• BA (Music and Mathematical Economics), Pomona College, Claremont, California, United States
• MA and PhD (Musicology, emphasis in Ethnomusicology), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States 

Alexander M. Cannon is an ethnomusicologist with research expertise in Vietnamese music and creativity studies. He holds an undergraduate degree in flute performance and mathematical economics from Pomona College (California) and a PhD from the University of Michigan. He most recently taught at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he taught Asian music, Western art music, and research methods, as well as directed a Vietnamese music ensemble.

• Year 1: Popular and World Musics (with Dr Christopher Haworth)
• Year 2/3 option modules: Local Musicking in Asia; Music, Protest, and Social Activism
• Postgraduate: Introduction to Global Popular Musics (with Dr Luis-Manuel Garcia)

I welcome applications from research students interested in any of the following areas: Vietnamese music; traditional music of Asia and its diasporas; creativity theory; musical sustainability; intangible cultural heritage; semiotics; and queer ethnography.

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Find out more - our Music postgraduate study  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Dr Cannon’s research over the past decade has investigated the changing nature of traditional music practice in southern Vietnam. He primarily studies the genre đờn ca tài tử, a ‘music for diversion’ also called the ‘music of talented amateurs’. Currently, he is completing a monograph that examines notions of creativity used by Vietnamese musicians to sustain interest in traditional music and to rejuvenate debates concerning the Vietnamese identity in an increasingly cosmopolitan and globalised Vietnam. Tentatively titled Raising Vibrant Truths: Competing Creativities in Southern Vietnamese Traditional Music, he argues that creativity, rather than a casual descriptor of talent, emerges from competing structures of historical trajectory, power, and authority. His next research project evaluates the impact of intangible cultural heritage policies from the Republic of Vietnam, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) on local music practice in southern Vietnam.

External service

• Book Reviews Editor, Yearbook for Traditional Music
• Secretary, Society for Asian Music Board

Recent conference presentations

• 2017. ‘Metaphor, Creativity, and Disruption in Southern Vietnamese Traditional Music’. Paper to be presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference, Denver, Colorado.
• 2017. Participant, ‘Expanding Heritage Roundtable’, Endangered Heritage Conference, University of Michigan.
• 2016. Roundtable Presenter and Organiser, ‘Legacies for Vietnamese Music Scholarship in the Smithsonian Archives’. Session held at the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference, Washington, DC.
• 2016. ‘Making Truth and Planting Flowers: Musical Creativity in Contemporary Southern Vietnam’. Paper presented at the Engaging with Vietnam Conference, University of Hawai’i at Manoa.
• 2015. ‘Metaphors of Creative Practice: Navigating Roots and Foliage in Southern Vietnamese Traditional Music’. Paper presented at the Tracking the Creative Process Conference, IRCAM, Paris.
• 2015. ‘Emergent Creativity and Cultural Heritage in Southern Vietnamese Traditional Music’. Paper presented at the International Council for Traditional Music World Congress, Astana, Kazakhstan.
• 2015. ‘Về phương pháp nghiên cứu: Một số ý kiến’ [Regarding Methods of Conducting Research: A Few ideas]. Workshop, Ho Chi Minh City Conservatory, Vietnam.
• 2014. ‘From Bản cà chía to Pan-Asian Experimentation: Chinese Music as Other in Southern Vietnamese Traditional Music’. Paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Philadelphia.
• 2013. ‘Building “Soul”: The Transnational Negotiation of Vietnamese Traditional Music in Diaspora’. Paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, San Diego.
• 2012. ‘The Post-Socialist Self in Transnational Alliance: Negotiating Traditional Music in Contemporary Vietnam’. Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco.
• 2012. ‘Emerging from the Ruin: The Production of Knowledge and Traditional Music in Southern Vietnam’. Paper presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference, New Orleans.
• 2012. ‘French Colonialism, Modernity and Competence among Performers of Southern Vietnamese Traditional Music’. Paper presented at the Third International Symposium of the International Council on Traditional Music Study Group for the Musics of East Asia, Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Journal articles (peer reviewed)

• 2016. ‘Tradition, Still Remains: Sustainability through Ruin in Vietnamese Music for Diversion’. Ethnomusicology Forum 25(2): 146–171.
• 2016. ‘From Nameless to Nomenclature: Creating Music Genre in Southern Vietnam’. Asian Music 47(2): 138–171.
• 2013. ‘When Charisma Sustains Tradition: Deploying Musical Competence in Southern Vietnam’. Ethnomusicology 57(1): 87–114.
• 2012. ‘Virtually Audible in Diaspora: The Transnational Preservation of Vietnamese Traditional Music’. Journal of Vietnamese Studies 7(3): 122–156.
• 2012. ‘Epic Directions for the Study of the Vietnamese Diaspora’. Journal of Vietnamese Studies 7(3): 1–6.

Book chapters

• Forthcoming. ‘Building Soul with Tragedy: Alternative Temporalities and Spaces of Vietnamese Traditional Music Performance’. In Routes of Engagement: Việt Nam and Diasporas, edited by Quan Tue Tran, Thu-Huong Nguyen-Vo and Mariam B. Lam.
• Forthcoming. ‘Laughter, Liquor, and Licentiousness: Preservation through Play in Southern Vietnamese Traditional Music’. In The Routledge Companion to the Study of Local Musicking, edited by Suzel Reily and Katherine Brucher.
• Forthcoming. ‘Outing the Methodological No-No: Translating Queer Space to Field Space’. In Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology, edited by Gregory Barz and Will Cheng.
• 2016. ‘Căn phòng lưu giữ kỷ niệm’ [The Studio of Memory] in Nguyễn Vĩnh Bảo: những giai điệu cuộc đời [Nguyễn Vĩnh Bảo: Melodies of a Life], edited by Nguyễn Thuyết Phong, 261–264. Hồ Chí Minh City: NXB Hồng Đức.

Encyclopaedia articles

• 2012. ‘Apsara Ensemble’, ‘Khamvong Insixiengmai’, ‘Chum Ngek’, ‘Nguyen Thuyet Phong’, and ‘Pham Duy’. In the Grove Dictionary of American Music, edited by Charles Hiroshi Garrett. New York: Oxford University Press.

Reviews

• 2017. Review of Lauren Meeker, Sounding Out Heritage: Cultural Politics and the Social Practice of Quan Họ Folk Song in Northern Vietnam (2013). Asian Music 48(1): 121–124.
• 2015. Review of the compact disc titled Vietnam Le Don Ca Tai Tu: Musique de Chambre du Delta du Mékong (2014). Yearbook for Traditional Music 47: 218–219.
• 2011. Feature book review of Trần Văn Khê, La musique Vietnamienne traditionnelle (1962) and Pham Duy, Musics of Vietnam (1975). Journal of Vietnamese Studies 6(3): 180–186.
• 2011. Review of Barley Norton, Songs for the Spirits: Music and Mediums in Modern Vietnam (2009). Journal of the Society for Asian Music 42(1): 129–133.

Popular press and blogs

• 2015. Contributor to ‘Suy nghĩ về Giáo sư Trần Văn Khê’ [Reflecting on the Life of Professor Trần Văn Khê] on the BBC Vietnamese webpage.
• 2014. ‘Interview with Composer P.Q. Phan: Part I’ and ‘Part II’ on diacritics.org.
• 2014. ‘Resonance, Disruption and Houston Grand Opera’s Bound’ on diacritics.org.
• 2009. (with Lê Đình Bích). ‘Cải tiến đàn sến ba dây’ [The Improved Three-Stringed Đàn Sến] in Thanh Niên [Youth].