Indigenous Language Speaker Series: Ways of Faith: Aurality and Voicing in Lisu Christianity in China’s Ethnic Borderland

The event is rescheduled to February 28, 1:00 – 2:30 PM.

Register here: https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/register/kAK3uSUDQ-yj0xcMbJVhDw#/registration

This talk explores how voice, faith, and hearing intersect with sound recording technologies in the religious practices of the Lisu Gospel community on the China-Myanmar border. Using the concept of aurality, defined as “the shared hearing of mediated sound,” Diao examines how music production, circulation, and consumption create distinct sonic and social spaces for the marginalized Lisu hanleixsu (the faithful) as they navigate the rapidly changing religious and cultural landscape of China’s ethnic borderland.

This talk will focus on the performative dimensions of Lisu aurality through an analysis of two emerging song genres: daibbit song signing and the Lisu Peasant Choir. Daibbit, which involves choreographed body sign language performed to prerecorded Lisu-language gospel songs, has become a deeply embedded part of the Lisu Christian experience. In contrast, the Lisu Peasant Choir, created in 1996, transforms their long-standing participatory hymn-singing tradition into a presentational performance, crafting a “model minority” voice onstage for economic and political ends. Diao will discuss how these two distinct genres reflect the political and cultural implications of an auditory regime that defines what counts as a proper form of ethnic expression, while also revealing the lived reality of Christian striving on the ground in a constrained religious environment.

About the speaker:

Dr. Diao, Ying is an ethnomusicologist and cultural anthropologist specializing in the intersection of sound, media, and religion, as well as in music, minorities, and transnational cultural production in the China-Southeast Asia Borderlands. She is the author of Faith by Aurality in China’s Ethnic Borderland: Media, Mobility, and Christianity at the Margins (University of Rochester Press, 2023). Her current project examines the creative practices of the Minneapolis-based Ragamala Dance Company, exploring how South Indian diaspora artists navigate the U.S. performing arts industry to make their arts form accessible to contemporary audiences, while challenging stereotypes about tradition, creativity, and community.