retailers) and the financescapes (international trade). Restaurants and shops are the most conspicuous examples of the injection of material culture. The GTA - especially in the municipalities of Richmond Hill, Markham, and Scarborough - has a very high concentration of shopping malls which house restaurants and shops that specialize in
Chinese food and merchandise. This is an uncommon phenomenon among Chinese diasporas in North America and Europe. Many of these restaurants and shops are
29 operated by people from Hong Kong and sell products, foods, and services that are popular in Hong Kong. These merchandise and services include Hong Kong cuisine,
snacks, fashion, magazines, books, movie DVDs, music CDs, Asian-style hair cutting, foot massage, and traditional Chinese medicine. Chinese restaurants and shops help
sustain a lifestyle that is tightly connected with the current lifestyle in Hong Kong.
Besides making Hong Kong products and services available to the diasporic community,
Chinese shopping malls also function as important spaces for social interaction. They are the places where many Chinese immigrants regularly meet each other and exchange information. They also provide spaces for public performances. During festivals and weekends, Chinese media companies, associations, churches, and other parties often rent the open areas at the concourses or food courts in Chinese shopping malls. These areas are then transformed into stages for music, dance, martial arts, and other kinds of performance. Free musical performances in shopping malls are an important expression
of the musical culture of the Hong Kong diaspora in the GTA. These events provide opportunities for music making for local Chinese musicians and reveal the musical preferences of many people in the diaspora.
Advancement in communication and transportation technologies, which are
30 extensively distributed throughout the technoscape encompassing Asia and North
America, enables immigrants to have daily contact with their places of origin.
Technologies such as inexpensive long-distance telephone services, e-mails, instant messaging, and real-time online video interactions allow Hong Kong immigrants to stay in contact with relatives and friends in their homeland, creating a virtual space for keeping geographically extended social networks alive. These social ties are also reinforced by actual face-to-face meetings made possible by convenient international traveling. As airline tickets for trips between Toronto and Hong Kong have become more affordable and flights are available every day year round, many Hong Kong immigrants travel to and from Hong Kong frequently. This kind of traveling includes business trips, if the immigrants still have jobs or businesses in Hong Kong, and trips for visiting families and friends. Some immigrants may return to their homeland as frequently as once a year, or even more, if their immediate family members live in Hong Kong or if their businesses in Asia require frequent flying.
Information, images, ideas, and ideologies from Hong Kong continue to deeply affect the lives of Hong Kong immigrants in the GTA. The flows in mediascapes and ideoscapes are facilitated by several communication channels. Active social networks
31 enhanced by telecommunication technologies and international transportation result in these networks becoming an important channel for the exchange of information and ideas. In addition, Hong Kong immigrants regularly consume media products made in
Hong Kong. Media in the immigrants' native language and culture are consumed for entertainment, for keeping up with trends in Hong Kong society and politics, and also for reinforcing international social connections so that rapport may be maintained between the immigrants and their families and friends in Hong Kong (Preston et al 2006). The demand for Hong Kong media products has fostered a specialized sector in the media industry in the GTA to satisfy this particular need. This sector consists of several Chinese newspapers, three Cantonese radio stations, and two Cantonese television channels.
These GTA-based businesses either began as extensions of Hong Kong media companies or have close relations with the Hong Kong media industry, and they have attracted many media professionals who had worked in the Hong Kong media industry before immigrating to Canada. Besides covering local news and producing their own programs, these media businesses import current information and entertainment from Hong Kong, including daily news programs transmitted through satellite with a time lag of less than eight hours. These media keep Hong Kong immigrants synchronized with news and
32 trends in their faraway homeland. The immigrants also regularly consume popular music, radio and television programs, and movies produced in Hong Kong, which are conveniently available in Chinese media shops and through the Internet. Local Chinese entertainment production companies also frequently organize concerts featuring Hong
Kong pop stars in the GTA.
For Hong Kong immigrants in the GTA, global movements within Appadurai's five scapes have changed the experience of migration. Through replicating elements of Hong
Kong life style, maintaining social networks by long-distance communication technologies, and staying informed of current trends in Hong Kong by consuming goods and media, the immigrants construct a virtual presence of their homeland in the place where they are physically living. For many Hong Kong immigrants, this kind of virtual presence of the homeland is a significant part of their daily lives, engendering their experience of living simultaneously in two places, in two cultures. The relative ease of frequent returns has further diminished the feelings of separation from their homeland, of being "in exile," and thus has softened the dichotomy between living in the homeland and living in the receiving country.
The contemporary Hong Kong diasporic community is, therefore, a prime example
33 of how transnational movements and the experience of multilocal inhabitation problematize the traditional concept of "home." David Ley and Audrey Kobayashi discovered that, for many Hong Kong immigrants, the travel between Hong Kong and
Canada is no longer a unidirectional, one-time displacement. Instead, immigrants may migrate to and settle in Canada and Hong Kong alternately several times during their lifetime according to changes in personal, family, career, economic and political situations (2005). The experience of migration and "return migration," together with the perpetual belief in the option of settling in either place at will, engenders a sentiment of transnationalism among these Hong Kong migrants. For these immigrants, borrowing
James Clifford's metaphors, Hong Kong and Canada are simultaneously one's "roots" as well as two stops on one's "route" connected by cyclical "travels" (1997). Ley and
Kobayashi suggest that this transnational sentiment binds Hong Kong and Canada, though long distances apart, into a single social field for Hong Kong immigrants. "A fusion of 'here' and 'there'" has resulted "because they are part of a single, if geographically diffuse, life world" (Ley and Kobayashi 2005: 120). Within this fused life world, the immigrants' culture is most probably also a fusion. This implies that the culture of Hong Kong immigrants in Canada, including their musical culture, should be
34 understood not with the lens of a dichotomy between the music of the homeland and that of the "here-land," but with a perspective that sees the immigrants living in a unique fusion of the cultures of "here and there," "now and then," and "us and them."
Musical Culture of Hong Kong and Its Diaspora in the GTA
Cultural fusion is very familiar to people who have lived in Hong Kong. Indigenous
Hong Kong culture since the late nineteenth century is a mixture, combination, and amalgam of local Chinese culture and globalized cultures disseminated via colonization and multi-national industries, especially cultures exported from Anglo-American countries and Japan. This cultural amalgamation has become an important component of the identity of Hong Kong people. In a succinct sentence, a slogan of the Hong Kong
Tourism Board captures this self-awareness of an amalgamated identity when it states:
"Discover a diverse modern metropolis steeped in unique blends of Eastern and Western traditions - only Hong Kong."15
Cultural fusion is evident in the contemporary musical culture of Hong Kong. Hong
Kong was one of the earliest cities in China opened for massive influx of Western
15 From the frontpage of Hong Kong Tourism Board website, http://www.discoverhongkong.com/login.html (accessed 2008 February 14). 35 culture. Since 1842, the year when its history as a British colony began, Hong Kong society has been progressively Westernized. As part of the colonial education policy, the
Western art music tradition was taught in schools as the only officially endorsed music in the education system. For example, Anglo-American and European choral works were taught in primary and secondary schools and selected for competition in music festivals.
British music examinations, organized by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of
Music or Trinity College in London were introduced and became the most popular music education programs for middle-class Hong Kong people. Children were encouraged, sometimes forced, to learn Western instruments, usually piano and violin, as a means to fit into a model of educated people and to acquire proper taste in music. A small sector of the population has continually enjoyed traditional Chinese music and traditional Chinese opera. Since the handover of Hong Kong to China was confirmed in the 1980s, Hong
Kong society has been paying more attention to patriotic music and other kinds of
Chinese music. Nonetheless, the aesthetics of Western art music and the values associated with it, such as a particular notion of etiquette in attending concerts and judgements in evaluating other musical genres, have been firmly imprinted on people who have gone through the school system in Hong Kong.
36 The history of commercial music in Hong Kong is full of foreign cultural influences and hybridization. Before indigenous Cantonese popular music became the dominant genre in the 1970s, most commercial musics consumed by Hong Kong people were either imported musics or local imitations of foreign musical genres. Under British colonial rule, a good command of the English language became a valuable social asset, important
for advancement in education and career. The advantageous status of English, together with the colonial government's promotion of British culture and suppression of Chinese
culture, led to a general preference for Anglo-American culture in Hong Kong society,
especially among students of English secondary schools and the upper and middle classes
(Wong 2003). As a result, Anglo-American popular music was in demand in Hong Kong during the fifties and sixties. Many famous singers in the United States and Britain also became iconic figures in Hong Kong, and their songs became part of Hong Kong's
collective memory. Examples include Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Pat Boone, Dean
Martin, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Patti Page, and the Beatles (Wong 2003).
Anglo-American popular songs of this period were so influential that many Hong Kong
singers recorded cover versions of them, but substituted the English lyrics with
Cantonese or Mandarin lyrics (Wong 2003). Covers of "Mambo Italiano," "River of No
37 Return," "Jambalaya," "Seven Lonely Days," "Three Coins in the Fountain," and "Love
You More Than I Can Say" are some of the most famous examples. Today,
Anglo-American popular music of the fifties and sixties (though not their covers) are still continually enjoyed by middle-aged and senior people in Hong Kong and its diaspora.
Known as "the goldies" {huaijiujinqu 'IftiS^ffi), these songs are an important repertoire for live performances, such as free concerts in malls in the GTA's Hong Kong diaspora. A long-running Cantonese radio program, dedicated to playing the goldies, is
aired once every week in the GTA to Chinese fans of this genre.
Another type of commercial music that had gained a major share of the Hong Kong popular music market before the 1970s was Mandarin popular songs from Shanghai and
Taiwan. These songs are generally called "contemporary songs" (^jX^shidaiqu), and they represent the earliest merging of the Mandarin dialect and Chinese music with
Western music. They selectively combined different elements from both the Eastern and
Western musical worlds to forge a new sound to express themes of local social life in the
fifties and sixties. The constituent musical elements found in these "contemporary songs" include traditional Chinese melodies, Chinese instrumental music, Tin Pan Alley songs,
European operas, big band jazz, Hollywood movie songs, rock'n'roll, and Japanese music
38 (Wong 2003).
Commercial music in Cantonese, the native dialect of Hong Kong people, had existed long before the 1970s. Beginning as recordings of traditional Cantonese operas, popular music in Cantonese gradually evolved to incorporate more and more Western popular music elements. It had, however, never attained widespread acceptance before the 1970s. The 1970s is generally known as the formative period of the contemporary
Hong Kong popular music known as "Cantopop" (Man 1998); the decade is also a period of burgeoning economic development and the resultant building of local pride and identity. Cantopop is written, performed, and produced locally in Hong Kong, mostly by those native to Hong Kong. It is characterized by its Cantonese lyrics and "modern" sound, achieved through deemphasizing the heritage of Cantonese opera and the heavy borrowing of Western musical styles. Shortly after its emergence, Cantopop quickly became the dominant musical genre in the popular music market in Hong Kong,
surpassing the popularity of Anglo-American popular music and Mandarin popular songs, though the latter two continue to find a steady body of supporters and consumers up to the present.
From its inception, Cantopop was a hybrid music that combines Chinese musical
39 tradition with Western musical influences. It syncretizes the language structure and tonal characteristics of the Cantonese dialect, Chinese melodies (e.g., the prominent use of pentatonic scales), and traditional Chinese instruments with Western harmonization techniques, popular song forms (e.g., the twelve-bar blues, AABA song form, verse and chorus form, etc.), and other stylistic features of Anglo-American popular music (see
Man 1998, Witzleben 2000, and Wong 2003). Its popularity and vitality have been maintained by its continuous combination with whatever style is in vogue in the regional and global commercial music scenes. Within the East Asian region, Japanese popular music, or J-pop, has had a substantial influence on the popular music of Hong Kong. On a global level, Cantopop has been adopting many Anglo-American popular music genres.
The most important styles borrowed include rock, disco, techno, pop ballads, and more recently, rhythm and blues and hip hop. Popular music of Hong Kong, particularly
Cantopop, forms the musical backdrop for the Hong Kong immigrant community in the
GTA to make their own musical choices. This includes the choices made in Christian church music, a topic to be explored in depth in the next chapter.
This chapter introduced the Richmond Hill Chinese Community Church, a prominent Chinese Christian community in the Greater Toronto Area. This chapter also
40 provided an overview of the GTA's Hong Kong immigrant community and, in particular, the syncretic musical culture originated in the city of Hong Kong and shared among its diasporas. Based on the concept of transnational cultural flows explored by Appadurai, this chapter discussed how the GTA and Hong Kong are virtually fused into a single social world for Hong Kong immigrants. In summary, members of the RHCCC are living at the intersection of the cultures of Hong Kong and Canada. A third cultural influence on this community is the transnational network of evangelical Christianity. The meeting of these three cultures forms the context necessary for understanding the hybrid musical culture of the RHCCC, which will be explored in more detail in the next chapter.
41 Chapter 3 The Worship Music of the Richmond Hill Christian Community Church: Social Organization, Repertoires, Sounds, and Concepts
More perhaps than through the Bible itself, the popular piety of most Christians, particularly Protestants, has been expressed in the hymns people sing in church ... One learns the hymns of the faith in childhood They provide the theological vocabulary that may be supplemented and improved upon by age and experience, but is never supplanted . And it is my experience as well as that of practically every other preacher that worship depends upon the hymns. The sermon may be good or bad, the liturgy indifferent, but the effect of the service depends upon whether or not the people know and like the hymns. And most people like the hymns they know and on that basis know what they like. Thus to tamper with the hymns is to get perilously close to the emotional center of the worshipper.16
Introduction
An uncle of mine is a Hong Kong immigrant living nearby the RHCCC. After retiring from work in the 1990s, he landed in Canada and, since then, has been living in
Canada and Hong Kong, spending about half a year in each place alternately. As far as I know, my uncle is not particularly religious. However, one time when we were having a casual chat, to my surprise, he told me he was considering going to church more often.
What surprised me even more was his reason for getting interested in Christianity:
"Worship music in church is different nowadays; it's exciting and it's like you are m a concert." I was fairly certain that my uncle meant a concert of popular music because I knew that he was indifferent to most art music. And the church he was talking about was
16 Gomes, J Peter 1996 The Good Book Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart New York Avon Books, 134-35 42 the RHCCC.
My uncle's casual remark actually points out a major change in Chinese Christian church music during the last two decades. His remark is also a testimony to the magnitude of this change. The change is so drastic that an infrequent church visitor can tell the difference between the current and the older forms of church music. As stated in the quotation at the beginning of this chapter, which was written by American Baptist minister and Harvard Divinity School professor Peter Gomes, worship music is extremely important to the worship experience and intimately connected with church members' emotions. Using new music in churches, especially when an older musical practice is likely to be supplanted, is a highly symbolic action; the change in the musical sound reflects changes in some core values of the community. This chapter will explore this recent development in Chinese Christian church music as experienced by the Cantonese congregation of the RHCCC. Following an ethnographic snapshot of a thanksgiving service, the discussion will focus on the social organization of music making in worship services. The congregation's worship song repertoire and its ideas about worship music will then be explored.
43 A Thanksgiving Service
It was an October Sunday morning, just before Thanksgiving Day. More than a thousand worshippers had gathered in the sanctuary of the RHCCC for a Cantonese
Thanksgiving service. The worshippers had filled up nearly all the seats, which were arranged in tiered rows, half-circling the stage. On the stage, five singers, two men and three women, lined up in the front. Behind them were five instrumentalists with their instruments: a cello, a grand piano, an electric bass guitar, an electronic keyboard, and a set of drums.
