I, Ching

for soprano, mezzo, countertenor, tenor, baritone, bass, and live electronics duration: 9’45 written 2026
By virtue of my name and my face, performances of my pieces are imbricated with various reified notions, including neoliberal conceptions of identity and culture, the intercultural framing of combining East and West, and the discursively constructed categories of the folk and the classical. Undergirding all these ideas is the specter of U.S. imperial power.

Instead of explaining to you in detail the numerous socio-political relationships that connect all the musical and textual references of this piece, I, Ching, I will just inform you that they exist. Rather, I will invite you, dear listener, to ruminate on what hidden ideologies may lurk within the way you compose, perform, and/or listen to music. I would be more than happy to write to you in more detail about the context of these quotations after the performance, if you first share with me your own reflections.

I leave you with a quote from the 2002 Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival, titled The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures, Creating Trust. Richard Kennedy, the festival curator, said in a speech during the festival opening: “The modest victories of democracy and capitalism at the end of the second millennium allowed strangers once again to meet along the ancient roads of silk and once again exchange ideas and products…. If oil was the new silk, and democracy the new religion, then where did the old cultural traditions of the Silk Road stand?”

performed by Ekmeles

listen here (I recommend using headphones)