In search of a voice
Subtitle: karaoke and the construction of identity in Chinese America
By: Casey Man Kong Lum.
Series: Everyday communication
Publisher: L. Erlbaum Associates
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Mahwah, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 128
Subjects: Chinese Americans -- Music.; Karaoke -- Social aspects -- United States.; Chinese Americans -- Social life and customs.
Description: This book analyzes the social origins of karaoke and the dramaturgical characteristics of karaoke events, and explains how various musical genres are reframed as karaoke music. It also visits the numerous karaoke scenes in their natural context -- the sites of the actual consumption of media products, such as expensive private homes and fancy hotel ballrooms in the affluent suburbs of New Jersey, working-class restaurants and nightclubs in the multiethnic neighborhoods in Flushing, Queens, and Cantonese opera music clubs in New York's Chinatown. Finally, the book offers an intimate analysis of how karaoke has been adopted by several interpretive communities of first-generation Chinese immigrants not only as popular entertainment but also as a means to help (re)define their social identity and way of life. -- Publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 117-122) and indexes.