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SoundDecisions claims that music is a powerful mediator of cultural and economic decision-making. To prove this, SoundDecisions studies the music of Khmer Krom and Vietnamese populations of the Mekong Delta.

The region is rich in natural and cultural resources. How do musicians in this environment enable more equitable socio-economic development for all? When tackling climate change, what new forms of sustainability arise from the grassroots?

SoundDecisions seeks to answer these questions. The team will undertake a mix of archival, ethnographic, and econometric research on three continents. As the first project of its kind, SoundDecisions crosses the disciplines of ethnomusicology, economics, environmental science, geography, and anthropology. It will tell the story of music’s place at the centre of economic and cultural development in the Mekong Delta. The project studies how sound and listening between natural and human actors can sustain human life in rapidly shifting environmental and economic conditions. Given the worldwide pressures of climate change, SoundDecisions proposes a timely new framework for musical sustainability that is applicable beyond the Mekong Delta.

1: Understand the dynamic relationship between musicians and environment in the Mekong Delta

Khmer Krom and Vietnamese communities have long histories of music practice from different parts of Asia. How do they engage within a single geography to maintain their roots and best prepare for future conditions? What role does water play specifically in enabling new forms of discovery? 

2: Identify histories of musical listening and thinking in and from the Mekong Delta

There have been significant changes in everyday life in the Mekong Delta over the past 130 years. Therefore, the ways that musicians listen to one another have transformed considerably. How do modes of listening (lắng nghe in Vietnamese and ស្តាប់ in Khmer) allow musicians to communicate with and gather knowledge about the surrounding environment? How do Khmer Krom and Vietnamese musicians use instruments and modes to listen and think musically? In the past, how did they engage with the Mekong Delta environment, and what remains of these practices today? How do diasporic musicians contribute to knowledge maintenance? 

3: Identify local grassroots cultural development in the Mekong Delta

SoundDecisions gives voice to the dynamism and variety of localised cultural change. How do Khmer Krom and Vietnamese inhabitants of the Mekong Delta create new forms of cultural adaption outside conventional frameworks? How do musicians help extend human life through a sonic relationship with the environment? 

4: Examine risk assessment and decision-making through musical listening and thinking

Musicians experiment with forms of musical listening and thinking in performance conditions to cultivate new choices and make decisions on matters related to economic production beyond these musical contexts. How do farmers and other producers use music practice to think through a decision? How do the improvisatory elements of music practice enable economic problem-solving? How does music enable mediation between the environment, development, and growth?

5: Distinguish the role of diasporic musicians in ameliorating development and sustaining listening

Khmer Krom and Vietnamese musicians increasingly engage with diasporic counterparts through social media. Through YouTube and Facebook, they share numerous music recordings with one another. How do Mekong Delta musicians listen to and draw experience from Khmer Krom and Vietnamese in diaspora? How does a transnational circulation of sound support alternative educational and knowledge frameworks for Khmer Krom, Vietnamese, and diasporic musicians?

6: Propose a post-ecosystem acoustemology

SoundDecisions proposes a new way of understanding development and sustainability in music practice. How do inhabitants use new modes of listening and thinking to build intimate relationships with the Mekong Delta? How do these relationships enable new forms of living? How does technology intersect with environmental awareness? How does technology strengthen musical participation in the Mekong Delta and its diasporas?

Principal Investigator: Professor Alexander M. Cannon

Professor Alexander M. Cannon is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University �鶹��ѡ. He has research expertise in Vietnamese music, creativity, and intangible cultural heritage. He has published in the journals Asian Music, Ethnomusicology, Ethnomusicology Forum, and the Journal of Vietnamese Studies. His monograph Seeding the Tradition: Musical Creativity in Southern Vietnam was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2022. It won the 2023 Royal Musical Association / Cambridge University Press Outstanding Monograph Book Prize. 

As Principal Investigator of SoundDecisions, he oversees the research undertaken and the outputs generated by the team. He will study Vietnamese and Khmer Krom traditional music, examine grassroots cultural development in the Mekong Delta, and coordinate quantitative data analysis.

• Read Alexander's full staff profile

Project Officer: Sunitha Dwarakanath

Sunitha manages the research project, including budgetary monitoring and managing financial and operational processes.

She originally studied Physics at Imperial College London. Since then, she has worked in insurance software, a Japanese shipping company, charities and political organisations. Alongside this project, Sunitha works for a community hub based in Bearwood. She also works for the campaign organisation Regularise, campaigning for the rights of undocumented migrants.

• Read Sunitha's full profile

Doctoral researcher: Cường Minh Bá Phạm

Cường Minh Bá Phạm works at the intersections of sound, community, and archives. This encompasses radio, artistic interpretations, research, writing, and translation. He hosts a monthly show on NTS, under the handle ‘Phambinho’.

He is in the first year of a UKRI-funded PhD at the University �鶹��ѡ, as part of the larger SoundDecisions project. It explores sound archives as sites of co-creation, co-discovery, and interaction for diasporic groups who imagine the Mekong Delta as home. The research is titled ‘Critical Futures in the Mekong Delta's Colonial Pasts: Resonances, Resettlement, and Records’. His work draws upon care-led listening practices and critical futures to imagine new ways of encounter and being.

• Read Cường Minh Bá Phạm' full profile

• (University of Southampton)
• (Cần Thơ University, Vietnam)
• Professor NGUYỄN Thuyết Phong (Kent State University, retired)
• (San Francisco, United States)
• (University of California, Berkeley, United States)

• Project studying how Mekong Delta farmers fight climate change through music wins £1.75m grant