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.