With movie star looks and a raucous piano style, Maurice Rocco made a splash in the 1940’s, influencing future rock and rollers Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. By the 60s, however, he was a has-been in the U.S., playing lounges in Bangkok, Thailand until his grisly murder by a pair of male sex workers. In his deeply insightful book ⁠Bangkok After Dark, ethnomusicologist Benjamin Tausig reclaims Rocco’s forgotten story and reveals its broader context, exploring the intersection of race, queerness, and transnational music cultures during the cold war era.

Benjamin Tausig is a scholar of music, sound and politics in Southeast Asia teaching at Stony Brook University, New York. Working between music, sound studies, Asian studies, and anthropology, his publications cover topics such as the soundscape of political procest in Thauland, Luk thung and mor lam, and the impact of American military presence on Southeast Asian culture.

In this episode we discuss his two books, Bangkok is Ringing, which provides a lucid and in-depth ethnography of the Thailand’s Red Shirt anti-government protest movement, and Bangkok After Dark. In a wide-ranging conversation, we cover everything from Mack and Ben’s early days in sound studies to the proto-music videos known as “soundies” to the psychedelic roots of Thai music genres like luk thung.

Our Patreons get an extended cut of this interview, including our ‘what’s good?’ section, revealing Ben’s top picks for things to read, do, and listen to! Sign up to listen at Patreon.com/phantompower.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction: Maurice Rocco and the Forgotten Soundies

03:57 Welcome & Meet Benjamin Taussig

08:15 Sound Studies, Graduate School, and Early Interests

13:15 Fieldwork in Thailand: Urban Sound and Space

18:15 Learning Thai and Immersing in Bangkok

22:45 Language, Tonality, and Sonic Culture

27:45 The Red Shirt Movement and Thai Political Soundscapes

36:29 Protest, Democracy, and the Limits of Sound

44:10 Thai Music Genres: Luk Thung, Mor Lam, and Protest

51:00 Sonic Niches, Censorship, and Speaking Out

54:49 Maurice Rocco: From American Jazz Star to Bangkok

1:02:58 The Vietnam War, American Influence, and Thai Psychedelia

1:09:38 Race, Queerness, and Identity in 1960s-70s Thailand

1:14:05 Rocco’s Final Years, Legacy, and Reflections

For the full transcript visit https://phantompod.org/benjamin-tausig-bangkok-after-dark/.

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Maurice Rocco: Race, Queerness, and Thai Music Culture w/ Benjamin Tausig