Trans-Pacific
Ethnomusicologist
Hello! I’m Mark Hsiang-Yu Feng (he/him), a Taiwanese-born ethnomusicologist based in California.
I specialize in the study of East Asian popular music and transpacific racial politics through ethnographic, interdisciplinary, and decolonial frameworks. My work bridges cultural analysis with critical race studies, offering new perspectives on sound, identity, and power across borders. My research examines Taiwanese heavy metal music as a site where post/colonial history, Han supremacy, and Indigenous erasure collide. I conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Taiwan and the US and write in English and Mandarin to engage both the global and local academic public.
My academic mission is to challenge Euro-American-centric assumptions in the studies of music and race and reimagine the relationship between music-making, racial justice, and global inequality. My dissertation, A Postcolonial History of Metal Music in Taiwan, traces the development of Taiwanese heavy metal from the 1980s to the present, analyzing how it articulates Han nationalist ideologies, appropriates Indigenous cultural symbols, and negotiates Cold War legacies. I see scholarship not just as research, but as relational, multilingual, and transformative work—work that connects communities across the Pacific and redefines the political possibilities of music.
Taiwanese Metal Music & Race
This project begins with my dissertational research on Taiwanese heavy metal music and racial politics. It investigates the intersection of Han supremacy and white supremacy through Taiwanese metal music, and how have such power been expressed through the discourse and materialization of metal music to decolonize Taiwan from the Japanese occupation and Kuomintang dictatorship. As I travel back and forward between California and Taiwan, I am inspired by my teachers and friends in the “field” to establish this applied ethnomusicological public research project to benefit the Taiwanese metal music community.
I humbly invite metal lovers, fans, practitioners, musicians, teachers, and scholars who are interested in contributing to documenting our experiences with Taiwanese metal music. The history is ours, and we can write it for us. The project has three parts, a music and sound archive for recorded compositions and interviews, a photo and art gallery for concerts and events, and a collaborative oral history for musicians, teachers, and people who participate in the Taiwanese metal music scene in any way with their capacity. Participants will be voluntary but may receive compensation for their hard work and contributions. Also, parts of the materials in this project will be added to my dissertation. As a musician-ethnographer, I will also share my travel for conducting my dissertational research. Please free to reach out to me and join us by clicking on the button below. Let’s raise our devil’s horns and get ready to rock’n roll!
Music & American Culture
My undergraduate course at UC Davis provides a comprehensive introduction to major musical and cultural issues in the United States in the twentieth century from an ethnomusicological perspective. It explores and critiques how race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, and North American imperialism were and are constructed to shape our understanding of music and sound. Specifically, the course concentrates on contemporary popular music in its historical, social, political, and cultural contexts as mediated through performances and recording technologies, as well as diverse approaches to music-making and musical engagement.
Students will (a) confront broader philosophical and critical understandings of music and sound through feminist, critical race theory, and postcolonial lenses, (b) gain a comprehensive understanding of socio-political that are relevant to popular music and colonialism from an ethnomusicological perspective, (c) analyze, interpret, and think critically about American musical, auditory, and sonic cultural practices concerning historical power relations.