Joseph S. C. Lam
· Professor of MusicologyUniversity of Michigan · Department of Musicology
Active 1989–2025
About
Joseph S. C. Lam is a professor of musicology in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance at the University of Michigan. He is a musicologist and sinologist whose specialization includes the musics and cultures of Southern Song (1127-1275), Ming (1368-1644), and modern China (1900 to present). Lam regularly and extensively lectures in China, Europe, and the U.S. and has published works on Chinese music and performance, including a recent book titled Kunqu, the Classical Opera of Globalized China (2022). Since 2020, he has been teaching courses on Chinese music and culture, ethnomusicology practices and theories, and music as creative and/or historical practices. Starting from winter 2024, he will teach a course on shiyue, Chinese songs set to lyrics in the Shijing, the Classic of Poetry.
Research topics
- History
- Psychology
- Art
- Computer Science
- Literature
- Political Science
- Philosophy
- Aesthetics
- Acoustics
- Law
- Advertising
- Geography
- Business
- Archaeology
Selected publications
East Asian Publishing and Society · 2025-03-10
article1st authorCorresponding2024-06-17
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingMonumenta Serica · 2024-01-02
article1st authorCorrespondingWhy and How Do Chinese Sing <i>Shijing</i> Songs?
Oxford University Press eBooks · 2023 · 1 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Computer Science
- Political Science
- Literature
Abstract This chapter presents an overview of the Chinese tradition of chanting and singing Shijing songs, songs that Confucius (551–479 BCE) anthologized and used to teach his humanist ideals. Since then, Chinese people have been chanting and singing the songs to investigate, comprehend, and debate their aesthetic values, memories, histories, and contemporary realities, revealing through such activities their musical and social-political agendas and identities. To illustrate these processes of personal and social expression, this essay describes Shijing songs as text, music, and performance, traces their historical development and notated sources, and sketches practical and theoretical challenges for creating and restoring the songs as historical or contemporary music.
Kunqu Institutions, Practitioners, Terminology, and Theories
Hong Kong University Press eBooks · 2022-12-31
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingThis chapter introduces kunqu institutions, practitioners, their discursive keywords, and international theories for examining the genre in twenty-first-century contexts. Currently, there are eight state/city supported kunqu troupes in mainland China, each of which presents shows on a regular basis, and operates with a large staff of librettists, composers, actor-singers, instrumentalists, make-up and costume artists, sound and light designers, and other production specialists. Many semi-professional troupes and amateur institutions operating inside and/or outside mainland China mount kunqu shows, entertaining themselves and their audience. Kunqu performers and audience actively communicate with one another, expressing their views with an insider’s vocabulary. Its keywords and tropes, like <italic>qingchun dianya</italic> (being youthful, cultivated, charming and productive) and <italic>yanhuole (</italic> bringing characters alive on stage <italic>)</italic> , encapsulate kunqu aesthetics, social-political functions, production goals, performance values, and appreciation paradigms. When they are theoretically defined and nuanced with international theories on world cultures and performing arts, the keywords and tropes constitute practical paradigms for examining kunqu performance and discourse.
Hong Kong University Press eBooks · 2022 · 38 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Art
- Literature
- History
As the first comprehensive and scholarly book on kunqu written in English, Joseph S.C. Lam’s <italic>Kunqu: A Classical Opera of Twenty-First-Century China</italic> , presents a holistic view of the 600-years-old genre which has recently been transformed into a vibrant world opera. Approaching kunqu from different perspectives, ranging from those of performers and producers to those of causal audience, dedicated connoisseurs, and scholarly critics, Lam describes the genre in its cultural, historical and performance contexts, and analyses its representative shows with a judicious blend of Chinese and international theories and methods. Lam posits that kunqu not only tells Chinese lives and dreams with virtuoso performance of literary lyrics, flowing melodies, and elegant dances, but also informs on the transformation of intangible cultural heritages and performing arts throughout the globalized world.
Kunqu as a Twenty-First-Century Chinese ICH and World Opera
Hong Kong University Press eBooks · 2022-12-31
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingThis chapter examines Chinese preservation, development and exportation of kunqu with four analytical accounts. They are: a survey of overseas kunqu performances since the late 1950s, an account of China’s Sinicization of UNESCO ICH theories and practices, an examination of kunqu as an irreplaceable example of Chinese and world ICH, and an report on Bando Tamasaburo’s <italic>Peony Pavilion</italic> , a unique rendition that manifests the kabuki master performer’s Japanese aesthetics and performance skills of female impersonation. Significantly, Bando’s rendition not only charmed and encouraged Chinese kunqu practitioners to openly revive the genre’s traditional female impersonation practices, but also exposed the core issues of kunqu’s modernization and globalization: how, why, and for whom twenty-first-century China is preserving, developing and exporting kunqu as a classical opera of China and a world ICH.
Hong Kong University Press eBooks · 2022-12-31
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingThis chapter presents twenty-first-century kunqu not as a national and unified phenomenon but as a conglomerate of regional institutions and competing stakeholders. To mount artistically and commercially successful shows, kunqu practitioners have to operate in <italic>yuescapes</italic> , namely dynamic times and sites that shape and are shaped by stakeholders’ artistic talents, social-political identities, performance agendas and contexts, and access to nationally and locally available resources. In these <italic>yuescapes</italic> , such as those found in the cities of Suzhou and Taipei, and in mainland China as a nation, localized kunqu operations would produce unique shows, such as the <italic>1699 Peach Blossom Fan</italic> that Shengkun of Nanjing premiered in 2006. Featuring the troupe’s young and handsome actor-singers who don spectacular costumes tailor-made by Nanjing clothing shops, the show tells a love story that took place in Nanjing while Ming China (1368-1644) collapsed. As such, the show makes a revealing manifesto on not only kunqu operations and products, but also Nanjing as a historical and contemporary site of Chinese lives and dreams..
Hong Kong University Press eBooks · 2022-12-31
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingExtract Hong Kong University Press The University of Hong Kong Pokfulam Road Hong Kong https://hkupress.hku.hk © 2022 Hong Kong University Press ISBN 978-988-8754-32-8 (Hardback) All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound by J&S Printing Co., Ltd. in Hong Kong, China
Hong Kong University Press eBooks · 2022-12-31
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 3 shared
Jenny Kwai‐Sim Leung
- 3 shared
Kieran James
- 2 shared
Christian de Pee
University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
- 1 shared
Timothy J. Cooley
- 1 shared
Thai Son Hoang
- 1 shared
Seon Young Ham
- 1 shared
Ben Pritchard
- 1 shared
Shuen-fu Lin
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