Tokyo Listening: Sound and Sense in a Contemporary City by Lorraine Plourde (review)

Abstract

we approach and redefine broadcasting “with viewers and listeners of the narrowcastasbroadcast engaging in live time or afterwards in soughtafter comments and ‘likes’ ” (chapter 3, 55)? How or to what extent does the highly political and economically charged jargon of APAC present an alternative to “the problematic descriptor ‘Oriental’ ” (introduction, 2)? Or how should we apply it in a context in which Lisu radio programs are broadcast by a media organization called Far East Broadcasting Company (chapter 2, 33)? It would have been useful if some of these larger comparative and theoretical dimensions, as well as suggestions for further research, had been addressed in an additional concluding chapter by the book editors. This is not to devalue the book’s merits outlined previously. In thoughtprovoking ways, the authors demonstrate how music, media, and technology cross, and in often ingenious ways intersect, the fields of individual expression, community building, state ideology, religion, customary tradition, commerce, identity politics, selfdetermination, and resistance. Throughout the region, the arts, the media, and their sociopolitical contexts have been the products of the historical and contemporary connections, tensions, and sometimes unlikely alliances and collaborations between performers, media producers, consumers, governments, civil society organizations, and activists. One of the book’s key contributions lies in making its readers realize that the region’s music and broadcasting practices and broader cultural, social, and political landscapes are shaped by paradoxes and unpredictability, in themselves unique, at least as much as they are by socalled intrinsic features or fundamental traits.