Domesticated Noise: The Musical Reformation of Identity in Urban Vietnam
(2016)
author(s): Lonan O Briain
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
In his composition “New Moon” (Trăng non), saxophonist Trần Mạnh Tuấn appropriates sounds from the musical cultures of Vietnam’s ethnic minorities to create a fusion of regional Vietnamese and international jazz music. The musical cultures are reduced to the raw sounds of instrument timbres which are then reformulated as part of a new popular style by the composer. His detachment of these sounds from the minority cultures and propagation of them as sonic referents to an internal Other nurtures an essentialized understanding of the minorities as different and distant from the urban majority. This research deploys Georgina Born’s proposal of four planes of distinct socialities that are mediated by music and sound (2011) to examine how the musical domestication of these ethnic-themed sounds contributes to the conceptualization of new economically-endowed social classes in urban Vietnam.