Moving - Critical Review

Wong introduces her research on taiko, or rather how she defends going about her research on taiko. The research is based on autoethnography, and she explains how she first was the performer, then the ethnographer, and that the two are very different but she strived to put them together. She speaks of the draw that Asian-American culture had on her, as an Asian-American, and notes that taiko has continued to be defined and dominated by the Asian-American culture. In her final statements, she confesses that she yearns to find or to start a taiko group that would be completely about Asian-American identity, or even feminist Asian-American identity. Her idea is that performance ethnography will help her create encounters to forward social change. It is a fine idea. However, in practicing performance ethnography, relationships might become strained, because of how the research is written and presented to the scholars, and not aimed towards the fellow musicians. How can an ethnographer who wishes taiko was more visionary or progressive comment on it without too much bias or underlying motivations? Is the change of a kind of performance due to performance ethnography still representative of the previous culture and traditions?