"Listening Ethnographically to the Sounds and Silences of Japan's Antinuclear Movement" at Pitt, September 18.

Marié Abe, an Assistant Professor of Music, Musicology and Ethnomusicology at Boston University, will present "Listening Ethnographically to the Sounds and Silences of Japan's Antinuclear Movement" at Pitt on Friday, September 18. From the University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center:

In April 2011—one month after the devastating M9.0 earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent crises at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in northeast Japan—an antinuclear demonstration of over 15,000 participants took over the streets of Tokyo. Leading the protest was the raucous sound of chindon-ya, a Japanese practice of musical advertisement dating back to the late 1800s. Contextualizing the anti-nuclear protests within a larger arc of Japanese social movements, this talk explores how the particular sounds of chindon-ya transposed from the commercial to the political, and what historical moments, translocal relations, and social differences were being articulated through chindon-ya sounds, especially vis-à-vis Anne Allison’s notion of “affective activism.”

The talk will be held at 4130 Posvar Hall (map) from 2:30, and is free and open to the public.