Listening Session: Vietnamese Bolero In Conversation

Join us for a listening session this Monday, March 23 from 6:30–7:30 pm, during the final week of Alison Nguyen’s exhibition Perforation, Ellipse. Nguyen and ethnomusicologist and performer Bryan Le (Lê Thanh Lâm) will play a selection of songs which expands the questions at the core of the exhibition, bringing together music shaped by censorship, displacement, and alternative modes of circulation. 

The program focuses on Vietnamese bolero music—also known as nhạc vàng (“yellow music”)—which was once forbidden by the Vietnamese government following the American War in Vietnam, for its Western proximity and influence. Bolero is situated as a sonic counter-archive that carries forms of memory often excluded from official records. Through collective listening, the program invites audiences to consider how music can hold feeling, testimony, and political residue, and how history might be rethought through the affective and unfinished traces that sound preserves.

Perforation, Ellipse will be on view from 6–6:30 pm for attendees to visit the exhibition before the session begins.