In recent years, there has been a broad consensus across scholarship on music sustainability that diversity is beneficial for the survival of musical genres. Nonetheless, this concept has been drawn directly from ecology research and its applicability to cultural ecosystems through ethnographic methods has not yet been carefully examined. This paper therefore explores through an ethnographic lens whether the diversification of performance practices in Hong Kong Cantonese opera has impacted the sustainability of the opera. Since Cantonese opera was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009, performers and patrons have forged a variety of performance aesthetics aimed at attracting new audience groups, namely younger people and non-Chinese people typically uninterested in Chinese traditional music. On the one hand, the various styles of performance generated by this effort have attracted those desired demographic groups and have made significant progress towards improving the sustainability of the genre. On the other hand, these diverse practices were forged through performers and patrons negotiating notions of authenticity which challenges a prevalent notion in scholarship that authenticity commonly constricts the development and sustainability of musical genres. In all, this paper provides ethnographic evidence to demonstrate that diversity aids musical sustainability whilst examining how authenticity discourses can play a significant role in diversifying musical practices. The paper closes with some reflections on how ethnomusicologists can reflexively and ethically engage the intertwinement of authenticity discourses with processes of diversification.

Building on ethnomusicological scholarship on cultural sustainability over the last 20 years, this presentation introduces key findings of the Australian-led multi-year research project Sounding Good. Involving nine Collaborators and six case studies across five continents, Sounding Good aims to understand the interplays between music, cultural sustainability, and matters of social justice. In a refugee camp in the harsh Algerian desert, people come together to sing old and new songs about life in the camps, their nostalgia for their Western Saharan homeland, and their hopes for the future. In a university class in Brazil, students learn songs, dances, and stories from a senior Indigenous culture-bearer—the first time these cultural practices have been welcomed into tertiary education. In Cambodia, a “magic music bus” chugs through rural provinces, joyfully returning traditional music to people and places from which it had nearly disappeared due to genocide. Through these cases, and others from Vanuatu, India, and Australia, Sounding Good traverses a range of pressing contemporary social concerns—from forced migration, educational inequity, and poverty to matters of racial, cultural, and climate justice. This presentation contends that strong and sustainable cultural practices can advance causes of social justice, and vice versa. Understanding these interrelationships is more important than ever. Not only will it help musicians, communities, scholars, and cultural agencies in efforts to protect and promote the rich diversity of musical practices around the world; it will also enhance our prospects of an equitable and thriving world, now and into the future.

Cultural Resilience generally refers to a community or “culture” that absorbs, responds to, and/or recovers from an induced set of extraordinary demands (Murray and Zautra 2012), including political and natural disasters. Traditional lifeways and collective stories can help communities overcome manipulation, then revive and become emerge makers of their own culture (Friere 1993). The Sasak people of Lombok have persevered through decades of sociopolitical management and recently (re)discovered new insights about their history and identity that grant some control over the direction and “making” of their culture.

This paper discusses how Wayang Sasak has been central in this movement. This shadowplay, introduced in the 16^th century, helped teach and popularize Islam. Over ensuing centuries, reformist clerics challenged its “Islamic” status and sometimes banned the form. Violence in the 1960s further propelled reformist Islam, which resulted in more prohibitions, and political turmoil at the end of the century suggested that it had become irrelevant.

Several agents – cultural leaders, educators, government officials – relentlessly advocated for wayang and other traditional arts prompting some clerics to drop opposition. Cultural leaders took the position that wayang is essential to Sasak Islam, history, and identity. Study groups and Facebook communities began to sponsor wayang Sasak, which has a better chance of sustainability now that at any time over the past 100 years. I will explore how this happened and include continuing challenges to the viability of this art.