Spring 2013 Catalog - Duke University Press

Japanoise
Music at the Edge of Circulation
david novak
“Edgy, compelling, and sharply insightful, this is the definitive book on
‘Japanoise.’ Through his personal involvement in Noise scenes across two
continents and over two decades, David Novak takes readers into the
experience of Noise: its production and performance through apparati of
wires, pedals, amplifiers, and tape loops, its intensity on the stage and
in one’s ears and body.”—ANNE ALLISON, author of Millennial Monsters:
Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination
Noise, an underground music genre
made through an amalgam of
feedback, distortion, and electronic
effects, first emerged in the 1980s,
circulating on cassette tapes traded
between fans in Japan, Europe and
North America. With its cultivated
obscurity, ear-shattering sound,
Haino Keiji performing in New York City.
Photo by the author.
and over-the-top performances,
Noise has captured the imagination of a small but passionate
transnational audience.
For its scattered listeners, Noise always seems to be new, and to
come from somewhere else: in North America, it was “Japanoise.”
But does Noise really belong to Japan? Is it even music at all?
And why has Noise become such a compelling metaphor for the
complexities of globalization and participatory media at the turn
of the millennium?
In Japanoise, David Novak draws on more than a decade of
research in Japan and the United States to trace the “cultural
feedback” that generates and sustains Noise. He provides a
rich ethnographic account of live performances, the circulation
of recordings, and the lives and creative practices of musicians
and listeners. He explores the technologies of Noise, and the
productive distortions of its networks. Capturing the textures
of feedback—its sonic and cultural layers and vibrations—Novak
describes musical circulation through sound and listening,
recording and performance, international exchange, and social
interpretations of media.
David Novak is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of
California, Santa Barbara.
SIGN, STORAGE, TRANSMISSION
A Series Edited by Jonathan Sterne and Lisa Gitelman
MUSIC/ANTHROPOLOGY/JAPAN
June 312 pages, 51 illustrations
paper, 978–0–8223–5392–8, $24.95/£16.99
cloth, 978–0–8223–5379–9, $89.95/£67.00
general interest
Little Manila Is in the Heart
The Making of the Filipina/o American
Community in Stockton, California
dawn bohulano mabalon
“Little Manila Is in the Heart is a triumph of Filipina/o American history and
American studies. There is no other scholarly analysis of the dynamic and
vibrant Filipina/o American experience central to the development of Stockton’s
urban life and the larger San Joaquin Delta, a key area of California’s agribusiness.
Moreover, Dawn Bohulano Mabalon is a masterful storyteller. She draws
on oral histories to illuminate the pain and joy of building, sustaining, losing,
and attempting to preserve Little Manila in Stockton, weaving in with great
finesse family history, archival research, and her own activism on behalf of
Little Manila’s preservation.”—CATHERINE CENIZA CHOY, author of Empire
of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History
In the early twentieth century—not
long after 1898, when the United States
claimed the Philippines as an American
colony—Filipinas/os became a vital
part of the agricultural economy of
California’s fertile San Joaquin Delta.
In downtown Stockton, they created
Little Manila, a vibrant community
of hotels, pool halls, dance halls,
restaurants, grocery stores, churches,
union halls, and barbershops. Little
Manila was home to the largest community
of Filipinas/os outside of the Philippines until the neighborhood
was decimated by urban redevelopment in the 1960s. Narrating a history
spanning much of the twentieth century, Dawn Bohulano Mabalon
traces the growth of Stockton’s Filipina/o American community, the
birth and eventual destruction of Little Manila, and recent efforts to
remember and preserve it.
Mabalon draws on oral histories, newspapers, photographs, personal
archives, and her own family’s history in Stockton. She reveals how
Filipina/o immigrants created a community and ethnic culture shaped
by their identities as colonial subjects of the United States, their racialization
in Stockton as brown people, and their collective experiences
in the fields and in the Little Manila neighborhood. In the process,
Mabalon places Filipinas/os at the center of the development of
California agriculture and the urban West.
Dawn Bohulano Mabalon is Associate Professor of History at San
Francisco State University.
HISTORY/ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES
June 464 pages, 58 illustrations
paper, 978–0–8223–5339–3, $28.95/£18.99
cloth, 978–0–8223–5325–6, $99.95/£75.00
11