Sound Communities in the Asia Pacific

The popularization of radio, television, and the Internet radically transformed musical practice in the Asia Pacific. These technologies bequeathed media broadcasters with a profound authority over the ways we engage with musical culture. Broadcasters use this power to promote distinct cultural traditions, popularize new music, and engage diverse audiences. They also deploy mediated musics as a vehicle for disseminating ideologies, educating the masses, shaping national borders, and promoting political alliances. With original contributions by leading scholars in anthropology, ethnomusicology, sound studies, and media and cultural studies, the 12 essays this book investigate the processes of broadcasting musical culture in the Asia Pacific. We shift our gaze to the mechanisms of cultural industries in eastern Asia and the Pacific islands to understand how oft-invisible producers, musicians, and technologies facilitate, frame, reproduce, and magnify the reach of local culture.

Lonán Ó Briain is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is the author of Musical Minorities: The Sounds of Hmong Ethnicity in Northern Vietnam (2018) and co-editor of Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music (2020). Min Yen Ong is an ethnomusicologist at the University of Cambridge, UK. She is also a research associate at Darwin College and a Bye-Fellow at Homerton College and Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. She holds a PhD from SOAS, University of London, UK.

List of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Musical Media in the Asia Pacific Lonán Ó Briain, University of Nottingham, UK, and Min Yen Ong, University of Cambridge, UK PART ONE Vocalizing Community 1. Getting Our Voices Heard: Radio Broadcasting and Secrecy in Vanuatu Monika Stern, CNRS, France 2. Sounding an Indigenous Domain: Radio, Voice, and Lisu Media Evangelism Ying Diao, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany 3. Narrowcasting into the Infinite Margins: Internet Sonorities of Transient Indonesian Domestic Workers in Singapore Shzr Ee Tan, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK PART TWO Transforming Tradition 4. Harmonies for the Homeland: Traditional Music and the Politics of Intangible Cultural Heritage on Vietnamese Radio Lonán Ó Briain, University of Nottingham, UK 5. Mediation of Tradition: Television and Studio Productions of Khmer Music in Cambodia Francesca Billeri, SOAS, University of London, UK 6. Going with the Flow: Livestreaming and Korean Wave Narratives in P'ansori Anna Yates-Lu, Seoul National University, South Korea PART THREE Sounding Authority 7. North Korea: Controlling the Airwaves and Harmonizing the People Keith Howard, SOAS, University of London, UK 8. The Party and the People: Shifting Sonic Politics in Post-1949 Tiananmen Square Joseph Lovell, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA 9. Broadcasting Infrastructures and Electromagnetic Fatality: Listening to Enemy Radio in Socialist China Hang Wu, McGill University, Canada PART FOUR Performing Activism 10. "Change the World Gently with Singing": Queer Audibility and Soft Activism in China Hongwei Bao, University of Nottingham, UK 11. Sounds of Political Reform: Indie Rock in Late New Order Indonesia M. Rizky Sasono, University of Pittsburgh, USA 12. Finding Agency in Hawaiian Online Collaborative Music Videos: Reclaiming Kaulana Na Pua in a Contemporary Context Min Bee, University of Cambridge, UK, and Jordan Anthony Kapono Bee, Independent Scholar Index