Harmonizing Across a Divide: The Music Confucius Institute

Harmonizing Across a Divide: The Music Confucius Institute
In this presentation, we describe the perspectives of managers and Chinese
instrument teachers with the world’s first Confucius Institute to have a focus on
music, Copenhagen’s Music Confucius Institute (MCI). Previous research has
theorized the notion of “soft power” and documented diverse opinions on China’s
system of Confucius Institutes, while previous ethnomusicological studies have
established that music exchange can reduce international conflict, but a need
persists for further studies of Chinese music policy. Our pioneering study examines
the views of expert Chinese musicians who taught for the MCI in Europe and a
leading music conservatory in China, as well as the complex diplomacy associated
with managing such intercultural music institutions. One author worked for nine
years founding director of the MCI, and can thereby offer a view from direct
experience. The other author visited the MCI multiple times, later serving as Visiting
Scholar at the Central Conservatory of Music where he interviewed and observed
the work of instrumentalists who had taught in both Beijing and Copenhagen.
Fitting the ESEM theme, our presentation emphasizes issues in research
collaboration, including that of balancing between Sinophobia and jingoism,
cultural diplomacy, self-censorship, and strategies of reflective distancing to “make
the familiar strange”, thereby obtaining insights with broad applicability. We will
demonstrate how personal relations and diverging stakeholders can make
ethnomusicological studies of leadership delicate in international contexts due to
the need to maintain healthy collaborations that may be misunderstood due to
prejudices from multiple directions.