Yang Chen is a second year Master’s student in Ethnomusicology.  He received a Bachelor of Arts in Music at Carleton College in Northfield, MN. Trained as a classical violinist, Yang also received Erhu training for two years under Carleton College’s Chinese Ensemble director, Gao Hong. Currently, his research interest is in the role of symbols such as ancestral spirits in Taiwanese Aboriginal pop music and how that informs identity and nationalism for Taiwanese Aborigines.