The service began with twenty minutes of congregational singing consisting of a set of four songs. Led by the singers and instrumentalists on the stage, everyone in the sanctuary was invited to sing the first hymn of praise. The voices of the singers and the sounds of the musical instruments were amplified to fill the whole space inside the sanctuary so that all attention was naturally drawn to the actions and sounds happening on the stage; one could barely notice the singing voice of other worshippers, even one's own voice. As is usually the case with the RHCCC's worship programs, some worshippers sang along, a few of them quite emphatically, by following the lyrics projected on the huge screen hung from the ceiling above and behind the stage; some,
44 however, watched the event silently.
The second song of the set had an unusual beginning. After the first song was finished, the whole atmosphere suddenly changed as one of the women singers on stage began to sing in a soprano voice - noticeably trained in the "classical" tradition with intense vibrato and projecting head resonance - while everyone else fell into silence.
Without any verbal introduction, everyone in the sanctuary realized that this was a solo performance, perhaps by noticing the weight and fullness of the soloist's vocal tone, or by getting the cue from the change in the language used to perform this song: from
Cantonese to English. The song was titled "How Great Thou Art!" and it was taken from a popular hymnbook among Chinese communities worldwide (Figure 3.4, page 69).
According to the hymnbook, the song's melody was originally a Swedish folk melody.
The English text was translated in the early twentieth century; a Chinese text was subsequently translated from the English text in 1957 (Hymns of Life 1993: 14). At the refrain of the first stanza, the other four singers on stage joined in singing, still in English, and whenever the group sang the main phrase "How great thou art," the soprano who previously sang solo responded with a short improvised "echo" of the same text. During the entire first stanza, the only instrumental accompaniment was provided by the pianist.
45 But right at the end of the first stanza, the drummer hit the cymbal and from the start of the second stanza, the drum set became the most prominent accompanying instrument, stressing the first and the third beats of every bar in 4/4-time with the bass drum. The change in accompaniment pattern signaled the change from performance to congregational participation. The worshippers automatically joined in singing the second and the last stanza in unison. Notably, when the congregation joined in, the Chinese song text was used again.
The next song was a slow and meditative hymn called "Turn Your Eyes Upon
Jesus." This hymn was selected from the same hymnbook containing the previous song.
The original hymn was written in 1922 in English while the Chinese translation of the hymn text was written in 1957 (Hymns of Life 1993: 396). Before the congregation
started to sing, the leading singers read a few scripture verses with the cellist playing the melody of the hymn's refrain in the background. When the cello finished playing the refrain once, the congregation sang three repetitions of the refrain: the first was accompanied by the piano only; in the second and the third repetition, the singing was accompanied by the full band while the cello doubled the melody and the singers sang in homophonic arrangements. The hymn ended with the cello playing the final phrase of the
46 refrain.
One of the leading singers, the worship leader, then asked the entire congregation to stand up and sing the last song of the set. This song was titled "Stream of Praise (Zanmei zhi quart Wl^^LM-)" Written in 1995, the song was a much more recent work relative to the preceding three songs, and it was the most dynamic song in the set. Unlike the previous hymns, it was a Mandarin song. The congregation was apparently very familiar with this song as most of the people could participate in singing the song right from the start, though some people were not singing with proper Mandarin pronunciation. The keyboard player chose to use the sound of the electric organ as accompaniment as is typically the case in African American gospel music. This special sound was particularly prominent when the keyboard played the song's melody in the introduction, in fills, and
at turnarounds between repetitions of the melody. The sound alluded to modern popular music and rendered a sharp contrast to the sound of the previous songs, which were more reserved in character and had more affinity with western art music despite the instrumentation. Though the tempo was not exceptionally fast (approximately ninety quarter-notes per minute), the relentless eighth-note sub-pulse on the drums generated the energy that encouraged more dynamic singing and bodily movements. Corporeal
47 participation was also introduced in places where the lyrics seemed to warrant such
actions. For example, the third sentence of the lyrics read, "Let us open our mouths, raise
our hands, to praise the Lord of everlasting life (Figure 3.1)." Besides asking the
congregation to sing while standing instead of sitting, the singers on stage also put then-
hands up when they sang the lyrics "raise our hands." A few members of the
congregation put up their hands and sang emphatically in response to the music, the
lyrics, and the leading singers' gestures. Such "exaggerated" gestures were not widely practiced by the congregation, as the majority of the congregation chose to clap hands - a
more conservative movement - to engage with the heightened mood.
dfe : :: IHF ^T? ^f== f ^^ Rangwo menzhangkaikou, Ju qi show, Xiang Let MS wsn o°i? mouths, ffs'5* our hcn3$. To it ~. t^.~ ~ i ™ — ~~v 2 ~.~3p3iq-:^^r ft | J. „ ^
S_±=--m i i-.c-^s^**-"--».— *- ^zlJzzzzzI^Jt - — yongsheng zhi shu chenig xxe, prm$& tb& U>f& of GVPrtashrK) iiff^ w^P^^r^^::z^-^
Figure 3.1: Transcription of a musical phrase from "Stream of Praise" with abbreviated drum arrangement.
Singing stopped for a few minutes for a congregational prayer, then the worshippers
sang a song again when money offerings were being collected. The song was called "Go
48 Out {Zouchuqu T^ILB^)," and it was also a Mandarin song. This song had never been sung in the RHCCC's services before. Trying to encourage the congregation to learn this new song, the worship leader said, We will sing this song in Mandarin. Now, a good thing about being in the RHCCC is that when you sing spiritual songs, you will sing in English, you will sing in Mandarin, you will sing in Cantonese. So, when you sing in Mandarin and you say that you do not sing well, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that you sing because you sing the songs to our heavenly father, and he will understand .. ,17
The accompaniment to "Go Out" was similar to that of the previous songs, but the song's melody differed from most Christian songs due to its "Chinese" flavour (Figure 3.2).
An association with traditional Chinese music could be easily perceived in this song because of the melody's pentatonic and modal qualities, which invoke stereotypical images of Chinese music.18 The end of this song also marked the end of the first part of the service program, which had the richest share of musical events. After the song, the service transitioned to its second part whose focus was shifted from singing and music making to listening to sermons.
Unless stated otherwise, all transcription of public speeches, sermons and personal interviews quoted in this thesis are originally in Cantonese English translations are mine 18 As shown in the transcription of the song "Go Out"(Figure 3 2), with the exception of a few passing E notes, the melody is based on the F-major pentatonic scale. F-G-A-C-D, or in solfege syllables, DO-RE-MI-SOL-LA, with DO being equal to the note F The frequent appearance of the notes D and A and the two notes' prominent cadential role in phrase endings shows the influence of the LA-MI mode (or the Yu mode identified in ancient Chinese court music theory) m traditional Chinese music, which is commonly employed in folksongs of Northern China as well as in the composed and arranged concert-hall Chinese music of the late 20th century (Thrasher 2008 87, 88 note 24) 49 Figure 3.2: Transcription of the melody of "Go Out."
Social Organization of Worship Music
The Thanksgiving service described above is a snapshot of how a worship service program is organized at the RHCCC. Figure 3.3 below shows a sequence of activities and their related musical events typically found in a Sunday service program.
Activity Musical Event Duration Welcome and preparation for Instrumental background music; usually of About 2 minutes worship familiar hymns and Christian songs
Praise and worship Congregational singing, usually 3 to 4 songs 15 — 20 minutes
Holy Communion (on the first Background music, on the piano or the organ; 15 minutes Sunday of each month) usually selected from instrumental pieces, hymns or other Christian songs Prayer — 5 minutes
50 Choir performance (usually on Christian Choral works in Cantonese, Mandarin, 5 minutes alternate Sundays each month) or English under the direction of a conductor; mostly accompanied by the piano
Money offering Congregational singing of one song 5 minutes
Announcement - 5 minutes
Bible reading - 2 to 3 minutes
Sermon - About 30 minutes
Response Congregational singing of one song 5 minutes
Benediction Congregational singing of "Doxology "; 2 to 3 minutes accompanied by the organ
Congregation leaves sanctuary Instrumental background on the organ; usually About 2 minutes selected from hymns, other Christian songs, or classical organ pieces
Figure 3 3. A typical Cantonese service program in RHCCC.
Members of the RHCCC usually describe their current style of worship music as the
"contemporary" style or "praise and worship" style. This musical style has been increasingly popular among Chinese Protestant churches since the 1990s. As for the
Cantonese congregation in the RHCCC (hereafter abbreviated as the Cantonese congregation unless stated otherwise), this style has been gradually adopted since the mid-1980s. What makes this style contemporary is the way it is different from the
"traditional" style, the dominant style in most Chinese churches before the latter half of
51 the nineties. The two styles are different in at least three ways: the social organization of music making, the musical sound, and the song repertoire. The following section will focus on the social organization and the musical sound, and the remaining part of this chapter will discuss the song repertoire in detail.
Congregational singing in the traditional style is typically directed by two people.
The first person is a singing leader, either a church minister or a lay leader, who stands on the pulpit to give instructions and cues for the congregation to follow. The second person is the pianist or organist who provides accompaniment to the singing (more about traditional church music in the discussion of tradition hymns below). In the contemporary style, the social organization for music leadership and music making is very different.
Several informants in the RHCCC unanimously told me that the defining feature of contemporary church music is music making by worship teams.
During the period of my fieldwork in the church, there were four worship teams in the Cantonese congregation who took turns in organizing and leading congregational singing in weekly Sunday services. Each team consisted of four to five singers and an instrumental band. All worship team members are volunteers among official members of the congregation. Most of them were fine amateur musicians or music teachers prior to
52 volunteering or being invited to join the worship teams, though some members, especially singers, might not have had formal music training or performance experience.
Musicianship skills, however, are not the most important requirement of joining a worship team. As the minister overseeing the church's music ministry told me, personal character is even more important than skills in music making in church. Worship team members are expected to treat each other equally, regardless of the individual's music experience, and work together harmoniously in making worship music. Moreover, worship team members are expected to have (or to acquire through training provided by the church) proper theological, biblical, and historical perspectives about Christian worship music. Most interestingly, according to this minister, understanding the historical development of church music can help cultivate openness towards different kinds of worship music, which diminishes the rigid distinction between sacred music and secular music held by some Christians, especially those of the older generations.
In each worship team, one person among the singers is designated the role of worship leader. This role is usually reserved for church members who have been actively participating in the church for quite a number of years and who are among the more skillful singers in the worship teams. The worship leaders are entrusted with the
53 responsibility of selecting appropriate songs for the first twenty minutes of congregational singing in a worship service (congregational songs for the latter half of a service, from the money offering to benediction, are chosen by ministers and the church's
"celebration" department, that is, the worship ministry department). All songs should ultimately receive approval from the worship ministers before they can be sung in worship services. In actual practice, worship leaders have a great deal of freedom in selecting worship songs from a song collection maintained by the worship ministry. If worship leaders wish to introduce new songs to the congregation, guidelines regarding language and theological themes have been laid down by ministers to ensure that the new selections are compatible with the church's existing musical practice. Worship leaders are also responsible for determining the general "feel" and atmosphere of a given set of worship songs. The exact music arrangements are worked out in collaboration with other worship team members. The congregation's music director may sometimes provide the worship teams with written arrangements in the form of band and vocal harmonization scores.
In the performance during services, the worship leaders are responsible for greeting worshippers, reading scripture passages, providing verbal transitions and offering short
54 prayers between songs, and cuing the worship team for repetitions and song endings as well as ad lib events, such as repeating the chorus or a certain phrase of a song according to the worshippers' mood as perceived by the worship leaders. Some worship leaders provide simple conducting or beat-keeping gestures, which are supposed to aid worshippers to sing in unified tempo and rhythm. Because of these roles, the worship leaders are usually recognized as the key singers in the group; they tend to draw the most amount of attention and receive the highest volume boost to their voices in the overall amplified sound mix.
As a group, all singers in a worship team are responsible for leading, teaching, and influencing the congregation to sing during worship services. The singers' importance is shown by the stage arrangement: the group of singers always stands at the front of the stage facing the congregation while the instrumentalists play behind them. The singers usually stand in one line along the front of the stage, with the worship leader at the centre. They are often formally dressed, women in dresses and men in suits, and each holds a microphone in one hand to sing. Their demeanor is modest; movements like beat-tapping with the feet or exaggerated gestures such as those employed by commercial singers are usually avoided. Simple bodily movements, such as raising hands, waving
55 hands, and clapping, may occasionally be used to convey the message of "whole person" worship, which is known as a characteristic and an ideal of contemporary worship. In the
RHCCC, worshippers no longer sing from hymnbooks in their hands. Song lyrics are projected on a big overhead screen hung at the sanctuary's back wall, right behind and above the instrumental band. The ability to read written music in the hymnbooks is now less important for worshippers to participate in communal singing, for they can rely on the singers on stage for guidance about rhythms, phrasing, and other musical expressions.
For the purpose of providing a strong and clear model for the congregation to follow and imitate, the singers on stage often sing the melodies in unison. Microphones and an amplification system are used to project the singers' voices to fill the whole sanctuary.
The timbre and style of their singing are, interestingly, usually not completely unified. In traditional worship music, complete blending of voices singing together is a prized ideal that traditional church singers strive for. In the RHCCC, however, worship singers usually sing in a variety of vocal timbres at the same time. The variation falls between two extremes. On one end is the "classical" voice with its strong projection, exaggerated enunciation, open-throat sound, and prominent vibrato. On the other end is the "popular" voice with its soft, mellow, speaking-voice character and, sometimes, a slightly breathy
56 quality. This timbral mixture is an indication of the hybrid nature of the RHCCC's worship music, the significance of which will be further explored in the next chapter.
In addition to unison singing, the singers may sometimes divide up to sing in harmony. Harmonized singing is most often heard when songs familiar to the congregation are sung. As was the case with vocal quality, vocal harmonization also
shows a mixture of traditions. If a particular song is drawn from the traditional hymn repertoire (see the section on traditional hymns below), a homophonic chorale-style harmonization is usually employed which is more or less adapted from the four-part harmonization found in traditional hymnbooks. If a song is selected from the contemporary Christian song repertoire (see the sections on contemporary songs below), the singers are usually divided into two groups; one group sings the melody while the other supplies a counter melody. The counter melody is usually heard as a descant melody and matches the main melody note for note. The interval between each melodic note and counter-melodic note is always a "consonant" interval (major and minor thirds, perfect fifth, major and minor sixths, or perfect octave). Notably, this type of harmonized singing is very popular among Cantopop singers, especially in live duet performances.
Compared with the traditional style, the contemporary style of worship music at the
57 RHCCC uses a much larger selection of instruments. The instrumental band in each worship team may have a slightly different mix of instruments, depending on the various musical backgrounds and skills of individual team's members, but a team at full force typically consists of a grand piano, a drum set, one to two guitars, an electronic keyboard/synthesizer, and a bass guitar.19
These instrumental bands are the backbone of music making in the RHCCC's worship services. While the exclusive use of the piano and the organ reflects the connection with Western art music in traditional church music, the selection of guitars, drums, and synthesizers shows affinity with contemporary popular music, both Cantopop and Anglo-American popular music, in the congregation's contemporary worship music.
Another crucial difference between the traditional and the contemporary styles concerns the role instrumentalists play in making worship music. In the traditional style, the piano or the organ is responsible for playing the melody; melodies played on these two instruments should clearly stand out from the whole musical arrangement so that worshippers can follow the instruments' lead and sing from their hymnbooks. In the contemporary style, melodies are not carried by any instrument but by human voices, that
19 During the period I was doing field observation in the Cantonese congregation, other instruments occasionally employed included the flute, the cello, the tambourine, and the clash cymbals.
