As analysed in Chapter 5, human movement can invoke disruption of social networks and a loss of familiarity with daily routines and a diminished sense of control and status. Participation in community, such as joining a choir, creates opportunities for older Chinese immigrants to rebuild social networks (cf., Putnam, 1995). Participation can also increase older Chinese migrants‘ feelings of control over the environment and help them develop an environment that fits more closely with their needs in navigating a new cultural milieu (Wandersman & Florin, 2000).
Wei reflected on how organising a choir creates a music-mediated environment in which the members of the choir fit in and negotiate social and cultural interaction:
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We set up our own choir. However, we didn’t have professional conductor. I was a member of a choir in China, knowing a little bit about choirs. Our members asked me to conduct the choir. I started learning how to conduct a choir. When we practiced, we explored music together and influenced each other. New things were created in the process of learning and practicing.
Wei‘s account shows that music can emphasise the relatedness of members of the choir with creativeness and concreteness that language cannot easily reproduce. Through its fundamentally iconic and concrete functioning, music foregrounds the older Chinese people‘s involvement with their cultural memories, histories and identity (re)constructions (Cheung, 2008). When the choir grows, members of the choir grow too. During the processes of growth, cultural identities which belong to the symbolic dimensions of the social and cultural realities are rendered into direct and concrete musical activities, choir practices in this case. Wei, in the following account, illustrated that the musical medium is also a powerful form that mediates older Chinese migrants‘ acculturation:
We sang the Chinese songs belonging to our generation. When we sang the song My Motherland and I, we deeply missed our motherland. Being overseas Chinese living in New Zealand, we were proud of ourselves. We also learned to sing the New Zealand national anthem in English and Maori languages; of course, we had strong Chinese accents. (chuckles)
Music has a special capacity to evoke and symbolise the emotional and semantically experienced dimensions of people‘s lives (Shepherd & Wicke, 1997). It is through this capacity that Wei and her friends are able to create symbolic aspects of their social and collective worlds in songs (Cheung, 2008). By singing Chinese songs, which ―belong to their generation,‖ Wei and her friends carry their responsibilities towards their motherland and their nostalgia with the songs through which their feelings are more richly articulated. Singing English and Maori songs with a strong Chinese accent evokes a mixture of tongues. In a sense, elements of Chinese, English and Maori cultures become woven into the person‘s sense of self, reflecting the mixture of cultures and identities. Aspects of different cultures are brought into dialogue, and new identities and practices can begin to emerge as a result. This
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suggests that cultural identity is often fluid and hybrid when manifest in everyday practices (Hodgetts, Drew et al., 2010).
Multicultural musical practices can be read as registering the sense of belonging to a new land. In a sense, the songs actually become a place and home (Gunew, 2003). Tuan (2004) proposes that music is home, a virtual place people visit again and again to sing or listen to favourite songs and to gain a sense of belonging and participation. The musical landscaping and soundscape creates a place which people do not tire of returning to, and a place that nurtures the socio- cultural roots of the self, and reminds the self that home is the here and there, the then and now (Li & Groot, 2010). Music not only expresses or reflects what people are like. Music also ―creates and constructs people‖ (Cheung, 2008, p. 226). Multicultural musical practices, as a form of participatory acculturation, place the individual in the social. Music here stands for, symbolises and offers the immediate experience of the acculturating self (cf., Firth, 1987). Chan reflected:
Music is beyond cultural borders. Our choir was invited to an Indian festival
(see Figure 14). We sang the song You and Me, the 2008 Beijing Olympic
Theme Song. We sang in both Chinese and English. When the Indian community gave us big applauses, we were very proud of ourselves. After our performance, my daughter asked her Kiwi friend whether she understood our English. Her Kiwi friend said, “Yes, it’s about family and that we are family.”
In Chan‘s account, the musical landscape moves across cultural borders. The musical landscape creates, as well as being created by, the intercultural sociality. Music creates a cultural contact zone in which people from different cultures share cultural similarities (cf., Bender, 2006). In this sense, acculturation is not only concerned with cultural differences, but cultural similarities which have been overlooked in acculturation research. Moreover, through music the Chinese older people are not only acculturated by other cultures, but also acculturate people from other cultures.
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Figure 14. The Chinese choir
Wei and Chan‘s comments suggest that their acculturation occurs not merely between two cultures, but also includes Chinese, English, Maori and Indian cultures. This finding challenges the assumption in Berry‘s (2006) acculturation model that immigrants who move to a new country only have continuous and firsthand contact with a single mainstream culture (see Chapter 2). Acculturation processes of older Chinese migrants are dynamic and in flux, influenced by their intercultural participation. In New Zealand, cultural diversity is an everyday reality, which is manifested in the ongoing multicultural contact. Acknowledging acculturation as a dynamic process, interacting with increasingly multicultural landscapes, will increase awareness of how immigrants encounter and potentially incorporate values, beliefs and practices of an array of other cultures. If this possibility is embraced, members of both immigrant and receiving cultures will become progressively more knowledgeable and welcoming of a variety of cultures (Nayar, 2009).