Conversa com Benjamin Tausig

Conversa com Benjamin Tausig:
Neocolonial Sound Relations between Thais and Americans in the 1960s-70s

Segunda-feira, 10 de junho de 2024, 14h
Por videoconferência (o link será disponibilizado em breve)

Summary:
Hundreds of thousands of Americans passed through Thailand during the long war in Vietnam, either as soldiers on leave from fighting or as tourists -- sometimes both. The American presence had profound effects on Thailand's economy and culture, and this presentation examines Thai-American relationships of the period through an analytic of sound and listening. As listeners, American visitors mainly encountered Southeast Asian sounds in a paranoid register. Conversely Thais, who gained enormous profit from developing expertise in American sonic practices, including language ability, musicality, and awareness of sonic meaning, were eager students of neocolonial sonorities. This talk is a historical analysis of neocolonial sonic imbalances in Thailand during the war in Vietnam.

Bio:
Benjamin Tausig is associate professor of critical music studies at SUNY-Stony Brook University in New York. His work centers on sound and politics, with a focus on Southeast Asia and Thailand in particular. His first monograph, Bangkok Is Ringing, is an ethnography of the sound of the Red Shirt antigovernment protest music. His second monograph, Bangkok After Dark, is a history of Thai-American nightlife relations during the Cold War.