58 is the group of singers led by the worship leader. The entire instrumental section concentrates on providing accompaniment. Similar to the role played by various instruments in contemporary popular music, the primary responsibility of an instrumental section in the worship setting is to provide a solid rhythmic foundation supporting the singers' and the congregation's singing. This is usually achieved through the drummer playing a simple, consistent groove: usually a rock style groove emphasizing the backbeats (the majority of worship songs are in 4/4 time) on the snare drum or the ride cymbal. The bass guitar usually plays a repetitive whole-note or half-note bass line, outlining the root movement of a song's chord progression. The guitarist (electric or amplified acoustic) usually plays simple, strumming patterns, but occasionally a short melodic interlude at the beginning of a song or melodic fills between phrases of lyrics may be added. Bending and sliding techniques are rarely used; but a light touch of electronic distortion, through distortion pedals, is sometimes used by an exceptionally skillful guitarist.
The keyboard/synthesizer is often used to enrich the orchestral colours of the overall sound. For instance, it may emulate a harmonic pad of wind instruments, a brass fanfare, a string section, or a wall of sound similar to the sound of a pipe organ. It may even play
59 a counter melody with a synthesized flute sound. The role of the piano has drastically
changed from its role in the traditional style. Having stepped down from being the
leading instrument, the piano now plays a much subtler role in the band. For most of the time, the pianist provides harmonic support by improvising different voicings of the
chord progression of a song; the playing is usually more sustained, less percussive and rhythmically less outstanding than the guitar. For a casual listener, the piano's sound is usually drowned out by the louder sounds of the drums and the bass guitar. Depending on the playing style of individual pianists, the instrument can be heard jumping out from the band sound when an occasional quick run or some improvised figures are played; but in
general, the presence of the piano is more symbolic, representing a link to the heritage of
former church music, and supportive of the band rather than a prominent sound in the
amplified soundscape. The piano, however, is featured in moments when quiet and meditative music are required. When accompanying a quiet song, or providing background music for the worship leader's speech, or during the Holy Communion, the piano remains the most important instrumental sound for such moments. In summary, the
instrumental section of the RHCCC's worship teams deliver a multi-layered musical
accompaniment to congregational singing, and it clearly has adopted many characteristics
60 from contemporary popular music.
To summarize, the RHCCC's worship music is a mixture of musical traditions, in terms of both musical sounds and music making. Although the church has largely adopted the contemporary style of worship music, the traditional style has not been completely replaced. Musical characteristics inherited from the traditional style, such as the presence of the piano, the classical vocal timbre, and chorale-style vocal arrangements, are mixed and syncretized with musical elements borrowed from contemporary popular music. Judging from the reception of the congregation of worshippers, the synthesis is well received as a coherent musical style.
In the next section, different types of worship songs used in the Cantonese congregation will be explored. The discussion will show that, parallel to the hybrid sound of the worship music, the congregation's worship song repertoire displays a mosaic of songs originating in different times and with different cultural groups.
Four Song Repertoires
The Thanksgiving service described above provides a snapshot of the rich variety of musical sounds in the congregational singing of the Cantonese congregation. It also
61 illustrates the use of multiple languages in congregational singing. From time to time,
widely divergent musics are played in the services, from traditional Cantonese opera tunes (with newly composed religious lyrics) to performances by touring Hong Kong popular music artists. But at the core of the collection of songs most frequently used for
congregational singing, four main categories of music can be identified, each having
different languages, places, and cultures associated with it. These four categories are:
Euro-American hymns which Chinese Christians usually refer to as "traditional" hymns
(chuantong shengshi ft|!lJEI=§^r), Cantonese contemporary Christian songs {xiandai yueyu shige J^ft^fjprKflf^O, Mandarin contemporary Christian songs {xiandai guoyu shige ^MiiXMiWimWO, and English contemporary Christian songs (yingwen shige ^^C
mWO. Together, these four categories of songs form the Cantonese congregation's basic repertoire of worship songs. Normally, at least half of the songs selected for a typical
Sunday service come from the Cantonese contemporary Christian song repertoire.
Traditional hymns usually account for the remaining songs in the selection. One, or at most two, Mandarin contemporary Christian songs may be occasionally selected for a
service. Only a few times in a year will songs be selected from the English contemporary
Christian song repertoire; nevertheless, English songs form a distinct and special category
62 in the congregation's overall congregational singing repertoire. It should be noted that whether traditional or contemporary songs are selected for a service, all songs are basically accompanied by the same style of musical arrangement, that is, the kind of pop/rock style described in the previous section.
Choosing songs for worship services is a complicated and contested issue in the
RHCCC. It is complicated because the church's non-denominational and multi-generational orientations, its founding objective of serving an immigrant community, and its large congregations (over 2 000 people in the Cantonese congregation) mean that people of very diversified backgrounds are gathering at the handful of weekly services available. The congregants' diverse backgrounds lead to diverse preferences for musical styles and different convictions about what constitutes appropriate music for worship. These preferences and convictions are based on multiple factors including musical taste, education, age group, theological orientation, and linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
The decision-making process is contested because leaders of the church generally see the change of church music from traditional to contemporary as a necessity for attracting newcomers and refreshing the congregation's worship experience while some
63 congregants have voiced doubts and dislike regarding the newer music. One of the church's ministers recalled the debate about traditional versus contemporary worship music during the early phase of the change, We already had worship teams in fairly early times [around the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s]. Of course, as for the congregation's reception, they could not accept immediately things like worship teams, drums, and band. Some people did not feel comfortable, and they asked a lot of questions: "Why do we need to do it this way?" "Why do we need to make it so excited, so noisy?" They thought worship should be very quiet, very solemn. There was, therefore, quite a bit of struggle. But the church leadership thought that this was the way to go, that is, you must have a renewal. Because if you did not do it, young people might think that worship was boring, and they might feel unmotivated and want to leave.20
Thus the inclusion or exclusion of a certain type of music is not a matter of indifference to the church community but rather an issue that has potential impact on church development strategy, unity, and expressions of beliefs and identities. The RHCCC has nevertheless established a more or less standard collection of songs deemed appropriate for services. This repertoire reflects the result of the community's negotiations of values as expressed through musical styles.
To accommodate its members' diverse preferences for worship music, the Cantonese congregation has adopted a mixed repertoire, or a "balanced" repertoire in the members' parlance. As a former worship team member told me, ... basically your congregation has all sorts of people. Some may like more advanced [music] and can accept new kinds of music. But some may be, after all, more traditional, or they may be older, and like mellower and more traditional music.
Personal interview on 2009 February 11. 64 That's why [the pastor] needs to find a balance; that's why we often talk about 'balanced worship.' We will sing new songs together with old songs. We will sing traditional hymns as well as contemporary songs.21
This mixed repertoire is continuously expanding. In addition to the existing collection of songs that the church has already been using, the worship leaders and pastors frequently introduce new songs in services, thus expanding the congregation's repertoire. The worship song repertoire, therefore, is not a fixed collection kept in hymnbooks, as was the case before the 1990s, but a growing collection. New songs are usually discovered and shared through the worship leaders' and ministers' personal networks, for example their Christian friends and relatives who are participating in other churches in the GTA, or who are living in Hong Kong or mainland China. New songs also become known through the broadcast programs and marketing promotion of Chinese Christian music businesses, especially those based in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Although this growing repertoire is selected from a multitude of sources, the songs included in the repertoire can still be largely categorized as belonging to one of the four main song categories mentioned above.
21 Personal interview on 2008 May 27. 65 Traditional Hymns
The corpus of songs recognized as traditional hymns in the RHCCC are those found in Chinese hymnbooks widely used by Chinese churches in Hong Kong and Chinese diasporas in the latter half of the twentieth century . These hymns are mostly western
Protestant hymns inherited from Euro-American missionary work in Hong Kong since the second half of the nineteenth century. Beginning around the mid-twentieth century and well into the 1980s, different church denominations in Hong Kong collected and edited these hymns, and published them in hymnbooks with Chinese translations of the hymn texts. These hymnbooks became the essential tool in the liturgies in Chinese
Christian churches before the nineties. As a church member related to me about her experience of traditional worship in Macau in the late 1980s, "... we basically just turned open that hymnbook -1 don't even remember what the title is called - and sang the songs
Some exceptions to equating traditional hymns with songs collected in hymnbooks are found in a few hymnbooks published around the turn of the century An example is the Century Praise (Shiji Songzan Ht^tifilqff) published in 2001 As is the case with older Chinese hymnbooks, this hymnbook contains traditional hymns of Euro-Amencan origin such as "Amazing Grace" and "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee," which is based on the "Ode to Joy" choral melody in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony But this hymnbook also contains Chinese and Anglo-American songs that were wntten within the last three decades and that have adopted the popular music style, these songs include the works by the well-known American Taiwanese group the Stream of Praise and popular contemporary English worship songs such as "As the Deer," "Rejoice," and "Shine, Jesus, Shine " Since the identity of traditional hymns has already been firmly established as the corpus of Euro-Amencan hymns collected in older hymnbooks, the inclusion of contemporary songs in newer hymnbooks does not affect the differentiation between the two genres 66 in that book only. We wouldn't sing any other songs of the contemporary style."
The most representative hymnbook of this genre is the Hymns of Life, first published in Hong Kong in 1986. As believers in Hong Kong emigrated and either joined existing
Chinese congregations or established new ethnic churches in the receiving countries, the believers naturally replicated the worship music they knew by heart when they were in their homeland. The Hymns of Life and other similar Chinese hymnbooks were the chief instruments by which traditional hymns were exported to Hong Kong diasporas. Maria
Chow's survey of worship music among Chinese Christian churches in the United States shows that, as of 1994, the Hymns of Life was the most widely used Chinese hymnbook.
The Hymns of Life was also used by Chinese congregations in Canada and Chinese diasporas around the world (Chow 2006). The Hymns of Life and other contemporaneous
Chinese hymnbooks thus functioned as a common repertoire of hymns for Chinese
Christians globally before the twenty-first century. The Hymns of Life was also used in the RHCCC; copies of the hymnbook are still put behind pews in the church's sanctuary or piled up in storerooms. A study of the hymns collected in the Hymns of Life and the practice of using them in services, therefore, reveals the characteristics of traditional
23 Personal interview on 2008 May 27. 67 hymns used in contemporary Chinese churches.
Most of the 536 songs in the Hymns of Life are not composed by Chinese Christians; like other contemporaneous Chinese hymnbooks, the Hymns of Life largely consists of
Euro-American hymns from the Baptist, Methodist, and American revivalist traditions
(Chow 2006). The editors of the Hymns of Life intended "to produce a hymnal which would retain a great many of Christendom's loftiest hymns" (1993, preface). By
Christendom, these editors do not mean the whole Christian world but specifically the
Protestant churches in Europe and North America. Hence, most hymns collected in the
Hymns of Life are compositions by European or North American composers and hymn writers between the seventeenth century and the early twentieth century. Some of the most celebrated names and their representative works include the hymn texts of "Joy to the World!" and "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), "See the Destined Day Arise" which is set to the music of "Nun Komm, Der Heiden Heiland" by Johann Sebatian Bach (1685-1750), "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken" with music by Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and text by John Newton (1725-1807), the music of "Joy to the World!" and "There is a Fountain Filled with Blood" by Lowell
Mason (1792-1872), and the music of "O Sing a Song of Bethlehem" and "Praise for the
68 Spirit of God" by Ralph Vaughan-Williams (1872-1958). Other Chinese hymnbooks add to this traditional repertoire additional hymns, revival songs and spirituals, such as
"Precious Lord, Take My Hand," "Go Tell It On the Mountain," and "Oil in My Lamp"
(Wong 2006: 70).
