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Martial Sound examines the performance and function of music in the martial arts traditions of Chinese Canadians. Author Colin P. McGuire's novel theory of martial sound identifies the ways in which one can hear music as martial arts and listen to hand combat as musicking. In doing so, McGuire both outlines how to discuss fighting rhythms in musical terms and provides a conceptual framework for analyzing how music can function as a form of self-defence. Throughout, McGuire closely studies the gong and drum percussion music that accompany the lion dance and kung fu, all of which are practised together as a single blurred genre by members of the Hong Luck Kung Fu Club in Toronto, Canada. While Hong Luck's history and character are distinctive, the club's practices and approaches are typical of many styles of Southern Chinese martial arts, both in China and abroad.
During the eight years of participant observation fieldwork completed for this book, both of Hong Luck's founding masters passed away, marking the end of an era. The first female lion dancers also began performing during the fieldwork period, which reconfigured traditional constructions of gender. Through highlighting recent developments within this community and the diaspora, McGuire shows that while kung fu practitioners have traditionally used their interdisciplinary performances as a ritual to disperse negative energy for patrons, they now extend that martial function to become an empowering performance that challenges a history of race-based discrimination in Canada.
