In Vietnam and its diaspora, the đàn bầu monochord zither is a symbol of cultural pride. Based on fieldwork conducted in Vietnam and in diaspora communities between 2015-2017, this study of the đàn bầu argues that the instrument is a site where state institutions, individual musicians, and audiences in Vietnam and the diaspora articulate myriad narratives of personal and national identities. In contemporary Vietnam, the state maintains a discourse that positions the đàn bầu as a musical representative of national culture, rooted in an imagined past.

In the diaspora, the đàn bầu is similarly emblematic of Vietnamese identity, but the dimensions of the “nation” are continually in flux. Due to legacies of trauma in the diaspora, musicians and audiences actively separate Vietnamese culture from the current nation state. The đàn bầu represents Vietnamese heritage, while also articulating the personal and political concerns of life in the diaspora. Musicians use the đàn bầu to traverse political and aesethetic expectations in Vietnam, in diaspora communities, and in the liminal space of tourist performance.

This dissertation addresses the ways in which the Ainu tonkori, a fretless zither, has come to represent the resurgence of Ainu performing arts in Japan as an important identity marker for the Ainu as a minority culture that is commonly perceived to be extinct by most people in Japanese society. The dissertation traces Ainu historical engagement with the Japanese, starting with the Jomon Neolithic period through successive stages of trade, colonization, and assimilation. By tracing these periods of engagement, we can observe how cross-cultural influences have affected the tonkori and its tradition, and how subjugation practices from colonization led to the rise of Ainu social movements and the reconstruction of a new performing arts genre with the tonkori as its main instrument.

The dissertation presents Ainu performing arts as a contemporary phenomenon, one that is being newly created and currently in a transformative process, initiated by key musicians who are also cultural and political leaders. The tonkori is emblematic as a musical instrument that allows its practitioners to convey a distinct Ainu indigeneity within Japanese society, a notion that challenges accepted beliefs in Japan of a homogeneous ethnic identity. This work addresses the roles of individual musicians within the Ainu social movement as mediators engaging with Japanese and international institutions and also as bearers of a newly emerging musical tradition.

In California both min’yō and Tsugaru shamisen practitioners occupy two disparate diasporic intercultural spaces for Japanese folk music. Based on fieldwork conducted in California music and dance affinity groups between 2018 – 2023, this study of Japanese folk music and dance argues these two practices and communities demonstrate different types of musical resiliency during precarious times while they engage with the differing desires of institutions, participants, and audiences in expressing a Japanese folk musical past. In precarity, the min’yō and Tsugaru shamisen groups demonstrate resiliency in adapting to shifting conceptions of identity whilst experimenting with alternatives to the current promotion practices of state institutions and NGOs. The min’yō and Tsugaru shamisen communities work to sustain the spatial aesthetics of Japanese folk music and dance which are tied to specific places and practices in Japan. While cultivating this aesthetic, practitioners move across different transmission spaces with masters and peers both in-person and digitally distanced. The contemporary place of min’yō and Tsugaru shamisen communities in California is informed by a Japanese American history of displacement. These groups exhibit resiliency in negotiating the transitions and transformations of Japanese folk music and dance.

JOYGRIEF is a multiple-channel sound installation. It is an 8-channel interview collage involving field recorded samples of interviews conducted by the artist. The main focus of the interviews are death, mortality, and joy, and go into more specific topics such as the deaths of loved ones, war, suicide, feelings regarding one’s own mortality, cultural practices surrounding death, and more. The clips are played randomly from random speakers interspersed with silence in order to create a confrontational and uneasy environment that is at the same time immersive, reflective, and minimalist. Within this sound collage common and divergent themes emerge, connecting visitors to the human experience and leaving them to meditate on some of life’s most difficult feelings.

Speakers are arranged in an evenly-distributed circle (or, octagon) within a plain white-walled space. People can stand in the middle of the speakers or walk around and between them. The speakers are placed on stands to be nearer to ear-height. The speakers are connected to an 8-channel interface and interview clips are randomized and distributed by a Max patch.

This piece is an exercise in exorcising my own personal experiences with and feelings toward death and mortality as well as tackling the Zeitgeist of this era. This Zeitgeist is metaphorical and actual death and destructive change that is happening politically, socially, economically, ecologically, religiously, intellectually, etc. all over the world and which can be seen plainly even within our own UCSC microcosm.