These hymns became a musical tradition beloved by many Chinese Christian communities. The main reason that this originally foreign music became an important part of the music of Chinese Christians is the Chinese translations of the hymn texts. The
Chinese texts are translated from hymn texts in English or other European languages, and the translation are often kept very close to the meanings of the original texts. In the
Hymns of Life, both Chinese and English hymn texts are provided for every hymn. The music of the hymns is notated in cipher notation24 and Western staff notation. The cipher notation is used to notate the melodies to facilitate sight-singing by people who cannot read the staff notation. The staff notation provides the melodies as well as homophonic harmonization in a four-part chorale style. The hymn texts are typically in the form of
24 The cipher notation is often referred to as the "simplified score" (jianpu fata) in Chinese The system works similarly to the movable-DO solfege system Numbers from 1 to 7 are used to represent notes in the major scale number 1 is equivalent to DO, and number 2 is equivalent to RE, and so on (for details, see Thrasher 2008 185) In today's common practice, the cipher notation is also extensively used in notating traditional Chinese instrumental pieces and traditional Chinese opera tunes Moreover, this notation system is used in some collections of Cantonese and Mandann popular songs There seems to be no evidence, however, indicating that these musical genres have direct connections with traditional Chinese Christian church music
69 stanzas and chorus; the music set to the stanza and chorus sections are repeated for each stanza. Figure 3.4 below shows the beginning part of the score of the hymn "How Great
Thou Art!," which was selected for solo performance and congregational singing in the
Thanksgiving service described above 25
m 1M Jz mm How Grea&•"«« t Thop=f= u Art^!^ *m±. as A,**. tun I m iS«(«1irS¥,1957 <) STORE GUD 1110.1110. Ref. 1 G Boberg, 1858-1940 Ca Swedish folk melody En g trans, by Stuart K Hme, S> 1 Arr by R J. Hughes s s 5 3 • 5 5 s 6 5 I 4 6 • 6 6 6 5-3 _^_ k| S h. r*. X| J J J J *u Figure 3.4: A section of a printed score in the Hymns of Life These harmonized hymns serve as the blueprint of music making in "traditional" worship services in which traditional hymns are the chief or the only type of music used. This style of worship is replaced by the contemporary style in many Chinese churches, 25 The structure and history of Euro-American Protestant hymns and the history of their use among Chinese churches have been the focus of many scholarly and theological literatures. A detailed discussion of these topics, however, is beyond the scope of this thesis. 70 but some churches still preserve the traditional style in their services. In a traditional worship service, worshippers sing from reading a hymnbook, under the leadership of a "leader of singing" {lingshi #MI^, literally leading the hymns). For most of the time, the congregation sings only the melody of the hymns, though a few members who are musically trained may sing the alto, tenor, or bass parts from the staff notation in the hymnbooks. The distinctive instrumental sound in this style of worship is the piano, or the organ (pipe or electric) if one is available in the church; these two instruments are usually the only instruments accompanying the congregation's singing (Chow 2006). Pianists or organists usually provide accompaniment by playing the four-part arrangement verbatim from the hymnbooks. If highly proficient players are available, they may play more complicated and improvised accompaniment, but the melody is always played prominently in the top-most part, guiding the congregants' singing. If both the piano and the organ are available, the organ usually doubles the melody and other parts that the piano is playing. Although the RHCCC has adopted the contemporary worship style (further explained below) and added other genres of songs to its worship music, traditional hymns remain an essential part of its musical legacy. In every Cantonese service I have 71 observed, at least one traditional hymn was selected for congregational singing. In some services, more than half of the songs in the entire program were selected from the traditional hymn repertoire. Judging from the weight given to singing traditional hymns in services, the congregation still sees traditional hymns as an important constituent of its worship music. The virtue of traditional hymns and their usefulness in helping the congregation to worship is a point of controversy among members of the Cantonese congregation in the face of the current trend of using contemporary Christian songs. A faction of the members still hold the traditional hymns as the dearest in their hearts, and this preference translates into the organization of the Traditional Hymns Worship, a special evening event dedicated to the appreciation, performance and singing of traditional hymns.26 For these supporters of traditional hymns, the merit of traditional hymns lies principally in the sung texts. As a church minister said, Indeed, in those traditional hymns, every stanza of each hymns' three to four stanzas has very strong theological implications. If you look carefully, many of the writers [of these traditional hymns] are pastors, missionaries, or the wives of missionaries. To summarize, they are very involved in God's family, in God's ministry. In other words, they have very rich Christian lives.27 The event was organized in 2007 by the Association of Chinese Evangelical Ministries (Canada), a parent association that coordinates the ministries of the RHCCC and other sister churches in the GTA The Traditional Hymn Worship event was opened to all congregants of the association's member churches 27 From a short speech by one of the judges delivered on the Contemporary Chinese Christian Song Writing Competition on 2007 November 18 This competition was also organized by the Association of Chinese Evangelical 72 This comment indicates that the essence of traditional hymns rests more in the texts than in the music. This perspective allows traditional hymns to be integrated into the mixed repertoire and the band sound of the RHCCC's contemporary worship. The church's members call this approach a "new way" to sing old hymns. Cantonese Contemporary Christian Songs Cantonese contemporary Christian songs (hereafter abbreviated as Cantonese Christian songs) are by far the most frequently used songs in the Cantonese congregation. Connie Wong traces the genre's origin to the importation of contemporary Christian music to Hong Kong from the United States (2006). Contemporary Christian music emerged in the U.S. in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The genre grew out of an endeavour to express religious, social, and moral values of Christianity with a musical sound that many Christians in the U.S. had been listening to for over a decade by that time: the sound of rock music. This fusion of religion and popular/commercial music was groundbreaking, particularly because rock was deemed a demonic music by many Christians in the 1960s (Wong 2006). Contemporary Christian music continued to Ministries (Canada) Three of the twelve finalists of this competition were members of the RHCCC, and two of them won the first prizes in the Cantonese and Mandarin categories respectively 73 develop into a major genre and a multi-million-dollar industry in the commercial music scene in the U.S. After the development of almost a half-century, contemporary Christian music in the U.S. has become less a unified musical style than a general label referring to music about Christian themes, written and performed by Christian artists. This label can stand for various types of music which incorporate a variety of musical styles including folk, country, rock, pop, and even heavy metal. Within this heterogeneous genre, one type of music is particularly influential to Christian music worldwide. This type of music is called contemporary worship music; many Christians, including some of my informants, also refer to it as "praise and worship" {orjinbai zanmei f£^=ffH, a literal Chinese translation of the term). Praise and worship music "is defined as a type of music expressing believers' attitude toward worship and their religious experience with God. In this sense, believers use [contemporary worship music/praise and worship music] in a more devotional state, mostly in the setting of communal worship for approaching God." (Wong 2006: 7) The genre's distinctive features include short, repetitive choruses and easily memorized phrases for deepening meditation; live music bands similar to the line-up of typical pop music bands; emphases on live performance and audience participation; and borrowing 74 from various types of popular music (Wong 2006: 7-8). Following a similar path of development as that of Cantopop, the first Cantonese Christian songs were covers of imported songs with Cantonese translations of the original English lyrics (Wong 2006). By the early 1980s, indigenous Christian songs began to appear in Hong Kong's Christian music scene (ibid.). Since then, the Cantonese genre has taken on its own course of development. Cantonese Christian songs share with Christian songs of the U.S. the objective of expressing Christianity with the sound of popular music. Moreover, Cantonese Christian songs have adopted many stylistic features and theological themes from contemporary Christian music, which still serves as a model and a source of inspiration for many Hong Kong Christian musicians. But since the early 1980s, Cantonese contemporary Christian music has been more directly inspired by Cantopop than Western Christian music (see Wong 2006). Cantonese Christian songs are especially appealing to many Christians in Hong Kong and its diaspora because they satisfy an important aesthetic requirement for native Cantonese speakers. Cantonese and Mandarin are tonal dialects. In these dialects, the generic structure of a word consists of three components: a consonant sound (sometimes omitted), a vowel sound, and a linguistic tone from a system of a fixed number of tones 75 (six to nine tones in Cantonese; four tones in Mandarin (Wong 2006)). A word in these dialects is differentiated from another word not only by the consonant and its following vowel, but also by the linguistic tone component. Hence, the same combination of a consonant and a vowel can produce several different words depending on the different linguistic tones ascribed to each word (words having all three components being identical, that is, words pronounced exactly the same, are not considered here). This linguistic tone system can be roughly compared to a system of relative pitch height. When a string of words are spoken, as in a phrase or a sentence, the relative rising and falling of linguistic tones produce a contour. If the phrase or sentence is set to a melody, the melody and the words are considered "matched" if the intervallic pattern of the melody more or less conforms to the contour of linguistic tones. In practice, to avoid tonal mismatch, most contemporary Cantonese songwriters will write melodies first before putting lyrics to the melodies, an important process called tianci (iSjpj]), literally "stuffing with song texts." In fact, the art of composing song texts to fixed melodic schemes is an important classical Chinese literary genre, called ci (|$), which had its heyday from the tenth to the twelfth century CE. Even today, the ability to put meaningful, appealing, and tonally correct lyrics to a song is considered a highly artistic 76 skill, or even an act of genius. This aesthetic of melody matching linguistic tones has been one of the major reasons for the success of Cantopop, the contemporary Cantonese popular music centering in Hong Kong. Following Cantopop's examples of successfully uniting Cantonese lyrics with modern popular musics, a significant feature of Cantonese Christian songs is the emphasis on this relationship between language and music, a consideration that tends to be put at a lower priority in traditional hymns. Editors and translators of traditional hymns usually give priority to preserving the original hymn melodies and the meaning of original hymn texts over matching linguistic tones with the music. Even when linguistic tones are considered, priority is given to the Mandarin dialect, which has simpler linguistic tone variations than Cantonese.28 The result of compromising the linguistic tones is that, when sung in Cantonese, the texts of most traditional hymns deviate from normal speaking; to the ears of native Cantonese speakers, these hymns may sound funny, at the least, or nonsensical in extreme cases. In the years when traditional hymns Although Cantonese and Mandarin have different linguistic tone systems, they basically share the same writing system For a given wntten sentence, a Cantonese speaker and a Mandarin speaker will likely come up with similar understanding of its meaning, but the two will pronounce the words in the sentence quite differently The unified writing system and divergent dialects explains why Chinese people from different dialect groups can read and sing from the same hymnbooks, ignoring the problem of accuracy of language tones The writing system and dialects are also the cause of the dilemma of translating Euro-American hymn texts to Chinese Given the different linguistic tone systems, a translation more fnendly to one dialect will inevitably cause inconvenience to singers and listeners of other dialects 77 were the dominant genre of Chinese Christian music, this undesirable trait was either tolerated or unconsciously ignored. After all, if native singers or listeners had a chance to read the texts without the music, then even when they were singing or listening to the texts with "mismatched" melodies, the deviated tones would be corrected subconsciously and the texts would still make sense in their minds. With the rise of Cantopop and Cantonese Christian songs, however, the matching of music with linguistic tones has become a new criterion of appraising both popular and Christian Cantonese songs.29 Matching musical notes and linguistic tones is a critical factor which causes many Cantonese speaking Christians to prefer Cantonese Christian songs over traditional hymns. But it is not the only cause; a significant portion of the Cantonese congregation also favours Cantonese Christian songs because of the music itself. As a worship leader explained to me, New music can also touch people's emotions. Not necessarily loud, and not necessarily beat-driven, but sometimes, what matters is whether a particular lyric, or a particular musical note, can touch people's emotion. I think contemporary music has an advantage in achieving this ... yes, I think the melodies of contemporary music can touch people. As for traditional hymns, if you look at the [Hymns of\ Life, the music for all four stanzas is the same, and that's why it's a bit boring ... and sometimes those melodic notes are not so contemporary, and you will feel, that is, the notes themselves are a bit boring.3 The requirement of matching musical notes with linguistic tones is actually an important aesthetic value in traditional Cantonese opera The resurgence of the public awareness of properly setting Cantonese lyrics to music in Hong Kong dunng the seventies and the eighties, therefore, can be considered a revival of a part of the older Cantonese musical tradition 30 Personal interview on 2008 June 3 78 Cantonese Christian songs have been increasingly accepted by Hong Kong Christian churches since the mid-1990s, and, in many churches, these contemporary songs have become the dominant genre in worship services. This trend has been brought over globally to Hong Kong diasporas. In the Cantonese congregation of the RHCCC, not only are Cantonese Christian songs originating in Hong Kong used in its services, but Cantonese worship songs written by its own members can sometimes be heard as well (these songs will be explored in more detail in the next chapter). In terms of both musical style and lyrical content, the songs made in the diaspora do not differ much from songs written by Hong Kong songwriters. Mandarin Contemporary Christian Songs Although singing traditional hymns by using Mandarin pronunciation will be less awkward due to the lower level of conflict between melodies and linguistic tones, such practice rarely happens in the RHCCC. The Mandarin dialect, however, is used occasionally in Cantonese services when Mandarin contemporary Christian songs (hereafter abbreviated as Mandarin Christian songs) are selected for worship programs. Like Cantonese Christian songs, Mandarin Christian songs emerged as a 79 combination of Mandarin lyrics with musical styles adopted from Anglo-American popular music. The genre has been used widely in Mandarin-speaking churches globally, including the Mandarin congregation of the RHCCC. In the Cantonese congregation, however, Mandarin Christian songs are a relatively recent addition to the congregation's regular worship song repertoire and only a small number of Mandarin Christian songs have been included. A number of songs included in the repertoire come from songs written and originally recorded by a group named Stream of Praise Music {Zanmei Zhi Quan Yinyue Shigong WJ^klZ-M^^^1, hereafter abbreviated as SOP), which is one of the best-known Chinese contemporary Christian music groups in the world. The group's members are Taiwanese Americans (Wong 2006). Originating in the Chinese diaspora, SOP's music combines "Mandarin, Taiwanese, and English lyrics with a popular music style inspired by American jazz, gospel, and rap, Asian pop ballads, and Euro-American hymns ... and exert[s] a profound influence in Asia itself (Wong 2006: 3)." In the RHCCC, only those SOP songs with Mandarin lyrics are selected for use in worship services, and these songs are also very popular among churches in Hong Kong and Chinese diasporas worldwide. The most prominent example is the group's signature song "Stream of Praise," mentioned above in the description of 80 the Thanksgiving service (Figure 3.1). Besides the songs by Stream of Praise Music, Mandarin Christian songs written by other musicians in the global Mandarin-speaking Chinese Christian communities are also included in the worship programs. The song "Go Out" mentioned above (Figure 3.2) was written and originally recorded by a U.S.-based transnational Chinese Christian music organization called Melody of My Heart {Woxin Xuanlii |^L>KE|1^), which has offices in the U.S., Britain, Sweden, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand. In recent years, Mandarin Christian songs originating from mainland China have also been included in the congregation's worship song repertoire. An example of these latest entries is "Hearts Unified" {He'er Weiyi DeXin), which is frequently sung in churches in mainland China when believers pray together. Another example is "The Best Friend" {Zuizhixin De Pengyou S^L>r3^JM JQ, written in Henan Province in mainland China by a woman, who allegedly has received no formal musical training but has been inspired by God to write songs which are well-received in Chinese Christian communities worldwide. 31 Both songs were wntten by a Chnstian woman who called herself Xiao Mm (/h®) It was reported that she had composed over a thousand short worship songs since the early 1990s Numerous websites and blogs, based in Hong Kong, China, Englandand North Amencan, were wntten about Xiao Mm and her compositions These websites and blogs illustrates the popularity of her songs among global Chinese Chnstian communities Some examples of these websites http//www gospelheraldcom/news/min-15908-O/^X- (ftrti?