Bloomsbury Academic Sound Communities in the Asia Pacific: Music, Media, and Technology

Review In this challenging and courageous book, Saladdin Ahmed thinks through the terms and textures of ‘negation’. He acutely interrogates thereby collective contemporary crises, global and planetary. Via a reinvigorated post-nihilism, the work articulates formations of critical solidarity with marginal subjects while unframing fascism as an ‘ideology form’. Such formidable conviction is rare in our present. The anthology convincingly argues that Asia Pacific in the 21st century is more than a post-modern category of convenience, and that its coherence is evident at the nexus of music, mediatisation, and indigenous agency. The mix of authors’ voices, their various positionalities, and the different approaches remind us that coherence in Asia Pacific possesses its own complexities as well as its own abilities to resist facile essentialisation. Sound Communities in the Asia Pacific is a must-read for all culture workers at the onset of the present‘pivot to the East.’ ―Ricardo D. Trimillos, Professor Emeritus in Ethnomusicology and Asian Studies, University of Hawai?i at Manoa, USA Product Description 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. About the Author 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.