Visitors to rural Vietnam often stop in bewilderment when they hear a public loudspeaker interrupt the stillness of the countryside. The distorted sounds deliver news and appear in curious contradiction to the now-omnipresent mobile phone with easily-accessible and individualised information. Those learning the Vietnamese language have further difficulty discerning the messages of the speakers, given the low fidelity of the sound and the propaganda language used. Lonán Ó Briain begins Voices of Vietnam with the public loudspeaker and its sound to make a powerful point. Listening repeatedly to these messages on the radio and other aural technologies shape the ears and perspectives of Vietnamese listeners throughout the tumultuous history of twentieth century Vietnam and into the twentieth-first century. Ó Briain combines archival research, extensive engagement with Vietnamese-language scholarship, and ethnographic fieldwork to relay little-known histories of some of the most recognisable sounds and musics in Vietnam over the past century. Voices of Vietnam is a treasure-trove of fascinating details on the localised practices of musicians and producers, and the ways these practices emerge from the colonialising initiatives of the French, and are strengthened by the broader cosmopolitan practices of twentieth-century communism.
Five chapters present a chronological history of broadcast and radio, and are bookended by an Introduction and Epilogue. In the Introduction, Ó Briain orients the monograph around the hegemonic role of radio and its use to broadcast nhạc đỏ, a propagandistic “red music” heard frequently on radio and television that glorifies the goals of the revolution and praises the Party and its leading figures, including Hồ Chí Minh. Chapter One offers an account of the deployment of various technologies and institutions in French Indochina that organised public and private space through sound. Those who best coopted the sonic and technological methods of the colonisers ultimately gained power in the nations that emerged with independence. Ó Briain makes the fascinating point, for instance, that even overhearing sounds of a neighbour’s radio “developed modes of listening and non-listening” in the colonial period ultimately exploited by the Vietnamese state (32). This line of argumentation continues into Chapter Two to investigate the impact of the contest for sonic supremacy waged just before Vietnamese independence between the musicians of Radio Hanoi, a little-studied station funded by the French, and radio programming of nhạc đỏ tunes by the Việt Minh. Chapter Three charts the development of the Voice of Vietnam (VOV) radio broadcaster in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) following independence. Investigations of archival materials and Vietnamese-language scholarship yield insightful descriptions of influential performers, ensembles, composers, and tunes used to broadcast political messages. The chapter ends with a description of the process of composing new tunes for the reunification of the two Vietnams after the end of the Second Indochina War in 1975. Ó Briain then transitions to an examination in Chapter Four of the new roles required of radio in the immediate post-war and, later, Đổi Mới (renovation) periods in Vietnam. Producers compiled an archive and designed new—but not always successful—programmes to engage with listener taste, while also disseminating political messages to the population. Chapter Five examines the work of VOV ensembles with ethnographic depictions of a week of rehearsals and time in a recording studio in 2016. Ó Briain describes interactions between instrumental musicians, singers, conductors, producers, and studio engineers in the creation of a recorded sound for the modern Vietnamese state. An Epilogue summarises the conclusions of the text with a reference to “cultural intimacy” (158).
Voices of Vietnam is an enjoyable and informative read, offering effective ways to understand the history of broadcast practice in Vietnam with just enough theory to connect conclusions to larger themes in ethnomusicology, sound studies, and Vietnamese history. In this reviewer’s view, the text might have been improved in two ways. First, conducting research in Vietnam is challenging, especially when studying any topic broaching politics. Ó Briain adeptly navigated these challenges in what I presume to be innovative ways, so he might have offered more reflections on research strategies, including methods of gaining access to and interrogating archival materials, and finding those individuals he interviewed.
Secondly, while I appreciate the extensive reference to Vietnamese-language archival and secondary literature, I had hoped for more ethnography. For instance, Ó Briain mentions in the Acknowledgements and in Chapter Five that he took lessons on the bamboo flute but neither relays how these lessons specifically informed his research nor discusses how these lessons augmented specific observations of rehearsal and recording practices. Either through these lessons or through interviews with nhạc đỏ creators and performers, I had hoped to better understand communities of listeners that formed the institutions he studies—a conversation that he starts in Chapter Four by examining previously-conducted surveys of listeners. The primary focus on institutions rather than communities, while useful for understanding the operations of state apparatuses, tends towards bifurcated ideological conclusions. In Chapter Three, Ó Briain identifies clear boundaries shaped by radio listening in the early independence period “between proletariat and bourgeoisie, north and south, and communist and capitalist” (74). This ultimately leads to a claim in Chapter Four of unidirectional message dissemination in the contemporary period, although Ó Briain does suggest in Chapter Five that room for some debate exists at the VOV for the shaping of content. Claims of boundary making, “regurgitating the message” (132), and advancing positive Communist Party messages tend to obfuscate agencies of practice; indeed, the purpose of radio broadcasts often appears quite rigid. More ethnographic data would have either supported these conclusions or nuanced them in productive ways.
These minor points aside, Voices of Vietnam will be of considerable interest to ethnomusicologists of broadcast media and to those interested in the use of sound to transition from colonial to postcolonial and to neoliberal contexts. The text is approachable for the general reader, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students.
As a postlude, I offer a note unrelated to the content of the book but a mixed review of the e-book platform. On the VitalSource Bookshelf application through which the publisher provided access to the book, I had some difficulty discerning the difference between headings and subheadings, adding notes, and highlighting text. Images were too large for the screen, and page numbers were only approximate. This said, I could easily view footnotes and most bibliography entries and then quickly return to the main text with a “back to page” button. Readers can adjust the text size, font, margins, and colour scheme of the page and text; readers also can listen to the text read aloud. Electronic books are the future, and I suspect that the limitations noted will improve.
