Dr. Mercedes Dujunco received her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington and Bachelor of Music in Piano, magna cum laude, from the College of Music of the University of the Philippines. She was a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta before taking up positions as assistant professor of music at New York University, associate professor of music at Bard College in upstate New York, as well as visiting faculty positions at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and at the Suzhou University of Science and Technology.
Dr. Dujunco’s main area of research focuses on the music traditions of the Chaozhou Chinese subculture in eastern Guangdong and of the Chaozhou diaspora in Southeast Asia. She has also written about the sizhu string-and-wind ensemble traditions of other regional subcultures in South China as well as on the musical labor of Filipino musicians overseas. Dr. Dujunco is currently on a three-year GREF-funded research project with Prof. May Bo Ching of the history department of the City University of Hong Kong to explore the “Cantonization”/ adaptation of Western Instruments in the Cantonese opera ensemble.
Research Interests
Music; Ethnomusicology; China; Chinese music, ritual and politics; Travel / migration / diaspora
Representative Publications
“Jiangnan Sizhu in the Greater Suzhou Area: Repertoire, Revitalization and Sustainability.” In The Oxford Handook of Music in China and the Chinese Diaspora. Eds. Hui Yu and Jonathan P.J. Stock (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2023), pp. 199-228.
《泰国，马来西亚，新加坡潮州功德班丧葬仪式中“血盆”的展现及其社会和历史因素的考虑》(“The Performance of Xuepen by Chaozhou Gongde Troupes in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore: Some Social and Historical Considerations”). 《大音》第三卷, 28-59, 2010 (Ritual Soundscapes 3:28-59, 2010)
“The Birth of a New Mode?: The Generation of New Modal Entities in Chaozhou Xianshi String Ensemble Music.” Ethnomusicology Online, Vol. 8, 2002 (http://www.umbc.edu/eol/8/dujunco/index.html)
“Hybridity and Disjuncture in Contemporary Mainland Chinese Popular Music.” In Global Goes Local: Popular Culture in Asia. Eds. Tim Craig and Richard King (Vancouver, B.C.: University of British Columbia Press, 2002), pp. 25-39
“Melodic Variation, Regional Identity, and Meaning in the Xianshi String Ensemble Music of Chaozhou, South China, ” Tongyang Umak (Journal of the Asian Music Research Institute, Seoul, South Korea), Vol. 23, pp. 17-54, 2001.