Musical enculturation, learning, and the values of four Hong Kong socio-musical groups

This research investigates how the different ways of music learning practices influence people’s belief in the value of music and music learning in four socio-musical group in Hong Kong. The four musical groups are: Popular musicians, music teachers, Chaozhou Xianshi musicians, and the Filipinos. Whilst the first two groups were locally born Hongkongees, the last two are diasporas who were born and raised in Mainland China and the Philippines respectively. A qualitative research design is adopted with six interviews and for each musical group together with non-participant observations. A total of 24 interviews were then conducted. Observations were taken in the musical rehearsals of popular musicians, Chaozhou Xianshi musicians, and the live performances of the Filipinos and the Chaozhou group. A trip had been made to Chaozhou, China to have a better understanding of their music-making tradition. From the data shown, the informants’ learning practices can fall into four categories: enculturation, informal, non-formal and formal way of learning. Though all groups involve more than one kind of learning practices, the music teacher group is the only group has formal musical learning practices yet they are shown to be the least active music-making group in their life after leaving college. For the other three groups which mainly learnt their music in enculturation, informal and non-formal ways are on the other hand shown to have more passion in active music-making throughout their life. Another finding is that the ways how and what they value music depend on their cultural background.