This book approaches the topic from two complementary perspectives. The first is a macro-theoretical perspective, which combines different lenses from art culture studies and music anthropology. By using historical texts and fieldwork methods, it aims to understand and interpret the structure, form, and symbolic meaning of the Chinese ethnic music discourse system. The second is a micro-practical level, which adopts another lens of music ethnography. Through the researcher’s own personal experiences and fieldwork, it observes the abstracted, standardized musical concepts and written scores in ethnic music. It focuses on the process by which specific, immediate performance actions produce and create a vibrant array of musical sounds. Based on this dual approach, the book intends to produce a future-oriented cognitive practice that generates new meanings and behavioral structures, thus offering a future-oriented music ethnography.