The path towards cultural identity : a portfolio of original compositions, arrangements and collaborations

Abstract

I was an Indonesian citizen before I immigrated to New Zealand with my family in 1996, but my national identity is rather complicated. My grandfather, who is Chinese, escaped to Indonesia during the period of Communist rule in China. In order to live in Indonesia, we had to change our surname to sound Indonesian. This is why my name is not officially Chinese. My grandfather sent my father to Taiwan to study, where he settled down and married my mother after finishing his study. So although having Indonesian citizenship, I was born in Taiwan and lived there for two-thirds of my life. Even though I was born in Taiwan, studied in Taiwan, and was able to speak the language as fluently as the Taiwanese, people still identified me as a foreigner because of my passport. And in Indonesia, people also identified me as a foreigner because of my Chinese looks. My own personal identity, then, became quite confused. Before I came to New Zealand, my musical background was very simple: I learnt the violin at age of six, and learnt the piano when I was fourteen. Although I had never specifically learnt Chinese or Indonesian music, most of the time I was surrounded by it in my living environment. Once I began studying composition with my supervisor, Jack Body, I started to become interested in different cultures. I also started to realise that my complex cultural background does not have to be a source of confusion, but that it is to my advantage that I have adapted to learning in different cultural contexts.