Bangkok is Ringing: Sound, Protest, and Constraint

Winner of the 2020 British Forum for Ethnomusicology Book Prize Bangkok Is Ringing is an on-the-ground sound studies analysis of the political protests that transformed Thailand in 2010-11. Bringing the reader through sixteen distinct "sonic niches" where dissidents used media to broadcast to both local and diffuse audiences, the book catalogues these mass protests in a way that few movements have ever been catalogued. The Red Shirt and Yellow Shirt protests that shook Thailand took place just before other international political movements, including the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. Bangkok Is Ringing analyzes the Thai protests in comparison with these, seeking to understand the logic not only of political change in Thailand, but across the globe. The book is attuned to sound in a great variety of forms. Author Benjamin Tausig traces the history and use in protest of specific media forms, including community radio, megaphones, CDs, and live concerts. The research took place over the course of sixteen months, and the author worked closely with musicians, concert promoters, activists, and rank-and-file protesters. The result is a detailed and sensitive ethnography that argues for an understanding of sound and political movements in tandem. In particular, it emphasizes the necessity of thinking through constraint as a fundamental condition of both political movements and the sound that these movements produce. In order to produce political transformations, Bangkok Is Ringing argues, dissidents must be sensitive to the ways that their sounding is constrained and channeled.

Table of Contents:
TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION: On Sound, Protest Space, and Constraint Chapter 1 Completely Packed In Chapter 2 Red Sunday: Power and Connections Chapter 3 Atrocity Broadcasts Chapter 4 Wireless Road and the Ground of Modernity Chapter 5 Megaphone Singing Chapter 6 The Megaphonic Somsak Sangkaparicha Comes by His Goddamn Self Chapter 7 A Quiet Mourning: The Poetry of Dynamics Chapter 8 Whistles Chapter 9 Vehicular Stereo Systems Chapter 10 Developing Musical Economies I: CD Vendors Chapter 11 Developing Musical Economies II: Stage Musicians Chapter 12 Spontaneous Chants Chapter 13 Developing Musical Economies III: Mr. Bear Chapter 14 Surveillance Chapter 15 Outer Space Chapter 16 The Vanishing Point Conclusion: On Mediated Spatiality Bibliography LIST OF INTERVIEWS

About the Author :
Benjamin Tausig is assistant professor of music (ethnomusicology) at Stony Brook University. His research focuses on sound and political dissent in Southeast Asia and beyond. With training in ethnomusicology, sound studies, and anthropology, Tausig studies political conflict with an ear toward local practices of sounding and hearing. His work has appeared in journals including Social Text, Positions: Asia Critique, and Culture, Theory, and Critique.

Review :
"Bangkok Is Ringing is an important contribution to sound studies and ethnomusicology as well as the ethnography of political movements. It will also serve as an important eyewitness account of the demonstrations of Red Sunday and as such will remain a valuable study for historians of Thai politics during this period." -- Nathan Prath, University of Southampton, Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde "Ben Tausig's gripping Bangkok Is Ringing is a vital resource for listening anew to the sounds of protest and power today." --Stefan Helmreich, Elting E. Morison Professor of Anthropology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Ben Tausig not only witnessed an unprecedented historical moment but ran with it, and he has transformed Thai music studies. He asks us to listen closely to the intimate workings of a massive Thai social movement. This is a once-in-a-generation book. This is sound studies with its feet on the ground." --Deborah Wong, Professor, Department of Music, University of California, Riverside