FUAIM Lecture - Matthew A. Haywood- 27/03/25, Ó Riada Hall, 11:00am

1 Jan 2025

Happening On 27/03/2025

Surviving the Silence: The Resilience of Hong Kong Cantonese Opera Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic

Matthew A. Haywood is a Lecturer in Music at the Macau University of Science and Technology. His research interests focus on the sustainability, identities, and affects of Chinese and Japanese musical traditions. He has published in Ethnomusicology Forum and is the current Secretary of the Association for Chinese Music Research.

From 2020 to 2022, Hong Kong implemented strict public health measures to combat and contain the COVID-19 virus. These measures unfortunately caused economic hardship for many artistic and cultural industries. Whilst Cantonese opera faced significant challenges, the genre successfully survived this period and quickly regained momentum once restrictions were lifted. Such a strong and quick recovery contrasts sharply with the usual claims found in popular discourse that Cantonese opera is in a state of constant decline. This seminar therefore explores how Cantonese opera navigated the COVID-19 pandemic without sustaining significant or long-term damage. The economic and social frameworks of the Cantonese opera industry are analysed through the lens of resilience scholarship to shed light on how musical genres achieve resilience. Moreover, Haywood demonstrates how accounting for the specific dynamics that underpin Cantonese opera’s resilience can reshape our understanding of music sustainability, particularly in terms of how affective ties and social capital influence the resilience of musical genres.

Readings

Chan, Sau-yan. 2019. ‘Cantonese Opera’. In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Traditional Chinese Culture, edited by Sin-wai Chan, 169–85. London: Routledge.

Mathews, Gordon and Tai-lok Lui. 2001. ‘Introduction’. In Consuming Hong Kong, edited by Gordon Mathews and Tai-lok Lui, 1–21. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Schippers, Huib and Catherine Grant. 2016. ‘Approaching Music Cultures as Ecosystems: A Dynamic Model for Understanding and Supporting Sustainability’. In Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures: An Ecological Perspective, edited by Huib Schippers and Catherine Grant, 333–52. New York: Oxford University Press.

Walker, Brian and David Salt. 2006. Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

Zolli, Andrew and Ann-Marie Healy. 2012. Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back. New York: Free Press.