SoundDecisions - Musical Listening, Decision Making, And Equitable Development In The Mekong Delta

Music is the mediator par excellence of effective decision-making. Using the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam as a case study,

SoundDecisions applies an interdisciplinary approach and mixed methodologies to prove the bold claim that music performance enables farmers and other workers to listen to their surroundings and think through innovative solutions to immediate

environmental and economic challenges. Both Indigenous Khmer Krom and settler Vietnamese who inhabit the Mekong Delta face

climate change catastrophe from increased salinisation, reduced freshwater runoff, and intrusive sand mining. Together, they use

improvised music to shape how they think about farming, trade, and other economic activities. Furthermore, by connecting with

diasporic musicians via global telecommunication systems, they co-curate dynamic forms of musical listening and thinking to build

trust, experiment with new solutions to environmental issues, and cultivate choice. These musicians reshape development of the

region; and yet, since development emerges from a cultural basis rather than an economic one, the Vietnamese state and economists

have not so far recognised their work. How do cultural changes forged by musicians at the intersection of the region's rich natural and

cultural resources enable new socio-economic development? What new forms of sustainability might arise from their grassroots

attempts to establish new methods of co-existence given climate change realities? The first project of its kind, SoundDecisions

undertakes a major programme of archival, ethnographic, and econometric research across three continents to answer these

questions. SoundDecisions offers new methodologies for economists to understand the role of music in mitigating climate change

and improving economic livelihood, and for ethnomusicologists to use econometric methods to expand their ability to evaluate music's place in the world.