7 ms·

> Music is a very "asian" or "chinese" thing to put your child through. Asian culture simply adopted American and English culture in this regard. In the United

by wahern 4y ago

> Music is a very "asian" or "chinese" thing to put your child through. Asian culture simply adopted American and English culture in this regard. In the United States circa 1950s and 1960s it was very common for children to be taking piano lessons, and owning a piano was also relatively common. Both the lessons and the piano itself were important status symbols, and having both were considered markers of being middle-class. My mother's side was middle-class Irish-Catholic and she and all her siblings had to take lessons; they also grew up with a piano in the home. By contrast, my fathers side was working-class Polish-German and both pianos and piano lessons were well out of reach--the family cleaned the church on weekends for reduced Catholic school tuition. But I think all 4 of my paternal aunts did have pianos in their homes as adults. So most of my cousins (all maternal, most paternal) grew up with pianos in their homes, though their parents were much less strict about lessons. My wife, who grew up in Malaysia, had the same experience as my mother. All of her grandparents were already middle-class (shop owners, professionals, etc), but old-world Chinese middle-class where status markers were making donations to religious and fraternal organizations or studying calligraphy. It was her parents generation that bought pianos and forced the kids to take lessons. And doing the same was important for both she and her brother. (I also appreciate the desire, it's just less of a parental priority for me.) The practice may be a little stickier in Asian culture (both in Asia and Asian diaspora) as the piano slotted into similar, pre-existing social customs which may remain more durable, but I think the overall arc is basically the same, just shifted up one or two generations.

