Noisy Hegemonies: How does tradition help a community regain its voice?

Location
Arts Main Lecture Theatre, Online - a link will be sent to you before the event
Dates
Friday 25 April 2025 (14:00-15:30)
cannon-alexander-315-2021

Professor Alexander M. Cannon Inaugural Lecture

Vietnamese culture, politics, and society transformed after 30th April 1975—a date known variously as the Fall of Saigon or the Liberation of Saigon. With the collapse of the Republic of Vietnam and the reunification of the country under the policies of the Vietnamese Communist Party, former South Vietnam citizens either embraced the new conditions or coped as best they could. Others escaped and built new communities in North America, Europe, and elsewhere. With new policies and departure, Vietnamese communities and culture splintered. Master musician Nguyễn Vĩnh Bảo described this using a line from Baudelaire’s poetry: Moi, mon âme est fêlée. For me, my soul is cracked. Importantly, fêlé(e) also has a musical meaning in French: it refers to a voice or timbre that is altered or distorted. 

To continue living required repairing the cracked soul and restoring its voice. For Nguyễn Vĩnh Bảo and many Vietnamese around the world, traditional music in its numerous forms enabled that repair and restoration. This is because tradition builds alliances across boundaries to solidify common assumptions and ways of thinking in a community. In other words, tradition is hegemonic. Musicians play instruments and sing songs to articulate the knowledge, ideas, and memories of a nascent identity formation. As audiences listen and offer feedback, a ‘way of playing’ or style emerges. Over time, multiple styles circulate, and new communities form. These many styles constitute the ‘noisy hegemonies’ of Vietnamese traditional music. 

In this lecture, Professor Alexander M. Cannon describes the overlapping sonic environments of Vietnam and the Vietnamese diaspora in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as noisy hegemonies. He draws on numerous examples from past and current research, including southern Vietnamese đờn ca tài tử (music for diversion), folksongs performed in Vietnam and in diaspora, and contemporary popular music based on traditional music aesthetics. Just shy of fifty years after the cracking of the soul and the distortion of the voice, his research shows how Vietnamese tradition thrives. 

Biography

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. 

Inaugural lectures are a landmark in academic life, held on the appointment of new professorships. Join us to learn more about the work of Alexander M. Cannon

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.

You can learn more about our other forthcoming talks and view our archive of previous lectures on our CAL Inaugural Lectures webpage.