This paper develops “screened listening” as an ethnomusicological analytic for understanding how installation art structures how people hear and move within exhibitions. Building on Blesser and Salter’s concept of aural architecture (2009), I argue that the screen in installation environments functions as an acoustic boundary that organizes movement, access, and authority in space. Focusing on works by three Asian diasporic artists, I ask how feedback systems, caption infrastructures, and museum acoustics compose perspective for differently positioned listeners. In Nam June Paik’s TV Buddha (1974), the camera–monitor loop encloses visitors within a tightly regulated “now,” converting gallery noise and electronic hum into an intensified mode of listening. In Christine Sun Kim’s Close Readings (2020), which I encountered at the Whitney Museum, Deaf-authored captions overwrite studio subtitling norms, redistributing sonic authorship across competing textual soundtracks. Wu Tsang’s Anthem (2021), experienced through participant observation at the Guggenheim, suspends Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s voice in the museum’s spiraling rotunda, where circulation along the ramp continually recomposes the mix. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews, I show how visitors describe these installations less through musical style than through shifting sensations of proximity, legibility, and collective presence. By bringing ethnographic method into dialogue with sound studies, Deaf and disability scholarship, and media-infrastructural approaches, the project reframes installation art as a site of infrastructural listening. It advances new directions for ethnomusicology in museums and galleries, foregrounding how exhibition technologies calibrate intimacy, access, and diasporic collectivity in contemporary public culture.

In 2021, Ez Mil went viral with his single “Panalo,” a rap song that smashes together text in three languages, a trap beat, and a Philippine folk dance. The song has garnered over 87 million views on YouTube; however, a historical error in its lyrics highlights existing tensions between the Philippines and Filipino Americans (FilAms). Twenty years earlier, Apl.de.ap of the Black Eyed Peas sampled the first verse of a political song by the Filipino folk group Asin in his “The APL Song.” Two years later, he released “Bebot,” which re-emerged in 2026 as a Tiktok trend but triggered conversations about racism. The Philippine subject matter in these songs has made waves throughout the diaspora with comments praising them for engendering pride while also serving as flashpoints for complex issues.

This paper analyzes these songs through the framework of diasporic consciousness, engaging with a wider scholarly debate about the theorization of a specific FilAm diaspora (Espiritu 2003; Okamura 2013) vs. FilAm ethnicity amid multiculturalism. At issue is the degree to which FilAms identify with a Philippine homeland and whether this bilateral imaginary extends to the reality of a global diaspora. I contend that recapturing the word “diaspora” from its ubiquity and narrowing its usage based on consciousness allows for a productive definition of FilAm diasporic music implicating US-Philippine history. In our current moment of anti-immigration, this consciousness is as much about homelessness as it is about home and the ability of music to nurture a sense of rootedness.

Punake—poet, composer, and orator—bear the responsibility of sustaining language, history, and culture in Tonga and around the world. While the punake in Tonga have long served as cultural stewards, their work in diaspora settings takes on new urgency as communities confront linguistic erosion, generational shifts, and changing relationships to tradition. Drawing on extensive interviews with the punake and community members across nine U.S. states, this paper examines how contemporary punake navigate creativity, responsibility, and cultural preservation in the U.S. diaspora. I explore how the punake conceptualize their creative process, particularly the significance of original compositions as vessels for genealogy, language, collective memory, and spiritual meaning. Original compositions are not only creative expressions of culture but also acts of service that honor ancestors and strengthen communal identity. The study further highlights how diaspora contexts reshape the work of the punake through community expectations as linguistic translation becomes more complex, and support networks shift as the punake collaborate across distance and negotiate gaps in cultural knowledge. By foregrounding the voices gathered through individual interviews of three punake, this paper shows the diverse pathways through which they learn, create, and teach. Their experiences demonstrate how musical creativity becomes a strategy for cultural and language continuity, allowing Tongan communities abroad to hear, feel, and embody their heritage. Ultimately, this research shows that the punake in the diaspora serve as both culture bearers and innovators that bridge the past and present.