bobthepanda 4y ago
as a second generation Chinese American, at least growing up it seemed like keeping up with the rest of the community, but it wasn't really so much about being middle class, but more about the kind of "so and so's child is a star tennis player, a pianist, the class president, speaks three languages, and they're probably going to get into Harvard and my child is going to need to keep up."
- TheAznestWhitey 4y ago
  Went to high school with the daughter of Chinese immigrants like that. Star tennis player, stellar pianist, 1st chair violinist in the city's youth orchestra, valedictorian, ivy league med school, doctor, etc... Some people are just built differently.
true_religion 4y ago
> Asian culture simply adopted American and English culture in this regard Since the OP mentioned China specifically, I think it’s good to note that the Chinese elite have venerated art for millennia. Poetry writing, singing, and playing musical instruments were a staple of every young nobles education during the times of the Imperial dynasties. It’s not at all something simply copied from the British during colonization.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  I've never heard of a Chinese/Asian parent forcing the erhu or pipa on their kids though: it's always Western instruments, particularly the violin and piano.
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    You can read into that, that violin and piano are considered to be high status. And yes, probably, the current 20th century legacy of western culture being high status.
  - andi999 4y ago
    the instruments changed (like clothing fashion) but the idea to learn art stayed.
  - SenHeng 4y ago
    The erhu and pipa were lowly instruments equivalent to guitars of today. The noveau rich are going to want something like the koto. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koto_(instrument) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koto_(instrument)
    - CapricornNoble 4y ago
      That instrument always makes me think of this scene from Hero with Jet Li & Donnie Yen: https://youtu.be/AeeoEpmyb2Y https://youtu.be/AeeoEpmyb2Y
    - thematrixturtle 4y ago
Gordonjcp 4y ago
> In the United States circa 1950s and 1960s it was very common for children to be taking piano lessons, and owning a piano was also relatively common. Growing up in Scotland in the 1970s and 1980s my friends and I all thought it was a bit weird that some people we know *didn't* have various musical instruments scattered about the house. My son was about six months old when he discovered that guitars make a noise, and since then my "living room" guitar has been tuned to open D ;-)
zasdffaa 4y ago
I knew a kid whose parents forced him to learn the violin. It was a social status thing, doubtless wrapped up in "it's good for you and you'll thank us" but it really was about them and jacking up their social standing a bit, and he didn't get a choice of instrument because violin had more social cachet so he got a violin and violin lessons. He totally hated it. This was in the UK some decades ago.
simonh 4y ago
My daughters took piano lessons and it really didn't work out, they never really enjoyed it and when the pandemic hit that was it. In retrospect I think having them do grades was a mistake. They enjoyed music and one of them even started a band with friends at school, but doing the grades was a grind. If they'd taken just fun lessons learning different types of music I think thing would have worked out very differently.
- hammock 4y ago
  Don’t be too hard on yourself
KolenCh 4y ago
I’m not sure if your statement about Asian adopting this idea from the west is right, but in ancient times a Chinese scholar has to excel at 琴棋書畫, where the first is a musical instrument. As someone who spent years self learning piano without having a piano to convince my mother to have a piano, I envy anyone why are forced to learn such thing. I have a younger cousin who in his childhood I encouraged her mother to let him take any music lessons, where she was very reluctant. (Yeah so not all Asian will force you to learn, because it is expensive.) In the end, somehow he got into orchestra in Uni, I’m proud of him. I’d argue that music training should be mandatory similar to other subjects like math, history, etc. Simply being put through the training progress is good education that you rarely find in other settings. Just like not everyone becomes a mathematician, it’s ok you don’t become a musician too.
- wahern 4y ago
  There's nothing new in any civilization about the upper classes studying and venerating art and music. What was new was the emergence of large middle classes and a very rapid, peculiarly pervasive adoption of the piano in particular. It may have started in Continental Europe, but as far as I can tell it was through Victorian England that it spread across the globe--directly through the British Empire, but also indirectly through the U.S. and then, especially in Asia, Japan. We're not talking electronic keyboards, but a large and expensive musical instrument which might cost as much as all the other furnishings in a house combined. It was usually upright pianos, which were cheaper and could sit against a wall, but still a major purchase. Today you're much more likely to find electronic keyboards in homes, which even at the higher end are still a much smaller purchase for middle-class incomes, yet you probably[citation needed] would not find them in nearly as many homes as pianos in their heyday. Pianos are extremely functional instruments and in many respects ideal for learning music, but that alone doesn't even begin to explain their popularity, nor the popularity of piano music lessons. Different countries had their own local dynamics. The Mandarin system built up a type of middle class culture (even if the middle class itself was never very big) throughout much of East and SE Asia, making formal study of classic art and literature a virtue for non-elites, including the poor, whether or not a family could actually afford an education. Japan never adopted the Mandarin system (class hierarchy too deep and rigid), but the Meiji Restoration accomplished much the same in making virtues of the Japanese intelligentsia part of a new middle class culture. So these cultures in particular were already primed for the piano-as-modern-middle-class-status-symbol wave when industrialization exploded their middle classes. And perhaps this is why the violin and classical Western music in general also saw relatively strong adoption--because classical music was already held in esteem by the masses, and much of that esteem simply shifted to Western classical music. (By contrast, in American and some European cultures much more emphasis seems to have been placed on women learning the piano. And dynamics such as the Protestant work ethic tend to moderate mass adoption of elite norms which aren't immediately practical or beneficial.) In any event, my point was just that this experience wrt piano lessons which are strongly encouraged and even demanded by parents has been shared (indistinguishably so, and for nearly indistinguishable reasons) by many millions of families all across the world, including in the U.S., where it approached something approximating a universal experience among the middle-class--actually taking lessons, or at least understanding that it was something you were supposed to be doing. It's just that most of those experiences outside Asia and the Asian diaspora occurred in earlier generations. The differences lay in how and when different communities arrived at that cross-cultural nexus, and how they moved away from it, if they did at all.

by wahern 4y ago

bobthepanda 4y ago

as a second generation Chinese American, at least growing up it seemed like keeping up with the rest of the community, but it wasn't really so much about being middle class, but more about the kind of "so and so's child is a star tennis player, a pianist, the class president, speaks three languages, and they're probably going to get into Harvard and my child is going to need to keep up."

TheAznestWhitey 4y ago
Went to high school with the daughter of Chinese immigrants like that. Star tennis player, stellar pianist, 1st chair violinist in the city's youth orchestra, valedictorian, ivy league med school, doctor, etc... Some people are just built differently.

true_religion 4y ago

> Asian culture simply adopted American and English culture in this regard Since the OP mentioned China specifically, I think it’s good to note that the Chinese elite have venerated art for millennia. Poetry writing, singing, and playing musical instruments were a staple of every young nobles education during the times of the Imperial dynasties. It’s not at all something simply copied from the British during colonization.

thematrixturtle 4y ago
I've never heard of a Chinese/Asian parent forcing the erhu or pipa on their kids though: it's always Western instruments, particularly the violin and piano.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  You can read into that, that violin and piano are considered to be high status. And yes, probably, the current 20th century legacy of western culture being high status.
- andi999 4y ago
  the instruments changed (like clothing fashion) but the idea to learn art stayed.
- SenHeng 4y ago
  The erhu and pipa were lowly instruments equivalent to guitars of today. The noveau rich are going to want something like the koto. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koto_(instrument) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koto_(instrument)
  - CapricornNoble 4y ago
    That instrument always makes me think of this scene from Hero with Jet Li & Donnie Yen: https://youtu.be/AeeoEpmyb2Y https://youtu.be/AeeoEpmyb2Y
  - thematrixturtle 4y ago

