麻豆精选

• BA (Music and Mathematical Economics), Pomona College, Claremont, California, United States
• MA and PhD (Musicology, emphasis in Ethnomusicology), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States 

Prof Alexander M. Cannon is an ethnomusicologist with research expertise in Vietnamese music and creativity studies. He is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University 麻豆精选 and currently serves as Principal Investigator of the ERC-selected and UKRI-funded project SoundDecisions. His 2022 monograph聽Seeding the Tradition: Musical Creativity in Southern Vietnam (Wesleyan University Press) won the 2023 Royal Musical Association/Cambridge University Press Outstanding Monograph Book Prize.聽

He previously taught at Western Michigan University, and has served as Secretary of the Society for Asian Music Board, Book Reviews Editor for the Yearbook for Traditional Music, Co-Editor of Ethnomusicology Forum, and a member of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology Executive Committee.聽He holds an undergraduate degree in flute performance and mathematical economics from Pomona College (California) and a PhD from the University of Michigan.

Undergraduate modules:

• Year 2 core module: Critical Musicology (with Dr Ben Earle)
• Year 2/3 optional modules:
  • Black Music in Britain
  • Local Musicking in Asia
  • Music, Protest, and Social Activism

Postgraduate modules:

• Fieldwork Methods
• Introduction to Musicology

I welcome applications from research students interested in any of the following areas: Vietnamese music; traditional music of Asia and its diasporas; music and climate change; creativity theory; musical sustainability; intangible cultural heritage; and queer ethnography.

Find out more - our Music postgraduate study  page has information about doctoral research at the University 麻豆精选.

Professor Cannon's current research project SoundDecisions examines the relationship between music, environmental change, and economic decision making in the Mekong Delta of southern Vietnam. From 2025 to 2029 and with the SoundDecisions team, he will undertake archival, fieldwork, and quantiative research on the ways that farmer-musicians make everyday economic decisions and build trust through improvised music performance.

Professor Cannon鈥檚 previous research has investigated the changing nature of traditional music practice in southern Vietnam. He has studied the genre 膽峄漬 ca t脿i t峄�, a 鈥榤usic for diversion鈥� also called the 鈥榤usic of talented amateurs鈥�. His 2022 monograph examines notions of creativity used by Vietnamese musicians to sustain interest in traditional music and to rejuvenate debates concerning the Vietnamese identity in an increasingly cosmopolitan and globalised Vietnam. Titled Seeding the Tradition: Musical Creativity in Southern Vietnam, he argues that southern Vietnamese musicians draw from long-standing theories of Daoist creation while adopting strategically from and also reacting to a western neo-liberal model of creativity focused on the individual genius. These musicians play with metaphors of growth, development, and ruin to maintain their tradition and keep it vibrant in the rapidly-shifting context of modern Vietnam.

External service

• Co-Editor, 
• Member of the Executive Committee, 

Recent conference presentations

2021. ‘Embracing a Decentred Approach in the Borderlands of Ethnomusicology’. Panel organiser and participant, , online.

• 2021. ‘Rejecting Creativity, Repairing Creativities: Experimenting with Traditional Music in Contemporary Southern Vietnam’. Paper presented at the Transformations of Musical Creativity in the 21^st Century Conference, Istanbul Technical University, online.
• 2021. ‘: “Lắng Nghe,” Active Listening, and Activism in Contemporary Vietnam’. Invited lecture, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, online.
• 2021. Roundtable participant, ‘Ethnomusicology Forum: 30^th Birthday Celebration’, British Forum for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference, online.
• 2021. Roundtable organiser, ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Workshop’, British Forum for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference, online.
• 2021. Emcee and moderator, Roots and Resilience: A Musical Conversation with Vân-Ánh Võ, Center for World Music, San Diego, online.
• 2019. Roundtable participant, ‘Decolonizing British and North American Ethnomusicologies’. Presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference, Bloomington, Indiana, USA.
• 2019. Roundtable participant, President’s Roundtable, ‘Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology’. Presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference, Bloomington, Indiana, USA.
• 2019. ‘Boundaries at the Water’s Edge: Maintaining Community through Nature and Sound in Vietnamese Music’. Paper presented at the American Musicological Society Annual Conference, Boston, USA.
• 2019. ‘Development, Rupture and Loss in Southern Vietnamese Music Practice’. Paper presented at the International Council for Traditional Music Biennial Congress, Bangkok, Thailand.
• 2018. ‘Theories of Water in Ethnographies of Asia’. Paper presented at the Third Forum of the International Council for Traditional Music, Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, China.
• 2018. ‘Development, Rupture and Loss in Southern Vietnamese Music Practice’. Paper presented at the British Forum for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference, Newcastle University, UK.
• 2017. ‘Metaphor, Creativity, and Disruption in Southern Vietnamese Traditional Music’. Paper presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference, Denver, USA.