Playing the Archive

Es war einmal ein Junge, der im Königspalast aufwuchs und einen Soldaten Cello spielen hörte – und sich sofort darin verliebte. Der Prinz bemerkte das große Interesse des Kindes und schickte ihn ins Ausland, um die Geheimnisse des Instruments zu ergründen. Im fernen Land der DDR lernte der Junge fleißig und wurde weit und breit bekannt. Seine alte Heimat versank in Blut und Chaos, also blieb er in seiner neuen Heimat – auch als dieses Land schließlich ebenfalls zerfiel. Das ist die Geschichte des kambodschanisch-ostdeutschen Jazzmusikers Sonny Thet.

Das ist unsere erste Folge auf Deutsch!

English version soon to follow.

In „Playing the Archive“ taucht die Musikethnologin Sydney Hutchinson mit Interviews, Hörspielen und vielem mehr in die experimentelle Archivforschung ein. Dieser Podcast ist Teil des „Second World Music“-Projekts. Mehr dazu erfährt man unter Zweite-Welt-Musik.

Playing the Archive © 2026 by Sydney Hutchinson/Second World Music is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and Germany reunified, the territory of the German Democratic Republic was absorbed into the capitalist West. People felt the West had won. But what if things had gone the other way? What if reunified Germany had been communist?

That is just what happened in Vietnam in 1975. As the war ended, the colonial, capitalist South joined the communist North -- and it remains communist today. Yet the Cold War still impacts how people live, feel, and listen, both in Germany and in Vietnam.

Why do South Vietnamese immigrants feel more "German" than North Vietnamese ones? Why do people still listen to the sentimental "yellow music" of South Vietnam, although they have forgotten the patriotic "red music" of the North? In this episode I talk with Vienamese culture worker and ethnographer Nhi Duong about her research on the Cold War histories of Vietnamese in Berlin and the traces those histories have left in Berlin's archives and soundscapes.

Because this episode was recorded on Zoom while Sydney had a cold, it sounds a bit different than the other episodes.

In Playing the Archive, ethnomusicologist Sydney Hutchinson dives into experimental archival research with interviews, radio plays, & more. This podcast is a part of the Second World Music project. To learn more, visit http://secondworldmusic.wordpress.com.

Playing the Archive © 2025 by Sydney Hutchinson/Second World Music is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Where do obsolete media go to die, and is there an afterlife for old tapes? In this Day of the Dead double feature, two sound artists explore lost sounds, spectral voices, trashed tapes, and anarchist sound editing, bringing research in sound studies together with experimental sound art. Join Nicolás Rey, Rita Santos, and me in the great beyond with some sonic (ghost) stories.

Part I features Nicolás Rey and begins at 1:05.

Listen to Nicolás Rey on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4PfdFzTqaz0aKCCZKrJCl9

Part II features Rita Santos and begins at 26:33.

Hear Rita Santos' new album here:

https://ritasantos.bandcamp.com/album/a-harmonia-parece-imensa-porque-as-coisas-n-o-t-m-boca-para-pregar

In Playing the Archive, ethnomusicologist Sydney Hutchinson and friends dive into experimental archival research with interviews, radio plays, & more. This podcast is a part of the Second World Music project. To learn more, visit http://secondworldmusic.wordpress.com.

Playing the Archive © 2025 by Sydney Hutchinson/Second World Music is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Dancing in a public square - it's a typical feature of Chinese urban life known as "Guang Chang Wu," square dance. Promoted by Mao, transformed through daily practice, Chinese square dance has often been mocked as an old women's activity. Yet it provides community and therapy for millions who do it in Chinese cities and in the Chinese diaspora. In this episode, Serena Agbokhan interviews Chang Cheng about her research on Guang Chang Wu in Norway. Communist relic or the new zumba? You'll have to decide for yourself.

In Playing the Archive, ethnomusicologist Sydney Hutchinson and friends dive into experimental archival research with interviews, radio plays, & more. This podcast is a part of the Second World Music project. To learn more, visit http://secondworldmusic.wordpress.com.

Playing the Archive © 2025 by Sydney Hutchinson/Second World Music is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Which sounds do archives keep, and which do they leave out? Do we, the archivists and researchers, create archives, or do the archives create us? In this episode, Sydney Hutchinson and Natalia Neira Nieto speak with sound scholar Alejandro Madrid about his latest book The Archive and the Aural City. Alejandro reflects on how archives in Mexico and Germany are shaped—how materials are chosen, what they reveal, and how they transform over time. The conversation also touches on themes of collective belonging, national agendas, and his current book project on Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez.

