The Influence of Confucianism and Western Psychological and Religious Culture on Identity and Music Learning among Chinese Musicians

During the 19th century Western music was introduced to China. Chinese people have maintained a passion for learning Western instruments which symbolises modernity, carries class and religious implications, and serves as a cultural mandate into Western culture. In collectivist Confucian societies, music education supports moral cultivation, and arts immersion shapes the pupil’s character. In Western individualistic culture, music learning primarily aims for personal enrichment and skill acquisition. The Eastern Confucian virtue of self-perfection aligns with Western self-actualisation recognised in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. My project investigated how the fusion of Confucianism and Western psychological and religious culture influenced identity formation and music learning of diasporic Chinese. Specifically, I explored how parenting beliefs, styles and practices rooted in cultural norms shaped the development of musical thoughts, behaviours, abilities, and identities of Chinese musicians.

Under phenomenological methodology, I employed three styles of research writings to explore Chinese musicians’ lived experiences including myself, a cultural insider and participant-researcher. My project recruited 49 musicians (18 included) from Australia, Hong Kong and the US of different genders, ages, and career stages encompassing musicians’ life cycles, thus enabling a fruitful discussion about their transitional changes. My dissertation is a ‘Thesis with Published Works’ which comprises an exegesis, 10 linking articles, a discussion and conclusion. The articles include one narrative inquiry, two autoethnographies, one shared autoethnography, and six Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) studies. Data for the narrative inquiry and autoethnographies used my self-reflections, complemented by my diaries and artefacts. Data for the IPA studies were interview transcripts, artefacts, email correspondences, my researcher journal and observation notes.

All participants were immersed in East-West influences from birth, the fusions of diverse cultures influenced their achievements and identities. Five overarching themes emerged: Confucianism, the umbilical cord; tension between collectivism and individualism; impact of parental goals and practices on children’s music learning; function and meaning of music in musicians’ lives; and musicians’ natural inclination for self-perfection and self-actualisation. Different cultural norms exerted sometimes conflicting forces upon the participants’ development and shaped them to become who they are; but their identities remain fluid.

The findings confirmed that a sociocultural psychology approach to research in music education provided rich understandings of the role of culture in shaping individuals’ music learning and identity. Confucianism has many overlaps with Western psychological and religious culture. It is a global philosophy that is readily transferable, applicable, and comparable to Western culture; thus blurring the boundaries between east and west, as well as dismissing the East-West dichotomy which does not consider diverse cultures in terms of a continuum. Parents remain the most influential figures in shaping their children’s cognitive, emotional, psychosocial, spiritual, and musical development. Cultural diversity is at the forefront of education and family studies; future research should consider family dynamics including parent-child and sibling relationships and kin role modelling among diverse racial and ethnic groups. Increasingly teachers across the globe have students with hybrid cultural identities, so greater understandings of cultural and musical underpinnings can assist the development of better teaching and learning at all levels.