Claiming Diaspora: Music, Transnationalism, and Cultural Politics in Asian/Chinese America adds a most welcome dimension to study of, in the author's words, the “Asian/Chinese” experience in America—that of music, which, the author points out, has been strangely ignored until now despite the significance of its role in the formation of the Asian/Chinese American cultural identity. The book fills in this gap with an excellent historical overview of almost 150 years of music making and consumption among the Chinese in America, or rather, more specifically, in New York City, followed by an exhaustive accounting of individuals and groups active on New York's Chinese American music scene in 1992-1993. It also makes note of the impact of new technologies and globalization on the modes of music making, propagation, and consumption.
Why does an author who proposes to speak to cultural debates current in twenty-first-century America focus on 1992–1993 in a book published...