In Playing the Archive, ethnomusicologist Sydney Hutchinson dives into experimental archival research with interviews, radio plays, & more. This podcast is a part of the Second World Music project. To learn more, visit http://secondworldmusic.wordpress.com.

Playing the Archive © 2025 by Sydney Hutchinson/Second World Music is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

When musicologist Sarah Fuchs stumbled across a mysterious set of wax cylinder recordings from a Parisian school for the deaf, she had no idea how deep the archive would go. In this episode, she chats with Sydney Hutchinson about early recording technologies, opera at a distance, and what it means to truly listen—especially when sound itself is contested. From 19th-century jukeboxes to the ethics of hearing someone else's history, this conversation asks: how do we make sense of voices from the past?

In Playing the Archive, ethnomusicologist Sydney Hutchinson and guests dive into experimental archival research with interviews, radio plays, & more. This podcast is a part of the Second World Music project and the episode was co-edited by Keyania Campbell. To learn more, visit http://secondworldmusic.wordpress.com.

Playing the Archive © 2025 by Sydney Hutchinson/Second World Music is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Have you ever tried to listen to the past? Sound artist and ethnographer Keyania Campbell has. In her research on the soundscapes of pre-Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, she recreates everyday sounds from the days long before natural disaster destroyed the city. 

In Playing the Archive, ethnomusicologist Sydney Hutchinson and guests dive into experimental archival research with interviews, radio plays, & more. This podcast is a part of the Second World Music project and this episode features SWM interns Serena Agbokhan and Keyania Campbell. To learn more, visit http://secondworldmusic.wordpress.com.

Playing the Archive © 2025 by Sydney Hutchinson/Second World Music is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Sounds are usually momentary. They're there, and then they're forgotten. Every day, we access new sounds on Tiktok or Youtube and some of them go viral - but who remembers them a month, a year, or a decade later? Archives preserve sounds of the past, but they become hard to access, buried under data protection, privacy, and heritage laws. How will future anthropologists know what 2025 sounded like?

In Playing the Archive, ethnomusicologists Sydney Hutchinson and Hannah Judd dive into experimental archival research with interviews, radio plays, & more. This podcast is a part of the Second World Music project. To learn more, visit http://secondworldmusic.wordpress.com.

Playing the Archive © 2025 by Sydney Hutchinson/Second World Music is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

You thought group projects in school were tricky? Try writing a telenovela with 900 collaborators!

In this episode we talk with visual anthropologist Gina Knapp about how she worked together with villagers in highland Papua New Guinea to create a show that blended fiction with reality to tell some truths about their life. Using a collaborative process both challenging and therapeutic, "A Slice of Life" drew from over 100 hours of footage in Gina's personal archive as well as newly shot scenes acted by the villagers themselves. The group hopes to continue the series, and is looking for donations to help them shoot another nine episodes.

Watch the pilot here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkMORZBPpGs

And contact Gina if you're ready to donate!

In Playing the Archive, ethnomusicologists Sydney Hutchinson and Hannah Judd dive into experimental archival research with interviews, radio plays, & more. This podcast is a part of the Second World Music project. To learn more, and find more of our dance videos, visit http://secondworldmusic.wordpress.com.

Playing the Archive © 2025 by Sydney Hutchinson/Second World Music is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

If you don't know the Orion, what are you waiting for? You're missing out on a hot trend (of the summer of 1963 in East Germany)!

In our first episode, we explored the story of the Lipsi, a new dance East Germans created in 1958 to compete with Western trends. In this episode, we continue the story by exploring the Orion, the GDR's answer to the twist, as well as some other experiments in international socialist choreographies of the 1960s. Lions and tigers and Orion - Oh my!

Watch our reconstruction of the Orion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkhMTQvoNUQ

Dance Orion yourself with this basic step tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xCRiMkGFUFc

In Playing the Archive, ethnomusicologists Sydney Hutchinson and Hannah Judd dive into experimental archival research with interviews, radio plays, & more. This podcast is a part of the Second World Music project. To learn more, and find more of our dance videos, visit http://secondworldmusic.wordpress.com.

Playing the Archive © 2025 by Sydney Hutchinson/Second World Music is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International