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Music in Conflict: Musical Power Relation in Southeast Asia

23 August 2024

13:30 - 14:15 hrs (GMT+7)
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“Those in power write the history, those who suffer write songs”, noted Frank Harte, an Irish singer and song collector. This phrase inspired song writers and musicians who take unequal and injustice power relations as a key to music worldwide. However, not only are songs or broadly speaking musics used as weapons of the suffer, but also musics are extensively used by those in power to suppress the suffer. In this paper I explore a variety of conflictual phenomena that musics play important role in either arousing or escalating conflicts. In terms of anthropology of the senses, according to Georg Simmel, a German sociologist, hearing is relatively passive and public in comparison to other sensual perceptions. Accordingly, musics are a kind of affects that is political, conflictual, and violent in some contexts. Although they are commonly viewed as a sensual means creating harmonious social relations, musics are in fact never neutral in power relations. This paper demonstrates how various forms of musics—whether they are rock, punk, pop, classical or ethnic music—are employed by both the powerful and the weak within different contexts of power relations including violent conflicts across the region of Southeast Asia. Eventually, I hope that approaching musics via socio-politico-historical contexts can shed new light on understanding how sensual relations play a significant part in conflicts and power relations and in what condition the sensual relations lead to violence. With such awareness, hopefully, music practitioners will be more socio-politically concerned in practicing musics.

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