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This talk is jointly hosted with Yale-NUS College Urban Studies Programme.

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Matt Wade, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

Making sonic city, rock music, and urban life in today’s Singapore are multi-modal ways of living centered around, in this case, sonic ways of knowing, communicating, and socializing. Sonic City follows a trio of men in their 60s, myself, Singaporeans James and Kiang, as well as a cast of others as they make rock music and urban life in Singapore and around Southeast Asia. The sonic existence described in Sonic City challenges assumptions of Singapore, its musical life and history. This sonic ethnography led me to discover some everyday urban spaces of creative worlding—spaces in which globally circulating things (in this case guitar gear and musical genres) and people (in this case Singaporeans and others) make sonic lives. Derived from dozens and dozens of jam sessions, performances, and rehearsals, the acoustemology (Feld 2014) assembled by this community reflects a pioneering embrace of Singapore as a global city that, as a crossroads, a place of experienced difference, and so affords a rather generous yet complicated leaning into difference; the result, a cosmopolitanism that celebrates itself for “being” cosmopolitan. Assembled within these cosmopolitan diplomacies are other ontologiesmasculinity and heritage, for example—that are fully recognized social members of this small community of musicians, fans, friends, family, guitar gear, and urban space.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Steve Ferzacca is an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. Steve conducts ethnographic research in the fields of medical anthropology and popular culture. His first book, Healing the Modern in a Central Javanese City (2001), is an ethnographic account of urban life and health in Yogyakarta, Indonesia that explores local assemblages of medical practice and perception that provide therapy to cope with the ill effects of modern life. Steve’s second book, Sonic City: Making Rock Music and Urban Life in Singapore (2020) is based on ethnographic research in a community of amateur and semi-pro musicians in Singapore who congregate around several Singaporean 1960s rock music “legends.” Steve has received appointments as Senior Research Fellow at the Kahin Center for Advanced Research on Southeast Asia, Cornell University (2004), and the Asia Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore (2011-12; 2016).  Steve served as editor of Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness (2007-09). In 2016-17 Steve was appointed as Visiting Associate Professor and Acting Head of Study for the Anthropology Program at Yale-NUS College in Singapore.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this webinar has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the webinar.