*) fF#/>©^&#¥€-#J>JiL3NIff Bfg (New York and San Francisco, USA ), http //www truth-monthly com/issuel84/0901mt01 htm (Vancouver, Canada), http //slbreadoflife blogspot com/2010/12/blog-post_20 html (London, UK), 81 English Hymns and Contemporary Songs Songs with English texts are occasionally sung in the worship services of the Cantonese congregation. Again, traditional and contemporary categories can be distinguished in this portion of the congregation's repertoire of worship music. On the traditional side, the original English texts of traditional hymns are sometimes sung instead of the Chinese translations. This usually happens when worship teams sing these hymns as solo recitals as shown by the solo performance of the hymn "How Great Thou Art!" described above (Figure 3.4). In these circumstances, the congregation is expected to listen but not to sing along. When the congregation joins in singing after the solo performance, Chinese texts are typically used again. English song texts are most frequently heard in congregational singing when songs from Anglo-American contemporary Christian music are selected for worship programs. The Cantonese congregation's English song repertoire consists of popular Anglo-American Christian songs from the 1980s to the twenty-first century, available from English Christian songbooks and commercial records produced by songwriters and recording artists in the British and the U.S. Christian music scenes. One example of an http://blog.sina.com.en/s/blog_635793d50100pf5u.html (China); http://www.chinesetheology.com/News/CanaanSongsAndWesley.htm (Hong Kong) 82 Anglo-American Christian song used in Cantonese services without translation is "Shine, Jesus, Shine," written in 1987 by British songwriter Graham Kendrik, who has been described as "a father of modern worship music."32 Another example is "Above All" released in 2001 by American contemporary Christian singer-songwriter Michael W Smith. Most importantly, this repertoire of English songs is shared by the church's Cantonese congregation and the English congregation; in fact, many contemporary English worship songs become known to the Cantonese congregation through their prior popularity within the English congregation. Special bilingual services are held several times a year. In these "family" services the Cantonese congregation is joined by the English congregation, whose members are mostly younger family members of the Cantonese congregants. Both Cantonese and English are used for these family services to allow first-generation and later-generation immigrants to worship together. The sermons are interpreted, usually from Cantonese to English. Worship songs are also sung in Cantonese and English alternately. If traditional hymns are selected, both English and Chinese texts are readily available from hymnbooks. A greater number of English contemporary Christian songs are selected for 32 See Kendnk's official website, http //www grahamkendnck co uk/bio_bnef php Accessed 2009 February 24 83 these services than in normal Cantonese services. The English lyrics and their Chinese translations are both projected on the screen. Similarly, if Cantonese Christian songs are selected, their lyrics are translated into English. These translations are sometimes more than mere translations of meanings of the original language but are actually newly composed lyrics in the target language that are good enough to be sung to the original melodies so that speakers of both languages can sing the same songs at the same time. Mandarin songs, however, are seldom selected for these family services. In sum, these family services are a unique phenomena not to be found in Christian worship in Hong Kong, and the music used in these services features congregational singing that employs two languages which are sung simultaneously to the same tunes. The Role and Function of Worship Music The RHCCC sees its change of worship style as a strategy to achieve its vision of being a "church of the twenty-first century." The church contrasts its current worship style, the "contemporary" style, with the worship style of "traditional" churches. As the church's members understand it, the traditional worship style has the official members of a church as the primary audience. In contrast, the RHCCC's worship music is intended 84 for both its members and the "unchurched" - people who are not familiar with Christianity, or who have not participated in church services before, or people who have stopped attending church services for a long time. To achieve this objective, the worship program, including worship music, is not designed according to the tradition and heritage of Protestant churches, but to the cultural backgrounds of worshippers. Shorter songs and variety in music making are preferred to help worshippers stay focused and to facilitate easy learning and understanding (Richmond Hill Chinese Community Church 2004). Several times during interviews with members of the Cantonese congregation, I was reminded by my informants that music in worship is a tool used in combination with other tools (e.g., visual display, staging, drama, movies, etc.) for the enhancement of the worship experience. Music, together with other expressive and communication media, is used for making "a nicer packaging of the offering" to the divine. Furthermore, ministers and lay leaders in the congregation commonly emphasize and teach the religious and didactic functions of church music. In a sermon about Christian music and the writing of Christian songs, one of the ministers expounded a key scripture passage which is often chosen for teaching about church music. The passage reads, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your 85 hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God." The minister interpreted the passage this way: It tells us the secrets of writing [Christian] songs, and the secrets can be summarized in three W's. The first W is 'wisdom.' When we write a song and its lyrics, we need wisdom; we use all kinds of means and all kinds of musical materials, and see how we can put together a song. The second W is 'word,' that is, let the word of Christ dwell in our hearts richly. If we, as Christians, can read the Bible diligently, we will be able to write good lyrics. The final W is 'worship;' we use psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to teach and admonish each other, and to praise God.3 This interpretation of the scripture passage highlights the commonly accepted value of church music for the Cantonese congregation: worship music is primarily a means to achieve religious objectives. Music is valued for its usefulness in enhancing the worship experience and fulfilling edification purposes rather than for aesthetic or entertainment reasons. Moreover, words or texts, especially the scriptures, are of central importance in achieving these religious purposes while the medium, that is, the musical sound and structure, may be varied and of different origins. This primacy of religious and didactic purposes is realized in a unique attitude towards music appreciation and valuation. As mentioned above, traditional hymns are treasured primarily for their texts, which are thought to be communicating precious spiritual experiences of godly people. In the church members' own words, the "content" Colossians 3 16 Quotation drawn from the New Revised Standard Version of the Christian bible Sermon for the Contemporary Chinese Christian Song Writing Competition delivered on 2007 November 18 86 of the hymns is the most important element, and the texts are also the reason for traditional hymns being passed on to the present generation. The distinction between the text and the music of a song, and the higher view of the former over the latter, is even set as an important criterion for evaluating contemporary songs. In a speech delivered on the first contemporary Christian song writing competition between the RHCCC and its sister churches in the GTA, one of the judges said, Many people say that contemporary songs nowadays are so superficial. No matter which song you sing [or are writing], you'll be just repeating 'God, I love you, you love me.' And you repeat it again and again, and then you have written a song. So all songs are the same ... if your creative ideas stay only in the realm of musical notes, if you do not put effort in the content, then no wonder we don't have much to write about. No wonder after we have written a song and sing it with pleasure for two to three times, the song will be forgotten by the fourth time.35 Clearly, lyrics, or "content," are thought to be the most crucial factor in differentiating good songs and bad songs. The music, on the other hand, is considered to be of secondary importance and at the service of supporting the content. As a result, the church community seems to be applying less stringent requirements with regard to the musical sound of its worship music. As the competition judge continued to say, Very often, our younger generation is exposed to a rich variety of musical materials; you can get different styles of music by going to karaoke lounges, surfing the Internet, downloading MP3s. So you can pick a [musical] phrase here and pick a phrase there, and it is not difficult to write an ear-pleasing melody ... Of course, it's not too bad to borrow others' styles. But the problem is, there are other things you should consider when you borrow. For example, there are songs that are good for The event was held on 2007 November 18, and it was organized by the Association of Chinese Evangelical Ministries (Canada), the parent organization which coordinates the ministries of the RHCCC and its sister churches in the GTA 87 listening but cannot be sung. This is especially true for popular songs nowadays, which often have octave leaps that require the use of falsetto to get those notes right. This is called style. But how can we use this kind of style in our worship? How can you expect our seniors to sing a phrase in falsetto? To belt out the notes? In principle, therefore, a variety of musical sounds can be accepted as long as the singing ability of the congregation is respected. This attitude towards worship music also reinforces the importance of congregational participation in the worship as well as the musical experience. For congregation members who would like to see more elements of the contemporary style of worship incorporated into their own worship program, music has another important function besides supporting song texts. For them, music is thought to be playing the essential role of linking discrete worship moments together so that a flow is created, leading to a coherent worship experience from a service's beginning to its end. As two worship leaders of the Cantonese congregation told me, one of the goals of the contemporary style of worship is to deliver the whole worship program as a "package" instead of as a sequence of activities, such as congregational singing, prayer, offering, and sermon, which tend to be distinctly separated in the traditional style of worship. In the newer style, music is a means to achieve a continuous flow by smoothing out the transition from one activity to another. For example, it is a common practice for the 88 congregation to sing a song of response right after the sermon. As described by my informants, in the contemporary style, this song can be introduced just before the sermon ends, when the preacher is still concluding the message The music can help build the mood when the pastor is going to urge people to think, to commit, or to respond to a calling, the musicians, who are informed of this moment m advance, start playing music [1 e , the song of response] in the background. The music will slowly build up to the moment when the pastor asks you to commit. [the transition] can be very smooth From the background, beginning with the accompaniment of very simple notes, and gradually, by the time you start to sing [the song], the music has been going on for a long time, but you will not be aware that, 'ah, it's now the time for singing '3 In practice, worship services in the Cantonese congregation are usually framed by music. Instrumental music, typically arrangements of well-known Christian hymns or songs, is usually performed at the beginning and at the end of services, inviting participants to focus their attention and marking the whole duration of a service out as a special time (though most participants do not stop conversing or moving around until worship leaders formally step onto the stage and declare the beginning of services). During a service, simple instrumental music, often minimally embellished chord progressions and simple improvised melodic figures played by the pianist, is frequently used to back up speeches between songs, when scripture passages are read, when worship leaders are introducing the next song, or even when worship leaders are leading 36 Personal interview on 2008 June 4 89 congregational prayers. Musical devices, such as short instrumental interludes which may involve simple key modulations, are sometimes used to string together two or more songs of the same key or in related keys, creating a medley of songs creating the effect of a sense of flow and allowing continuous singing. Not all congregation members, however, share this kind of positive evaluation of using music in worship as my informants do. The biggest concern for some members is that music that is too attractive may distract people from worshiping. Some worship leaders and prayer leaders do not like music in the background when they are leading a public prayer; they find the music disturbing. A church member, who loves and often plays music in his leisure time, even told me that music played too skillfully may actually be an obstacle for him to worship because he can be too absorbed in the musical performance instead of reflecting on things about God. This chapter has provided an overview of the worship music of the RHCCC's Cantonese congregation. The congregation's four diverse song repertoires and their origins have been identified. The shift of the predominant musical style from the traditional to the contemporary, and the current hybrid musical sounds of the worship music have also been described. Finally, some prevalent ideas about worship music in the 90 community have been explored. This overview shows that the congregation's worship music is a highly syncretic music which draws materials and inspirations from different national and regional musics. The synthesis occurs not only at the geographical and (sub)ethnic levels, however, but it also occurs at the intersection between religious music and secular music, and at that between western art music and popular music, both Chinese and Western. The following chapter will attempt to interpret the significance of this musical synthesis. In particular, the interpretation will explore how the congregation's worship music articulates identities in a diasporic situation. 91 Chapter 4 Contemporary Cantonese Christian Songs, Early Cantopop, and Diasporic Identities Although conveying religious beliefs is an important function of the worship music of the RHCCC's Cantonese congregation, it is possible to identify additional layers of meaning below the obvious messages of the religious sung texts. This chapter explores two other aspects of the music that are not directly related to the textual contents of the songs. The first one is the practice of singing songs in multiple languages; the second is the musical sound itself. Both aspects reflect and mediate ethnic and subethnic identities for this Hong Kong immigrant community. Multiple Languages in Singing and Sociolinguistic Identities Chapter Three describes the Cantonese congregation's mixed repertoires of worship songs. The four main repertoires - traditional hymns, Cantonese Christian songs, Mandarin Christian songs, and English Christian songs - are distinct musical traditions, and all four are vibrantly growing as new songs are continuously added to them. The mixing of these repertoires in worship services has been firmly established as a standard musical practice in the congregation, even though each accounts for different proportions in the total song mix. This practice uniquely reveals the congregants' colonial history and 92 present diasporic situation. Although these repertoires may be distinguished by their geographical and cultural origins, histories, theological themes, and musical styles, the most outstanding distinction between the repertoires is that the songs are sung in three different languages: Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. This practice of singing in three languages with relatively little difficulty and resistance is unique to first-generation Hong Kong immigrant churches; neither Chinese-speaking churches in Hong Kong, mainland China, and Taiwan, nor English-speaking immigrant churches, such as the RHCCC's English congregation, have this convention of using multiple languages in their music making. For people from Hong Kong, languages are intimately connected with politics and identities (Joseph 2000). People living in Hong Kong diasporas carry this language-identity nexus with them when they emigrate, though, as will be explained later, the connection is adapted to the diasporic situation. Cantonese, Mandarin, and English are central in Hong Kong's language-identity nexus. Many residents in Hong Kong, especially those who have received higher education, are proficient in two or all three of these languages or dialects. These three languages are essential for different areas in public life. For example, Cantonese is necessary for daily conversation and for the 93 production and understanding of mass media; Mandarin is important for interactions with people from mainland China, Taiwan, and other Chinese-speaking groups around the world; English is indispensable for international business and technological communications. Hong Kong, however, has not become a truly multi-lingual society in which all three languages are equal in status. Instead, different sociolinguistic identities are associated with each of the languages. Although identities of Hong Kong people are found to be ambiguous and in flux, recent discussions about language and identity highlight how the three languages compete to be the dominant language that entails a dominant sociolinguistic identity (see Joseph 2000). To describe this complicated situation in the simplest terms, Cantonese, being the native tongue of over ninety percent of Hong Kong residents, is the foundation of a local identity. Since the beginning of British colonial regime, this indigenous language has been suppressed by the hegemony of English, the controlling language for the entire duration of colonial rule from 1842 to 1997. Additional pressure caused by the need to assimilate into the global English-dominant commercial community has been increasing as Hong Kong evolved from an obscure fishing village to an international centre for commerce and finance on the world map 94 since the last third of the twentieth century. English, despite its colonial and imperialistic connotation, has allowed the population of Hong Kong to participate in an international identity. With Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese sovereignty and China's rise as a prominent power in the world stage, Mandarin became another necessary "second-language" for many of the citizens of Hong Kong. The Mandarin dialect is important not only because it is the official language of China; it also enjoys the privilege of being the language spoken by the largest number of Chinese people worldwide. Thus, the extensive use of Mandarin is part of a pan-Chinese identity. This identification with a Beijing-centred Chinese-ness is not, however, without ambivalence. