Musical decolonisation: the reception of Pablo Casals in Japan and the Sinophone world

Keywords: global music history
Cold War
Pablo Casals
Asia as method
musical decolonisation

This thesis, ‘Musical decolonisation: The reception of Pablo Casals in Japan and the Sinophone world,’ discusses the reception of Western art music in Japan, Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong through the lens of colonialism, the Cold War, and capitalism with a case study on the Spanish cellist and humanitarian Pablo Casals (1876-1973).
From the late nineteenth century onwards, Western art music has rooted in Japan and the Sinophone world alongside colonialism. However, postcolonial criticisms of Western art music by scholars from this region were absent until the twenty-first century. To the present day, Western art music enjoys a privileged status in this region as it receives more financial support from both governments and private sectors than local genres. My thesis considers that the phenomenon of Western art music being regarded as superior over local genres was an outcome of cultural imagination under colonisation. The core questions explored in this thesis are: 1) Why was Western art music welcome despite its association with colonialism? 2) Why did not postcolonial criticisms of Western art music gain a foothold in Japan and the Sinophone world in the twentieth century? and 3) What did the consumption of Western art music mean in these places?
In this thesis, I argue that the development of postcolonial discourses of Western art music in Japan, Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong was held back by the Cold War and consumer capitalism. In order to gain a clearer understanding of how the development of Western art music in these places was mediated by these factors, I have presented the reception history of Pablo Casals as a case study. Although Casals only visited Japan once, in 1961, and did not have any direct connection with China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, his name became well-known in the circle of Western art music lovers in these places through written materials and recordings. I have illustrated how Casals was introduced into Japan, Taiwan, and China in the first two decades of the Cold War, how his image was utilised to advance the governmental propaganda of Cold War ideologies, including humanitarianism, anti-communism, and leftism, and how his Cold War image was used to promote his CD sales in the post-Cold War era.
Methodologically, by conducting a dialogue with Chen Kuan-Hsing’s ‘inner Asian referential framework,’ my thesis has demonstrated how Casals’ reception in Japan and the Sinophone world served as the commonality amongst these territories to validate Chen’s framework. The research has also further addressed the role of capitalism in Chen’s discussion of the entangled ideologies of colonialism and the Cold War. Drawing further from Chen’s framework, which emphasises the importance of finding an alternative point of reference other than Western academia for knowledge production, my thesis has cited criticisms of Casals’ legacies made by local musicians during his residency from 1957 to 1973 from an indigenous perspective of Puerto Rico. The aim of including the Puerto Rican perspective is to prompt further discussions of musical decolonisation amongst scholars from different regions of the world.