Constructing a generational framework for guzheng practice in Malaysia: social location, cultural memory, and transmission

Within Malaysia’s postcolonial social context, the guzheng has undergone not mere technical continuation but structural reconfiguration. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Kuala Lumpur and Penang (2022–2025) and integrating Mannheim’s generational location with Turino’s diasporic/ cosmopolitan distinction and Slobin’s micromusics framework, this paper constructs an intergenerational analytical framework. Through comparative analysis of learning pathways, authority sources, and capital forms, three generational patterns emerge. The first generation relied on clan networks and embodied memory, yet with internal tensions between elite and community transmission. The second generation undertook localization experiments but operated as competing logics rather than a coherent trajectory. The third generation pursues institutional legitimacy through Chinese conservatory credentials and digital media, while maintaining structural closure beneath hybrid performance surfaces. The core of transmission lies in the transformation of legitimacy-validation mechanisms from embodied memory to institutional certification, and increasingly to bureaucratic legitimacy reinforced by mediatized visibility and episodic state co-optation. This framework elucidates how the guzheng continually reshapes its cultural authority, offering a structural perspective on the evolution of diaspora music.

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