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Cantonese dialect and its related culture have been increasingly denigrated by writers, scholars, and other Mandarin-speaking intellectuals (see Choi 1990). For many Hong Kong people, Mandarin, being a dialect of northern China, represents both a kind of cultural elitism and the much-feared communist regime. Thus the rising status of Mandarin is deemed as a sign of another hegemony imposed on the people of Hong Kong, exposing their lack of power and choice with regard to issues of culture and identity. On the other hand, for those Hong Kong citizens who feel patriotic towards the 95 People's Republic of China (PRC), the popularization of Mandarin is welcomed as a symbol of returning from colonial subjugation to the bosom of the "country of our ancestors" {zuguo tfiH). For these patriots, Mandarin represents a genuine and independent Chinese identity. In a discussion about the musical systems and identities in Hong Kong, Lawrence Witzleben writes: ... [t]he multilingual and multicultural nature of Hong Kong society has made it possible for a Hong Kong resident to choose one or more of a wide variety of musical traditions, Chinese and Western, as his or her "own." In addition, within the Chinese music sector, an individual has access to regionally-oriented Cantonese (or other) traditions, to pan-Chinese traditions, and to the tradition which is simultaneously the most strongly localized and most Westernized, Cantonese pop. (2000: 89) Witzleben's observation characterizes the pattern of musical choices among Hong Kong people: musical identification tends to differentiate along the dividing line of ethnicity (Chinese vs. Western) and, within Chinese music, along the line of regional culture and dialect (Cantonese vs. non-Cantonese). In other words, identification with different kinds of music is part of the construction and manifestation of Hong Kong people's sociolinguistic identities. In secular popular music, the emergence of Cantopop in the 1970s, which has displaced imported Western popular music as the dominant form of modern music entertainment in Hong Kong, was not a coincidence but a development induced by the 96 rise of a consciousness of local identity within the society (Wong 2003). Slightly lagging behind this development in secular society, Cantonese Christian songs have also developed into a major local musical form of religious expression. As mentioned in Chapter Three, the practice of singing traditional hymns in Cantonese had long been established even before the emergence of Cantonese Christian songs despite the former's unsatisfactory matching of linguistic tones with hymn melodies. The practice of singing traditional hymns in Cantonese was thus viewed as violating an important aesthetic standard of Cantonese music. In light of the relationship between language and identity in the situation of Hong Kong, this protest against a musical practice can also be understood as a protest against northern cultural elitism and a demand for the expression of local sociolinguistic identity. The ideological tension between the Cantonese and Mandarin dialects is a key reason for the popularity of Cantonese Christian songs in the churches of Hong Kong people. Evangelical churches in the diasporas, the RHCCC being a case in point, have inherited these associations between worship songs and sociolinguistic identities, but with significant modifications due to their diasporic situation. Compared with churches in Hong Kong, members of the RHCCC generally feel more at ease with singing songs in 97 languages other than Cantonese in their worship services. A minister of the church's worship ministry describes the difference between worship songs in North America and Hong Kong with regard to languages: When we make [worship] music in North America, since our language environment is different [from that in Hong Kong], we can use English. It's even more common here to use Mandarin [than in Hong Kong]. That's why, in terms of language, we have more choices here. As for songs, we can pick songs in English, Mandarin, as well as Cantonese, because the majority of the congregation accepts the singing of English songs. I find that churches in Hong Kong in general do not commonly sing songs in English. Most [Hong Kong] churches use Cantonese songs. Hong Kong churches also have been starting to use more Mandarin songs.37 This minister's comment confirms the unique practice in the diaspora of frequently mixing songs in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English in worship services. This practice, however, is not without dispute within the Cantonese congregation. A few worship leaders shared with me their hesitation in selecting Mandarin and English songs. They are concerned that using songs in languages other than Cantonese may be an obstacle for some congregants, especially the elderly and the less educated, to participate in the worship. Nevertheless, in real practice, there is an increasing trend of mixing in non-Cantonese songs in the congregation's worship program, indicating a general acceptance of songs in multiple languages. This trend also suggests changing meanings of sociolinguistic identities carried by the songs in the diasporas. For Hong Kong immigrants in the GTA, English has different 37 Personal interview on 2009 February 11. 98 connotations than what it represents in their homeland. Instead of symbolizing an elitist class and colonial control, English is the daily language of the host society, representing mainstream culture and Canadian identity. The core question facing these immigrants also changes from whether to embrace fully or resist passively colonial domination while regarding themselves an ethnic and cultural majority to a decision about actively fostering assimilation into the mainstream society as a minority group. Learning English has also changed from a dilemma between personal development and ethnic pride to a matter of survival. Singing English hymns and songs in worship services has the added meaning of symbolizing that most congregants possess the needed language skills and other cultural capital38 for functioning well in an English-speaking society and appreciating Western culture. Even for those who cannot use English proficiently, their silent participation in singing English songs in Cantonese services can indicate a general attitude favouring assimilation. Mandarin is also perceived differently in the Hong Kong diaspora in Canada than it is among Hong Kong residents. In the GTA, the population of mainland Chinese immigrants is on the rise while the number of new Hong Kong immigrants has declined 38 Cultural capital, as a sociological concept developed by Pierre Bourdieu, represents "a form of knowledge, an internalized code or a cognitive acquisition which equips the social agent with empathy towards, appreciation for or competence in deciphering cultural relations and cultural artefacts" (Johnson 1993 7) 99 sharply since the mid-1990s. This change in demographics means that Hong Kong immigrants are required to communicate more and more frequently with Mandarin-speaking Chinese people. Since different subethnic Chinese groups are often living in the same neighbourhoods and having frequent day-to-day interactions with each other within the GTA, the Mandarin dialect truly functions as a common language among Chinese people from different places for communication as well as for building solidarity as a single ethnic group. Mandarin, therefore, mediates a pan-Chinese identity, more so than it does in Hong Kong where the population is ethnically more homogenous. Without the tension between local autonomy and interfacing with the ruling regime of China, it is much easier for Hong Kong immigrants in the diasporas to claim such a pan-Chinese identity than when they were in their homeland. This change in attitude towards the Mandarin dialect is also reflected in the increasingly frequent use of Mandarin songs in the RHCCC's Cantonese services. To summarize, the three languages commonly used in Hong Kong have strong identity connotations, which are not fixed but change according to political and social contexts. Such changes are especially conspicuous when migration is involved. Different identities are evoked depending on the substance of the "Other" that each language 100 represents for a person of Hong Kong origin in a particular situation. In Hong Kong, the English language denotes colonial power and the international community; in other words, the Other represented by English is the so-called West. In the Hong Kong diaspora in Canada, English signifies the host majority, the mainstream, as the Other. As for Mandarin, it denotes the communist government of China, the culture of northern China, and to a lesser extent, the global Chinese community as Hong Kong residents' Others. In the diasporas, Mandarin strongly signifies a pan-Chinese identity, which even eclipses the boundary distinguishing the local Hong Kong identity and other regional Chinese subethnicities. Finally, a unique Hong Kong identity, based on the Cantonese dialect, is fundamental to Hong Kong immigrants. In an environment where the choice of using multiple languages is flexible, the dominant practice of singing Cantonese Christian songs in the Cantonese congregation is a clear act of claiming Hong Kong identity. At the same time, the practice of singing songs in Mandarin and English suggests the permeability of the boundary of this fundamental identity. Through the symbolic action of singing, the congregants simultaneously identify themselves with the English-speaking mainstream society and pan-Chinese identity along with their basic Hong Kong identity. Moreover, the use of 101 multiple languages reinforces evangelical Christianity's self-understanding of being a global religion that transcends geographical and ethnic boundaries. Participating in multiple sociolinguistic identities through singing in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, however, does not mean that the congregants are equally proficient in these languages. On the contrary, only a few members of the congregation can fluently speak all three languages. Except for those members whose jobs require fluency in Mandarin, the ability to communicate in Mandarin is not a necessity in the GTA's Chinese community since Cantonese-speaking businesses and services abound. Although Mandarin's popularity is on the rise, in the daily lives of many Hong Kong immigrants, occasions that absolutely demand the use of Mandarin remain rare if the immigrants interact primarily with the Cantonese-speaking community. As for English, most first-generation Hong Kong immigrants use English as a second language. In the most extreme cases, some immigrants, especially seniors, can survive without having to communicate in English frequently by spending most of their time in areas of concentrated Chinese settlement. As described in the previous chapter, not having fluency in a language does not prevent individuals in the congregation from participating in singing in that language during worship services, as in the case of some congregants 102 singing Mandarin songs with imperfect pronunciation. Even in instances of total incomprehension, as when some senior members are asked to sing English songs during services, these members' attitudes are still positive and approving. As the music minister mentioned earlier relates the reactions of some of these senior members, "They said that [selecting English songs in worship services] is okay. They were very happy about that; as long as people were singing together, the seniors were happy."39 Whereas language barrier is a fact of life for many immigrants and may be an obstacle to fuller integration into the English-speaking mainstream society or the Mandarin-speaking community, congregational singing in the church provides an easier and more secure way to participate in different sociolinguistic identities available in the diaspora. Religious Texts and Religiously Neutral Music Identities are not mediated by the languages of song lyrics alone, they are also revealed and constructed, though more subtly, through the musical sounds. The congregational music making in the Cantonese congregation is guided by an openness to the definition of "sacred" music which allows various musical styles to be included in church music. Such openness has been promoted by some churches in the transnational 39 Personal interview on 2009 February 11. 103 network of evangelical Protestant churches, particularly large and influential churches in the United States, which have adopted different musical styles in their worship music. Evangelical Christianity in the U.S., especially the development of megachurches within it, has been exceptionally influential on the RHCCC, from theological position and church organization to worship music. One of the most famous ministers of these "megachurches", Rick Warren, says, ... the music style [in worship] you like best says more about you - your background and personality - than it does about God. One ethnic group's music can sound like noise to another. But God likes variety and enjoys it all. There is no such thing as "Christian" music; there are only Christian lyrics. It is the words that make a song sacred, not the tune. There are no spiritual tunes. If I played a song for you without the words, you'd have no way of knowing if it were a "Christian" song. (2002: 66) Warren's book, from which the above quotation is taken, is a recommended reading for all members of the RHCCC. According to this idea of church music, it is apparent that any musical style from any culture can be potentially accepted in the congregation's worship services, qualified only by whether the sung texts are in line with evangelical Christian beliefs and the congregation's cultural preferences. Connie Wong also finds contemporary Chinese Christian worship music in the United States to be of a similarly eclectic nature. Focusing on the songs and As defined by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, megachurches refer to exceptionally large Protestant Chnstian churches, mainly in the U S A A megachurch in average has more than 2 000 people attending its weekly service, and it usually has very large buildings of spectacular architecture to accommodate its large number of worshippers Megachurches are usually founded upon a conservative Protestant theology (Hartford Institute for Religion Research, n d ) 104 performances of the Taiwanese American gospel group Stream of Praise, she identifies divergent musical styles in the group's music including Taiwanese campus songs, Southeast Asian native music, bossa nova, rap, jazz, gospel, Asian pop ballads, and Euro-American hymns (2006: 3, 210-11). Her conclusion is that "[i]n Praise and Worship [i.e., contemporary worship music], it seems that there are no limits on musical style; in other words, it has become culturally and musically inclusive and eclectic (ibid.: 210)." The worship music of the RHCCC's Cantonese congregation has blended various elements of Chinese and Western musics. The influence of Cantopop, the indigenous popular music of Hong Kong, is particularly prominent. Instead of separating secular popular music and church music by a rigid boundary, as was commonly done in most Chinese Christian churches before the 1990s, the RHCCC finds it crucial to modify its church music with reference to trends in popular music. As a worship minister of the congregation says, ... we have realized since more than twenty years ago that if we do not change, that is, do not renew the music in the church, then a time will come when many young people or new believers, that is, those who start to believe [in Christianity] here, will find it difficult to follow [our] music, or they will find church music rather backward. If people find that your stuff is behind the times, they will not pay much attention. If they find that your stuff is trendy or if they know that you are knowledgeable about, and can adapt yourself to, the newest developments in the world, they will be more interested in participating in church activities and in singing Christian songs.41 Uneasiness of various degrees has always existed between the Christian church and 41 Personal interview on 2009 February 11. 105 its surrounding larger society. Throughout the history of Christianity, Christians have used different approaches to understand and manage the differences between Christian culture and non-Christian cultures, or since the emergence of modernity, secular culture (see Niebuhr 1956). Many believers, especially those in conservative and evangelical communities, are skeptical of secular society, let alone popular culture. The inclusion of musical characteristics of contemporary popular music in the RHCCC's worship music, however, represents the church's general willingness to keep in contact with secular society instead of practising religious seclusion. It also reflects the inevitable adaptation of Christian traditions to practices of secular society in the modern age. For many congregants, core Christian beliefs still contrast starkly with secular values, especially in areas such as sex, marriage, the origin of human beings, and the outlook on life and the future. But conditional borrowing from secular culture is considered necessary. In the RHCCC, music serves as an important interface between Christian and secular cultures. Music is the creative and performance space in which experiments of mixing popular music elements with church music and Christian values are constantly being tested out. The resultant music symbolizes an image of progressiveness for the church, which is deemed helpful for establishing an affective bonding between the church and 106 non-Christians, thus facilitating evangelism and making Christianity relevant to modern, urban living. However, according to my experience and observation of the Cantonese congregation, its worship music does not display as high a degree of eclecticism as implied in the church leaders' and Connie Wong's comments on contemporary Chinese Christian worship music in North America and Asia. The congregation's music certainly involves the mixing of different song traditions and an obvious synthesis of the Western art music tradition with popular music in areas such as instrumentation, vocal timbre, and vocal harmonization technique (see Chapter Three). But in spite of this evidence of hybridity, the worship music shows consistent musical features which underlie most performances, regardless of song repertoire. The most influential styles include Cantopop before the 1990s, soft rock and Western folk (as a popular music genre). While the church leaders' vision and Wong's analysis may have focused on the potential creativity in Christian worship music, my focus here is on the recurring musical sound that is performed week after week in the congregation. Recurring musical styles suggest connections with some core experiences and values of the community. As aptly pointed out in the earlier quotation by Warren, the musical sound of contemporary Christian 107 music does not inherently convey theological meanings but rather reflects the social conditions of the community that embraces this sound. Cantonese Christian Song's Allusion to Early Cantopop The worship music of the Cantonese congregation is not an indiscriminate mixture of Hong Kong and Anglo-American popular music styles. Some worship leaders in the congregation insist that the purpose of church music is not to follow the latest trends in popular music, but to lead people to worship effectively. What this objective means is that worship music should be tailored to the prevailing musical taste of the congregation, most of whom are over thirty years of age, have settled in Canada for a relatively long period of time, and are longtime churchgoers. The dominant musical preference of this majority group works to create inertia countering the incorporation of new styles into the palette of musical sound usable by church musicians. As a result, many popular music styles that have been well received in Cantopop after the 1980s, especially the influences of rhythm and blues and hip hop, can hardly be heard in the congregation's worship music. Different time periods produce distinctive stylistic characteristics in musical traditions. The reverse of this relationship between time and style is also true; stylistic 108 features often symbolize distinctive eras. In the case of the Cantonese congregation, if the practice of singing worship songs in different languages can be correlated with a place - the city of Hong Kong and its unique sociopolitical situation - then the predominant musical style in those songs can also be correlated with a time period. Interestingly, present music making is anachronistically alluding to a much earlier time, namely the 1970s and 1980s. It is an allusion, because the sung words do not directly denote any temporal connection to the past. The anachronism is established instead through the more subtle musical practices that may be heard as symbols of time. This allusion to the music of the seventies and eighties operates at a conceptual level rather than a simple replication of old musical styles. Current Christian music and early Cantopop are connected by a shared attitude towards selecting and incorporating Western popular musical styles. In an interview, one of the congregation's leading musicians concurred with my observation that the predominant style of musical accompaniment for the congregation's worship songs could be broadly categorized as the genre commonly known as "soft rock." To this musician, "soft rock" represents the most widely accepted pop style, precisely because it is "not too hard and not too soft, right at the middle of the 109 road." According to Stephen Holden, soft rock as a genre label in Western popular music was invented by the music industry in the early 1970s "to describe acoustic folk-rock and other tuneful, soothing types of popular music that use electric instruments ... The term is now applied broadly to quieter popular music of all sorts that uses mild rock rhythms and some electric instruments in songs of the ballad type" (IIolden n.d.). Applied cross-culturally, this definition describes very neatly the dominant musical sound of the congregation's worship music. In addition to describing sound, researchers have noted that genre definitions in popular music are discourses on the sensibilities, politics, marketing, and consumer culture of a given music (e.g., Monroe 1999; Hibbett 2005). Their conclusion is supported by the comment on "soft rock" by the church musician mentioned above. For this musician, the aptness of the term "soft rock" for characterizing the congregation's worship music lies not only in the term's capacity to describe the musical sound but also in its implication of the qualities of being "easy-listening," conventional, and non-aggressive. His comment reveals a deeply embedded criterion for incorporating popular music in worship music among Chinese churches, that is, the music adopted 42 Personal interview on 2009 February 15. 