From Transmission to Tradition: Noisy Hegemonies in Vietnamese Music History

September 10, 3:00pm - 4:30pm
Mānoa Campus, Tokioka Room, Moore Hall 319

Tradition is enriching, perplexing, beautiful, and uncomfortable. In many ways, it is like water. Tradition sustains life but also carries hidden dangers. Tradition has existed for as long as one can remember, but, also constantly changes. Unlike water, however, tradition is a construction of human interaction. It arose to serve a particular purpose of human being-in-the-world and has proved profoundly durable—largely for the ways it connects people, ideas, and nature. In this presentation, Professor Cannon explores the history of tradition’s emergence in the twentieth century in the Vietnamese-speaking world and its symbiotic relationship with forms of music. As part of a larger work on the “noisy hegemonies” of tradition, Professor Cannon links ways of thinking about tradition to the practice of traditional music and shows how resilient and hegemonic tradition has become. British American ethnomusicologist Professor Alexander M. Cannon is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Birmingham. He is also Principal Investigator of the ERC-selected and UKRI-funded project SoundDecisions, which investigates the relationship between music and economic decision-making among Vietnamese and Khmer Krom populations of southern Vietnam. His previous academic scholarship on Vietnamese music and musical creativity has appeared in Asian Music, Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Forum, and the Journal of Vietnamese Studies. His book, Seeding the Tradition: Musical Creativity in Southern Vietnam (Wesleyan University Press, 2022), won the 2023 Royal Musical Association / Cambridge University Press Outstanding Monograph Book Prize. Professor Cannon holds undergraduate degrees in economics and music from Pomona College and an MA and PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Michigan.


Ticket Information
Free and open to the public

Event Sponsor
ֱM Center for Southeast Asian Studies & Ethnomusicology Program/Music Department, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Teri L Skillman, 8089562676, skillman@hawaii.edu,

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