Gordonjcp 4y ago

> In the United States circa 1950s and 1960s it was very common for children to be taking piano lessons, and owning a piano was also relatively common. Growing up in Scotland in the 1970s and 1980s my friends and I all thought it was a bit weird that some people we know *didn't* have various musical instruments scattered about the house. My son was about six months old when he discovered that guitars make a noise, and since then my "living room" guitar has been tuned to open D ;-)

zasdffaa 4y ago

I knew a kid whose parents forced him to learn the violin. It was a social status thing, doubtless wrapped up in "it's good for you and you'll thank us" but it really was about them and jacking up their social standing a bit, and he didn't get a choice of instrument because violin had more social cachet so he got a violin and violin lessons. He totally hated it. This was in the UK some decades ago.

simonh 4y ago

My daughters took piano lessons and it really didn't work out, they never really enjoyed it and when the pandemic hit that was it. In retrospect I think having them do grades was a mistake. They enjoyed music and one of them even started a band with friends at school, but doing the grades was a grind. If they'd taken just fun lessons learning different types of music I think thing would have worked out very differently.

hammock 4y ago
Don’t be too hard on yourself

KolenCh 4y ago

I’m not sure if your statement about Asian adopting this idea from the west is right, but in ancient times a Chinese scholar has to excel at 琴棋書畫, where the first is a musical instrument. As someone who spent years self learning piano without having a piano to convince my mother to have a piano, I envy anyone why are forced to learn such thing. I have a younger cousin who in his childhood I encouraged her mother to let him take any music lessons, where she was very reluctant. (Yeah so not all Asian will force you to learn, because it is expensive.) In the end, somehow he got into orchestra in Uni, I’m proud of him. I’d argue that music training should be mandatory similar to other subjects like math, history, etc. Simply being put through the training progress is good education that you rarely find in other settings. Just like not everyone becomes a mathematician, it’s ok you don’t become a musician too.

wahern 4y ago
There's nothing new in any civilization about the upper classes studying and venerating art and music. What was new was the emergence of large middle classes and a very rapid, peculiarly pervasive adoption of the piano in particular. It may have started in Continental Europe, but as far as I can tell it was through Victorian England that it spread across the globe--directly through the British Empire, but also indirectly through the U.S. and then, especially in Asia, Japan. We're not talking electronic keyboards, but a large and expensive musical instrument which might cost as much as all the other furnishings in a house combined. It was usually upright pianos, which were cheaper and could sit against a wall, but still a major purchase. Today you're much more likely to find electronic keyboards in homes, which even at the higher end are still a much smaller purchase for middle-class incomes, yet you probably[citation needed] would not find them in nearly as many homes as pianos in their heyday. Pianos are extremely functional instruments and in many respects ideal for learning music, but that alone doesn't even begin to explain their popularity, nor the popularity of piano music lessons. Different countries had their own local dynamics. The Mandarin system built up a type of middle class culture (even if the middle class itself was never very big) throughout much of East and SE Asia, making formal study of classic art and literature a virtue for non-elites, including the poor, whether or not a family could actually afford an education. Japan never adopted the Mandarin system (class hierarchy too deep and rigid), but the Meiji Restoration accomplished much the same in making virtues of the Japanese intelligentsia part of a new middle class culture. So these cultures in particular were already primed for the piano-as-modern-middle-class-status-symbol wave when industrialization exploded their middle classes. And perhaps this is why the violin and classical Western music in general also saw relatively strong adoption--because classical music was already held in esteem by the masses, and much of that esteem simply shifted to Western classical music. (By contrast, in American and some European cultures much more emphasis seems to have been placed on women learning the piano. And dynamics such as the Protestant work ethic tend to moderate mass adoption of elite norms which aren't immediately practical or beneficial.) In any event, my point was just that this experience wrt piano lessons which are strongly encouraged and even demanded by parents has been shared (indistinguishably so, and for nearly indistinguishable reasons) by many millions of families all across the world, including in the U.S., where it approached something approximating a universal experience among the middle-class--actually taking lessons, or at least understanding that it was something you were supposed to be doing. It's just that most of those experiences outside Asia and the Asian diaspora occurred in earlier generations. The differences lay in how and when different communities arrived at that cross-cultural nexus, and how they moved away from it, if they did at all.