110 should be welcomed by the greatest number of congregation members and offensive to the fewest. Secular musical styles must be "softened," that is, rendered without obvious stances of secular ideology or identity. "Soft rock" is an appropriate style for this purpose, because, on the one hand, it represents the congregation's willingness to keep up with the development of the "modern" society, and on the other hand, it connotes neither rebellion, as in (hard) rock, nor excessive sentimentality, as most Cantopop ballads are perceived to do. Figure 4.1 and Figure 4.2 below depict a song titled "Mission Journey" {shiming liicheng f^fjp JSfM)- It is a song written by a member of the congregation specifically for a congregation-wide campaign in 2008. During the campaign, this theme song was sung in every Sunday worship service and many other church gatherings for almost two months. Ill M#MM.Mis?.ion jQuoi.eyX2.QM): Music and lyrics by Larry Ilting EJ G D/F§ C/F D/F$ rru: zJL #• *N 3 f f=^N)= ft it ± tk it * », saang mmg zeon sam, jyn daap soeng leoi eing coeng lou; D/FH C/E G/D D B /D: "^Mb ; •J-" "A- .__7-'. • Jrr-|rA---^--A- ;3ri:t^ E^±==l m ^ m 3i. * m m ft ± =F «-. si ming dou jan, kau maai hoeng jyu zyu bat fan. Em Bm/F| C G/B a> W —i J~—- -J J—t—\—] -ft J j .7 j • f --• | I I —7—I 1—^4— .--—^^»~- --4 1~-» *—J^^X—J *z^x *—V"~*\_i.«' *—# J~ 4= ± *• * is a, leoi lou ztmg zyu sau to daai ztmg taa jiu joeng 7 bat bin gang, Am G/B +- C/D ^J3#^jy s s '3PE & n w • K i s m m m A ±. cyun sai gaai baai tyut zeoi kwan dak ceoi caan jan saang. D/¥$ Em G/D + :jbeg^=EJFNl ~Jd-^ rt^M ft «r if. d 112 G/B Am Am'/D 30 mm w PP=P m m m m m, n & m m, x IBIS. lou eing zung jyun, san bit hon gu, tin gwok ji zim kan [z Am 7 Am7/D Mb 3= _7_-. Jy £=2 -fczjr 5^ B E M ifio kan. san bit hon gu, tin gwok ji zim kan. Am' Am/D G 39 t"f" •"_# r ir"~ -":~"j ~- ~p—;v»>™ i w ^F -" "# •"— i fa 31. » tt « * A £0 zyu zi jan, daap ceot, si ming jan saang English translation of lyrics: (Section Al) Growing deep into life is like embarking on a long journey; Guided by the mission, the goal is to become inseparable from the Lord. (A2) The Lord's hand will hold us tight through the journey, He wants all people in the world freed from sin's bondage and have wonderful lives. (Bl) Go forward together, make every effort living true to the identity of being the Lord's children, Embrace peace, lift up the salvation. (B2) Go forward, ask for the Lord's companionship; fear not hardship, oppression, and hatred. Though the journey is long, God is looking after us; the kingdom of heaven is near. (2nd Ending) God is looking after us; the kingdom of heaven is near. Follow the Lord's guidance, actualize a life of mission. Figure 4.1: Leadsheet of "Mission Journey". Used by permission. The first line of text below staff is the lyrics in Chinese characters. The second line of text below staff is the transliteration of the sound of individual Chinese characters. 113 ^x '/ ^ % P^ ^ * V. ^ «p- JL 4? g%^g x.t£ir^ Mil d&s* IIlll "JZ.ZJ&ZZA ZZZ{^ZJLZZZZ.,,- ZZ... =J $*". SfeL -3*- i f~—&Z~.„y . .. ' ^J"*""^^ ""ffl "" ,^ # ^ , y -^ ^ ty , rzz 1 L—" y—l-—i__i—L_I j—[ j i___M:r^~ ....r._ _II 70- ^ * W £ ##* T^- *# £ feflfeta< ^^""^^ =E I «*i .-ft tfe^e^ A i.. sftffc T^ft Figure 4.2: Manuscript of backup vocal arrangement for "Mission Journey". Used by permission. 114 This song illustrates the practice and significance of the "soft rock" style in the congregation's music. The rhythm marker "Rock" printed on the manuscript for backup vocal arrangement (Figure 4.2) shows that the composer intends the song to be accompanied in the rock style. In actual performances, this song is usually not played in a hard-hitting and rough manner, which is the typical "non-musician" understanding of "rock" among people from Hong Kong. Instead, the rock style is interpreted in terms of a relatively up-beat tempo and a persistent drum pattern that emphasizes the backbeats and a sub-layer consisting of an eighth-note pulse. Even though the lyrics of this song are about action and determination, the dynamic characteristics of rock are "softened" by the simple, on-the-beat melody set in the middle to lower vocal range for most non-trained singers. The impression of "softness" is further enhanced by synthesized fills and turnarounds as well as the polished and precise vocal style of the worship teams. This particular way of using popular music in the Cantonese congregation is even more noticeable if it is compared with music making in the church's English congregation. Also accompanied by amateur bands of similar instrumentation, the English congregation tends to enjoy slightly faster tempi than the Cantonese congregation. Performances on the guitar and the drums are much more prominent. The 115 vocal quality of the worship leaders is usually less restrained and refined, and nonuniformity, even slight pitch imprecision among the worship leaders, is more tolerated. The overall sound of the band is amplified louder in English services. Finally, the worshippers usually stand when they sing, and they are more comfortable in moving their bodies to the music. In short, the whole performance by the worship teams and the congregation is "rougher" and "harder," resembling the kind of performance found in concerts of Western rock or more recent Cantopop. In comparison, the Cantonese congregation clearly prefers much "softer," reserved performances. This brief comparison between "soft" and "hard" performances in the same church indicates that the adaptation of popular music in contemporary church music is not uniform. Different Christian groups have different ways of absorbing, transforming, and reproducing the sound of popular music within a common context of traditional church music that has been steeped in the Western art music tradition. Different approaches with regard to using popular music reflect individual congregations' musical preferences, which are in turn conditioned by their unique experiences and identities. Since most worshippers in the Cantonese congregation are first-generation Hong Kong immigrants, their pop-influenced worship music is inseparable from their pre-immigration experience 116 of living in Hong Kong and their post-immigration connection with their old homeland. For these immigrants, their worship music's "soft" quality suggests a deep symbolic connection with early Cantopop, that is the popular music in Hong Kong before the 1990s. This quality shares the tendency in early Cantopop songs of avoiding absorbing "rougher," "harder" musical styles from Western popular music. In Cantonese Christian songs, this tendency appears as "softness;" in early Cantopop, it appears as political neutrality. Early Cantopop can be characterized by a symbolic absence: the absence of political reference and commentary. Yu Siu Wah has pointed out that Hong Kong popular music had been generally apolitical until the late 1980s when the city's residents were forced to ponder the city's imminent return to Chinese sovereignty, particularly the implication of the unsettling news of the June Fourth Tiananmen Square incident in 1989. This political neutrality was evident in the general absence of political or confrontational lyrics in Cantopop in the seventies and eighties (Yu 2001). Such apolitical lyrics were supported by the selective adoption of foreign popular music styles. During this period, the majority of mass-mediated Cantopop songs used styles that were of slow to medium tempi, had relatively few rhythmic intricacies, and simple, conventional harmonic structure - 117 musical devices conducive to "lilting melodies befitting the Cantonese dialect and lovelorn, amorous themes" (Lee 2005: 34). Notably, during the same period, other styles that were considered to have more overt expressions of "attitudes" or ideologies had emerged and captured significant portions of the popular music markets in the United States, Britain, and Japan. Examples included punk, various strands of harder rock, blues, hip hop, and electronic and dance music. But these "rougher," "harder" styles did not make a significant impression on early Cantopop creators and listeners. Only after the 1990s were these styles and the ideologies they represent substantially absorbed into the convention and discourse of Cantopop music. Researchers have noted the presence of more controversial lyrics together with the incorporation of rougher styles, such as rap music, in more recent Cantopop songs. This large-scale adoption of more radical musical styles in Cantopop has been attributed to Hong Kong people's rising concern with politics (see Yu 2001 and Lee 2005). As mentioned earlier, some members of the RHCCC prefer their church music to keep up with current trends in popular music so that it will not be considered old-fashioned. But a comparison between the congregation's worship music and the 118 development of Hong Kong popular music shows that these members' wishes are largely not realized. Contrary to the more recent development of absorbing a more diverse assortment of Western popular styles in Cantopop, Chinese Christian songs such as those used in the RHCCC are quite homogenous in style. The dominant "soft rock" style reflects a kind of conservatism reminiscent of early Cantopop's political neutrality. Similar kinds of ideological conservatism, thus, link Cantonese Christian music with early Cantopop. An examination of the typical musical arrangements of early Cantopop, Cantonese Christian songs, and more recent Cantopop offers more insight into the similarity between the former two. While all three genres are largely based on conventional song forms of Western popular music, Cantopop songs written after the eighties tend to use more intricate rhythms in melodies as well as accompaniment and more prominent percussion arrangements. In comparison, rhythms in Cantonese Christian songs and early Cantopop appear much simpler; percussion for these two genres is more about time-keeping than defining their characters. Closely related to rhythm is the relationship between sung text and music. In a given length of musical time, for instance the duration of four bars in 4/4 time, recent Cantopop songs typically have more words set to the music than Cantonese Christian songs or early 119 Cantopop songs of similar tempi do. Since melismas are generally undesirable in all modern Cantonese popular music genres43, denser lyrics tend to give an impression of speed and animation due to more onsets of melody notes compacted into each bar and smaller subdivisions of the beat, such as more frequent use of eighth and sixteenth notes. In addition, recent Cantopop songs usually have more off-beat accents. In the same duration of sixteen beats in four bars, Cantonese Christian songs and early Cantopop songs typically have melody lines that contain fewer notes, which are often of longer durations and are primarily aligned with the basic quarter-note beats. Hence, melodies of these two genres are commonly perceived as slower and more relaxed. Figure 4.3 illustrates three typical melodies, one from each of the three genres of early Cantopop, current Cantonese Christian song, and recent Cantopop songs. To facilitate comparison, each melody consists equally of a pair of musical phrases in 4/4 time, and all three melodies progress in similar tempi at around 135 beats per minute. Melody C shows the tendency of Cantopop songs since the 1990s to use more words, 43 For the purpose of producing a modern feeling, Cantopop writers and singers have tried to avoid reminding listeners of traditional Chinese operas in their compositions and performances Two common composition and improvisation techniques in traditional Cantonese operas are minimally present in Cantopop songs The first one is the decoration of a melody set to a single Chinese character with melismas; the second is the addition of decorative characters (chenzi W!¥) m the lyncs, and hence the addition of extra melody notes These decorative characters are additional words to the normal number of words in a sung phrase and are semantically unimportant I am indebted to Professor Chan Sau Yan of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, from his Chinese music class delivered in 1991, for this idea of how Cantopop has established its modem character 120 musically depicted as more frequent onsets of melody notes that are usually subdivisions of a beat, in the same length of actual time. Moreover, the frequent occurrences of repeated melody notes express a colloquial and agitated quality. The difference in style between early and more recent Cantopop songs becomes obvious when Melody C and Melody A are compared. There are far fewer musical notes (i.e., words) in Melody A which is typical of early Cantopop. The beats are less likely to be subdivided and the strong beats (beat one and beat three) are emphasized by long notes. The smoother and more lyrical contour of Melody A conveys a relaxed, elegant, and poetic feeling. The most striking point of this illustration is how Melody B, representing current Cantonese Christian songs, is stylistically similar to early Cantopop and how these two genres taken together sharply contrast with more recent Cantopop despite the fact that Melody B is written in the twenty-first century. 121 Melody A- A Cantopop Song of the 1980s First 8 bars of melody in "You Are the Best" written in 1983, from the record Shijian Shizhong Ni Hao by Luo Wen. J =140 Dm Gm W, ^^^^^^^^^^^^=^^^ Gm Am £^^:=-=£™£==^ Melody B - A Cantonese Christian Song of the 2000s First 8 bars of melody in "Mission Journey" written in 2008. Jsias G D/ff C/F D/ff G D/Ff C/E G/D D B7/D| Melody C - A Cantopop Song of the 2000s First 8 bars of melody in "The Adolescent Alliance" written in 2005, from the record Li Keqin Yanzouting by Hacken Lee. J=132 fat Bm 1 y»^^^hh^^P^^^^p§r^^^^^^^^^^ Bm Figure 4.3 Comparison of Melodies of Early Cantopop, Current Cantonese Christian Song, and More Recent Cantopop In my interviews with members of the Cantonese congregation, some informants were able to articulate quite clearly the contrast between early and more recent Cantopop, 122 though they do not express it in the language of musical analysis. When asked to describe the difference between early and recent Cantopop songs, these informants used two terms to differentiate the older music from the more recent: the term "wordiness" was used to characterize more recent Cantonese popular music and "delicacy of craftsmanship and orderliness" {gongzheng ZM.) to describe early Cantopop. The first term corresponds to the greater flexibility in word-setting, more melody notes, more complex rhythms, and a stronger sense of motion found in the style of recent Cantopop as the analysis above has shown. The second term matches the analytical description of early Cantopop as relatively more relaxed and structured. Interestingly, members of the congregation have divergent opinions about where their worship music is located on the timeline demarcated by these two stylistic terms. Some members think that contemporary Cantonese Christian songs no longer conform to the "gongzheng" paradigm, indicating progressiveness in accommodating recent developments of social tastes. This impression is particularly strong when Cantonese Christian songs are compared with traditional hymns. Traditional hymns are markedly regular and strict in terms of their structure. The Chinese translation of these hymns follows exactly the same poetic scheme that strictly governs the number of syllables in 123 each phrase of the original English texts. For example, in the English text of the hymn "How Great Thou Art!" (Figure 3.1), the verse section, spanning the first eight bars of music, contains four phrases. The fixed number of English syllables for these four phrases follows the scheme 11.10.11.10., and the Chinese translation has precisely the same number of monosyllable Chinese characters in each phrase. (In Figure 3.1, this syllabic scheme is printed on the top-right corner of the score.) Contemporary Cantonese Christian songs have not continued with this kind of rigid text-setting schemes. For example, a comparison of the song "Mission Journey" (Figure 4.1) with the hymn "How Great Thou Art!" (Figure 3.1) shows that phrase length in terms of the number of characters (syllables) is more varied in the newer song. This suggests that contemporary Cantonese Christian songs have freed themselves from the regulation of the archaic form of traditional hymns. However, if the frame of reference is shifted from traditional hymns to Cantopop since the nineties, the "gongzheng" quality, such as that found in early Cantopop, becomes apparent in these Christian songs. Like early Cantopop songs, Cantonese Christian songs generally have more concise lyrics, arranged in symmetrical phrases of four to seven Chinese characters long. In contrast, more recent Cantopop songs are far 124 more flexible in the organization of lyrics. The lyrics are often more "wordy" and have even more flexible phrase lengths. Musically speaking, these lyrics are usually set to busier and more intricate rhythms, which tend to imitate the flow and rhythm of vernacular speech rather than more regulated poetic forms which are typical in both older Cantopop songs and Christian songs. To make an analogy, the "wordy," speech-like style of lyric-setting is comparable to recitatives in Western operatic terms, while songs with 'gongzheng''' quality are comparable to arias. To summarize, the discussion above has put current Cantonese Christian songs and early Cantopop of the seventies and eighties in the same category through their shared contrast with modern Cantopop songs as marked by their ideological conservatism and their tendency to favour more regulated and refined musical structure, that is, the gongzheng aesthetics. Both of these features are symbols of time through which contemporary Cantonese Christian songs are anachronistically linked with the past, manifesting a musical nostalgia. Multilingualism, Multiple Identities, Musical Nostalgia and the Experience of Transnational Migration This chapter has explored the relationship between contemporary Chinese Christian 125 music, as practiced in the RHCCC's Cantonese congregation, and the sense of identity of Hong Kong immigrants living in Canada. It has demonstrated that, besides serving religious purposes, the worship music of Hong Kong immigrants signifies connections with their homeland. This signification operates through the choice of singing songs with multilingual lyrics and the similarities and differences with past and present styles in Hong Kong popular music. Firstly, multilingual lyrics link the worship music with the unique sociolinguistic identities of Hong Kong people. And secondly, through its affinity with the musical style of early, rather than current, Cantopop songs, the worship music is alluding not only to a general and ahistorical "Hong Kong culture," but it signifies temporally and quite specifically the experience and culture of Hong Kong people in the 1970s and 1980s. Setting multilingual lyrics in worship songs reflects the subtle differences in identifying with ethnicity and nationality between people living in the Hong Kong diaspora in the GTA and those living in Hong Kong itself. In particular, the more frequent and relatively unabashed use of English lyrics by the churches in the diaspora is associated with the demand, as well as the aspiration, of being assimilated into mainstream English-speaking Canadian society. Although identity politics are seldom 126 openly discussed and admitted in Chinese evangelical churches in Canada, or even in the larger Chinese immigrant community, singing in English is a symbolic act that parallels some immigrants' motives in participating in Christianity in the first place: the identification with Western culture (Nagata 2005). In the diaspora, the use of Mandarin, including Mandarin lyrics in worship songs, also signifies identifying with a pan-Chinese identity rather than a nationalistic sentiment towards the Republic of China as found among Hong Kong residents. Furthermore, the temporal aspect of this expression of identity revealed in the Cantonese congregation's worship music indicates interesting ways in which Hong Kong immigrants relate to their homeland and their present home. In Chapter Two it was pointed out that the denizens of the Hong Kong diaspora in the GTA can virtually be living in their "here-land" and homeland simultaneously through global dissemination of communication technology and relatively convenient transportation. Unlike earlier Chinese immigrants whose social lives tended to be confined within ethnic enclaves, many members of the diaspora have successfully immersed themselves in the occupational and social fabric of mainstream Canadian society while maintaining and synchronizing their Hong Kong identities through traveling, communication 127 technologies, and cultural productions. Nostalgia, commonly understood as a prolonged homesickness and indulgence in the memory or imagination of a past but now inaccessible homeland, is not a widespread sentiment among contemporary Hong Kong immigrants in the GTA. The positive attitude regarding living in the here-land is enhanced by the dominant discourse among Hong Kong immigrants that praises the virtues of working hard for successful assimilation and enjoying multiple identities (as Canadian, Chinese, and