False starts and reformulations in the study of everyday musical life in urban China

Drawing on preliminary fieldwork experiences in the small city of Kaili, Guizhou province, I present a self-critical examination of the assumptions that hindered my initial attempts to study musical practices during fieldwork. Affronted by the exoticizing representations of tourism literature, I had anticipated the opportunity to contrast these representations with the diversity of everyday music-making in the city. What I had not anticipated was the denial of the existence of music in Kaili by its inhabitants, or at least, of music which they considered worthy of academic study, writes Paul Kendall.