Colonial Soundscapes: Sonic Power and Resistance Formation in East Asia and Palestine

This paper uses music as an analytical entry point into the comparative history of empire, arguing that sound offers a uniquely revealing archive for tracing how colonial power was enacted, negotiated, and contested. Focusing on Japanese imperial formations in East Asia and British administration in Mandate Palestine, the study examines how empires sought to regulate sonic practices through schools, broadcasting infrastructures, and public performance regimes. Drawing on theories of governmentality, sensory history, and postcolonial critique, the paper conceptualizes music not simply as cultural expression but as a field of governance in which subjects were disciplined, identities were produced, and imperial modernities were made audible. At the same time, it highlights how colonized musicians mobilized musical hybridity, vernacular performance, and the listening public to articulate counter‑claims to space, belonging, and political ideologies. By placing the two regions in a shared analytical frame, the paper argues for a transregional history of “colonial soundscapes” that illuminates broader patterns of power, mediation, and resistance across early twentieth‑century empires. In doing so, it proposes sound as a methodological tool for rethinking global colonial history through which empires operated, with its subjects imagining alternatives.