Hong Kong people) at the present. Taken in relation with the immigrants' generally positive outlook, the observation that the Cantonese congregation's worship music contains nostalgic allusions seems like a counterpoint to their present-oriented attitude. These nostalgic allusions are natural from the perspective of the life histories of most congregation members. The seventies and eighties were the period when these congregants were growing up in Hong Kong as teenagers and young adults. The sound of Hong Kong popular music of that period has been firmly woven into the immigrants' memories and identities, either consciously or unconsciously. An immigrant friend of mine, who is in his late thirties to early forties and has recently emigrated from Hong Kong and landed in the GTA, told me that he received a CD album of songs by Hong 128 Kong-based singer Sam Hui as a farewell gift. Hui was one of the pioneer musicians in establishing Cantopop as a unique genre in the 1970s and has been revered as the "God of Songs" {geshen %XW) among Cantopop fans and marketers. For my friend, the album was a very meaningful gift because Hui's song represent Hong Kong identity, especially a "Hong Kong-ness" rooted in the particular time when Hui's music was most popular. Since the majority of the Cantonese congregation are of similar age, or slightly older than my friend, it is not surprising that the congregation has adopted the musical style of the first two decades of Cantopop's development in their weekly music making in the church. However, this preference in musical style may have revealed something more than a collective identity of a generation. Chinese Christian songs written recently by younger members of the Cantonese congregation do not exhibit any significant difference from older songs in terms of musical style and form. In the final round of the Chinese Christian song-writing competition mentioned in Chapter Three, a number of songs were written by people who are in their twenties to early thirties and who have spent a significant amount of their teenage years and youth in Canada. Their songs, however, are almost stylistically identical to any song in the existing repertoire of Cantonese Christian songs, showing clear similarities to the form and practice of early Cantopop rather than 129 reflecting the styles of newer Cantopop songs contemporaneous with the songwriters' age. This cross-generational and normative musical allusion to Hong Kong in the seventies and eighties opens a window into the collective psyche of this immigrant community. It reveals the community's attachment to some of the fundamental values of "Hong Kong" culture and identity which emerged in the seventies and were in full bloom during the eighties (Choi 1990). For the city of Hong Kong, the seventies and eighties were characterized by optimism about the future, an atmosphere of political apathy and the sway of pure capitalism; the latter had brought the first taste of rapid economic growth to the city's population. The stylistic features of early Cantopop were assembled and encoded during this period of general improvement in the standard of living, massive creation of wealth, and the emergence of the consciousness of the city's local identity (Choi 1990; Wong 2003). It is not a coincidence that many Cantopop songs of this particular period have become a symbol of hope and solidarity for Hong Kong people. In the twenty-first century, early Cantopop songs (instead of compositions after the 1990s) have been invoked for encouraging and unifying the whole of Hong Kong society when it 130 faces crises. Boym's description of a more generic kind of nostalgia, which emphasizes time more than place, illuminates the nostalgia experienced by contemporary residents of Hong Kong: At first glance, nostalgia is a longing for a place, but actually it is a yearning for a different time - the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams. In a broader sense, nostalgia is rebellion against the modern idea of time, the time of history and progress. The nostalgic desires to obliterate history and turn it into private or collective mythology, to visit time like space, refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition (2001: xv). The musical nostalgia in Hong Kong also finds its counterpart in the diasporas. Reproducing the sound of early Cantopop in the worship music of diasporic Christian churches, as that explored in this thesis, could well be a symbolism employed by Hong Kong immigrants that embodies their identifying with their homeland, especially the city's heyday of extraordinary economic achievement, as well as the immigrants' ways of coping with the challenges of settling in a new country. Without considering the religious lyrics, which do not have any necessary relationship with the musical style, the preservation of musical characteristics of early Cantopop may be understood as The prime example of this phenomenon is the song "At the Foot of the Lion Rock" (Shizishan Xia ffl^LifT"). The song, written in 1979, was originally the theme song of a television series that had been produced and broadcasted in Hong Kong on and off over the last three decades. During 2002 and 2003 when Hong Kong faced severe challenges from a sudden economic downturn and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome epidemic, the song was referred to by high ranking officials of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region government as well as the People's Republic of China as a means to encourage resilience in Hong Kong residents by invoking past experiences of success through diligence and perseverance. During the same period, the song was also widely broadcast in the mass media and at government functions; it had become an unofficial anthem of the city. 131 representing the immigrants' re-telling of the story about the golden period of Hong Kong identity and dignity, mirroring the significance of early Cantopop songs to current Hong Kong residents. The symbolism also hints at a wish to re-construct Hong Kong's success story in a new place by embracing a formula of success that had worked pretty well in the past: an apolitical and non-confrontational attitude as well as a strong belief in middle class values such as the capitalist social structure, the merit of competition between individuals under equality of opportunities, rational ordering of social and economic transactions, secularism, and pluralism (Choi 1990: 163). All of these underpin the general pattern of a low degree of political participation, the focus on wealth accumulation, and the conviction in self-reliance in Hong Kong immigrants' way of surviving and prospering in their new homeland. 132 Chapter 5 Conclusions In multiethnic societies, groups often use music making to differentiate themselves from each other. Characteristic musical sounds and performances are perceived as highlighting the boundaries distinguishing ethno-cultural communities; hence, a group's music often becomes a symbol of identity and membership (Stokes 1994). Following recent ethnomusicological research on music and identity, this thesis has studied the music making in a Christian church of Hong Kong immigrants in multicultural GTA. It has shown how the worship music of this community mediates its members' identification with their place of origin and how this identity as "Hong Kong people" has been reconstructed for coping with the challenge of living in the diaspora. Finding the Extraordinary within the Ordinary A direct approach for exploring ethnicity in music is to identify the perceived difference between one group's music and that of the other surrounding groups, especially that of the ethnic majority or cultural mainstream. A perceived exoticism in the traditional musics of ethnic minorities in Western countries usually functions to distinguish them from the dominant Western music traditions, contributing to the construction of a unique minority identity. For example, among Chinese immigrants in 133 the United States, traditional Chinese music helps immigrants to mutually bond as insiders of a minority group and also serves as a cultural emblem useful for facilitating cross-cultural interaction (Zheng 1990). Identifying such differences in the music of Hong Kong diasporas, however, cannot be easily accomplished. The globalization of Euro-American musical cultures, especially the aggressive marketing of Western popular music, had a tremendous homogenizing effect on music originating in Hong Kong and its diasporas. Consequently, modern popular music of Hong Kong, the music that is most pervasive in the daily lives of the city's residents and first-generation Hong Kong immigrants, is very similar, at least on the surface, to Western popular music. Yet, as Yu has suggested, the general features of Hong Kong popular culture, including music, from the end of the 1970s up to the beginning of the twenty-first century are distinctively Chinese despite their resemblance to foreign forms: Most of the various popular cultures of today are very much "foreignized" (yanghua >TMb) and follow closely the changing global trends. As these trends rise and decline, whatever is in vogue in Europe, the United States, or Japan, Hong Kong follows suit; hence, the music of Hong Kong is basically non-Chinese. But in spite of these overwhelming foreign influences, the popular culture of Hong Kong has surprisingly included a lot of Chinese musical elements and concepts. Some of them can actually serve as examples in Chinese music history classes. Hong Kong is "foreignized" on the surface, but at the deep level of popular culture, its music is still rooted in Chinese music (2001: 96; my translation). A different approach to studying the relationship between ethnicity and music, as 134 suggested by Deborah Wong's research on Asian American jazz and hip hop musicians, is to explore how Western musical genres are performed differently by people with non-Western backgrounds (2004). Similarly, the most intriguing thing about contemporary worship music of the diasporic Christian community studied in this thesis is that unique approaches to adapting and modifying these Western genres can be identified in the music, even though the music does not differ much on the surface from certain genres of Western music. These, in turn, subtly convey the community's experiences, histories, and political stances. In this thesis, such identity constructions have been traced mainly through two music making practices. Firstly, a multilingual repertoire is a characteristic trait of Christian worship music in Hong Kong diasporas. This mixed repertoire of songs in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English embodies the complex matrix of identifications with multiple ethnic and sociolinguistic identities that has been produced when the immigrants lived in Hong Kong's colonial and postcolonial histories. As these people move transnationally, they have brought these complex identity formations with them and adapted these formations to their experience of living in the diasporas. Secondly, the worship music of these immigrants consistently makes references, through stylistic 135 similarities, to Hong Kong popular music of the 1970s and 1980s. These references have created a kind of circumscribed nostalgia that signifies the immigrants' identification with an idealized Hong Kong identity. With an undertone of utopianism, this identity evokes longing for the homeland alongside negotiating national and ethnic identities created by the immigration experience on the one hand, and political developments in Hong Kong and China on the other. Moreover, this identity is not simply associated with Hong Kong, but rather with the era of the seventies and eighties, the period when a genuine and independent local identity had begun to emerge in Hong Kong. Hybrid Music and a Manifestation of an Alternative Modernity In exploring how identities are mediated through the adoption, transformation, and integration of Western and Eastern musical styles and linguistic practices in the worship music of this diasporic community, this thesis illustrates an important point in the study of vernacular music originating in Hong Kong. Previous studies on the subject have emphasized that the modern popular music of Hong Kong is a hybrid music, mixing Western popular music (as well as Japanese popular music, which is in itself much influenced by Western pop) with Chinese musical culture. The pervasiveness of foreign musical elements in this local genre has been the focus of most research on Hong Kong's 136 popular music (e.g., Lee 2005; Man 1998; Witzleben 2000; Yu 2001). In addition, Marc Moskowitz has pointed out the tendency for critiques in English, affected by Euro-centric biases, to disparage Asian hybrid popular musics as failing to live up to their constituent Western genres or simply as inferior, unattractive musics (2009). This thesis uses contemporary Cantonese Christian music, a sub-genre of Hong Kong popular music, as a case in point to explore the nuances of the synthetic nature of Hong Kong's music. This case study has illustrated that the synthetic process is not an uncreative and inferior imitation of the West's musics. Rather, the adoption of foreign musics in Hong Kong popular music reflects a creative selection and manipulation of materials, conditioned by the musical, cultural, and historical backgrounds of Hong Kong people. To characterize the popular music of Hong Kong and its diasporas as merely "hybrid" is inadequate in the sense that the concept of hybridity often implicitly takes Western culture as the frame of reference forjudging the music's value and significance. As Iwabuchi, Muske, and Thomas wrote: ... the arguments of heterogenisation, hybridisation and creolisation still tend not to transcend the West-the Rest paradigm. We still tend to think of global-local interactions by how the non-West responds to the West and to neglect how the non-Western countries "rework" modernities (2004: 9). Any analysis of Hong Kong popular music that is based on a Euro-centric understanding 137 of hybridity can easily slip into a conclusion that this music is basically an imitation of Western genres with added indigenous flavour and Chinese lyrics. When hybridity is taken as the essence of Hong Kong popular music, the music's complex and dynamic process of development through changing historical situations is obscured. Through studying the sub-genre Cantonese Christian music, this thesis has investigated the processes that have shaped the popular music of Hong Kong. The development of Hong Kong popular music reveals that the genre should be recognized as an alternative modernity forged by the society of Hong Kong and its diasporas in the last third of the twentieth century. This approach shifts the attention beyond the identification of static and stereotyped musical elements, foreign and local, to the processes of selection and transformation of these elements. These processes have rarely been discussed apart from Witzleben's observation that most foreign materials incorporated into Cantopop have affinities with traditional Chinese musical values, such as the preferences for clear, refined voices and clear articulation of speech tones (2000). By exploring other aspects of these processes, Hong Kong popular music and its derivative forms can be seen as parts of an Asian modernity, which is constructed through "a forced experience of indigenising Western cultural influences" (Iwabuchi, Muecke, and Thomas 2004: 2). This thesis 138 suggests that through integrating the connotations of using multiple languages and the ideology of political neutrality with selected Western musical forms, particularly the "soft rock" style, the diasporic community under study has transformed Western popular music into a sign that represents not the West and its global cultural dominance, but a version of modernity as experienced in the era when Hong Kong was a burgeoning player in the global stages of international finance, urban development, and modernization. Seeing the Homeland through Diasporic Music Making Finally, this thesis illustrates that the Hong Kong diaspora in the GTA and its homeland are closely connected to each other in many aspects of daily living, including musical culture. Cultural traffic is so frequent that many cultural activities rooted in the Hong Kong experience are virtually synchronized across the two places. One instance of such traffic has been explored in this thesis: the influence of Christian music that originated in Hong Kong on the repertoire and music making practice in diasporic churches. This exploration prompts further questions about the musical and cultural traffic between Hong Kong and its diasporas. For contemporary Christian music, is the transmission of musical culture only in a single direction, from the homeland to the diasporas? Or is there two-way traffic? How does the music of the diasporas influence the 139 music making of Christian communities in Hong Kong? And what is the significance of the "backflow" of diasporic influence to people in Hong Kong? Furthermore, it is interesting that Christian churches in Hong Kong share a large portion of Cantonese and Mandarin song repertoires as well as many music making practices with Cantonese-speaking churches in the diasporas. The styles of contemporary worship music of these churches in widely diverse places are virtually identical. Do these overlapping repertoires and musical practices have the same significance, besides religious representations, for both diasporic and homeland churches? This is a question for further research on the music of Hong Kong and musical influences flowing within the diasporic network, and some potential points of departure addressing this question may be inferred from the discussions in this thesis. Through physical displacement, Hong Kong immigrants have immersed themselves in an unfamiliar mainstream culture. Cultural estrangement has shaken the immigrants' established identities and triggered new self-understandings and strategies for representing an identity of being a minority. This thesis has posited a significant relationship between contemporary church music and this process of identity re-construction among Hong Kong immigrants. Are there similar processes for 140 constructing and expressing identities through religious music in the homeland churches? Do the processes in the diasporas, where the political and social milieu are different from those in Hong Kong, have any influence on the identities back in the homeland? The answers to these questions are likely to be positive because of the intimate connection between Hong Kong and its diasporas, a condition especially true for Hong Kong immigrants in Canada as explained in Chapter Two. More importantly, identity constructions in the homeland and in the diasporas are comparable because identities in Hong Kong, like their counterparts in the diasporas, are characterized by instability. Choi (1990) and Joseph (2000) have both suggested that the collective self-identification of Hong Kong residents has been ambiguous, in flux, and ambivalent since 1949, when the nation state of communist China was established, well into the twenty-first century. Identity crises, different in cause but comparable in nature to those happening in the diasporas, have been occurring in Hong Kong for the past 170 years due to political changes in the city and in its relationship with China. Either under the control of the British colonial government or of the Chinese government, the native identity and culture of the city's people have been subordinated to the cultures representing the ruling regimes, as these non-native cultures have been politically more powerful and often 141 deemed as superior. Whether regional, national, or global, these non-native cultures have threatened to assimilate and marginalize the native, local culture. Consequently, Hong Kong residents have been anxious of both being alienated from the more powerful cultural forces, on which they depend on for political stability and continuing economic prosperity, and of losing their own local identity. Such ambivalent feelings arose during the period of European domination and have continued under Communist China sovereignty and even in the face of the global network of Mandarin-speaking pan-Chinese communities. The fact that Cantonese-speaking Christian communities in both the diasporas and the homeland embrace similar styles of music may not be a coincidence or a simple transnational movement of cultural products. Rather, both could be an expression of a unique Hong Kong identity and a specific nostalgic reference to the golden period of Hong Kong history when facing the challenges of mainstream or dominant cultures. Circulating within the cultural network of Hong Kong and its diasporas are the themes of rootless-ness, an idealized local identity, and the wish for autonomy in actualizing this identity. 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