The making of a successful Chinese instrumentalist in the West: a case study of the pipa player Wu Man

The trend of pursuing higher education abroad in China has resulted in many Chinese musicians immigrating to the United States, Europe, and other Western countries. Among them is a Chinese traditional instrument pipa player, Wu Man, who has achieved great fame. This article analyses the creative life of Wu Man’s and her artistic outputs and thinking from two vantage points: as that of a famous and respected performer of the pipa and as that of a reflective practitioner whose work might be labelled practice as research, or as we term it ‘research for practice’. We draw on contextual analyses of the social and artistic environments that have shaped Wu Man’s career and her ability to integrate ‘authentic’ musical elements and world musics into new compositional and performative techniques. This article foregrounds Wu Man’s voice through personal interviews to showcase the reflexive approach she uses to shape her artistic practice.