This paper examines how Kenyan musicians narrate and recalibrate their performance practices within China’s theme park industry. Based on ethnographic interviews with Nairobi-based musicians who have worked in Chimelong parks in Southern China, I analyze how “Africa” is curated as immersive spectacle and how performers strategically craft sound in response to those demands. In themed environments that organize the world into walkable cultural zones, difference must be rendered immediate and legible. Music plays a central role in this process, anchoring atmosphere and signaling place. For performers hired to represent “Africa,” this demand translates into an emphasis on sonic markers that circulate globally as recognizable signs of the continent. Certain instruments, rhythmic textures, and timbral qualities are valued less for regional specificity than for their capacity to communicate "Africanness" quickly within tightly managed performance economies shaped by short-term contracts and standardized show formats. My interlocutors describe amplifying these elements not because they transparently reflect local tradition, but because they operate as effective currencies within transnational circuits of work. I frame this dynamic as musical hustle: the strategic crafting of sonic legibility to convert recognition into livelihood. As such, this paper shows how the notion of cultural authenticity emerges as a negotiated and infrastructurally shaped category at the intersection of tourism, diplomacy, and entertainment capital. By foregrounding sound as a site of political-economic mediation, the paper contributes to discussions of circulation, performance, and the staging of cultural difference in contemporary China–Africa engagements.

“Come on, let´s strengthen our eastern roots” – is echoed by many contemporary Hungarian musicians, engaged in a distinctive folkloresque music genre since the early 2010s. Táltos drums are played on public television, throat singing is incorporated into musical performances, nomadic horsemen drink from horns in video clips, and Turkish-Hungarian music co-productions are emerging.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted at selected sites pertinent to this particular tradition-invention- among musicians, audiences, cultural professionals, and locations of memory- the dissertation investigates this phenomenon through the application of key anthropological concepts, like musical affect, identity and tradition invention. Utilising music and its affective power as a methodological lens, it seeks to gain insights into broader cultural processes. In accordance with Hobsbawm and Ranger´s theory of invented tradition and Benedict Anderson´s concept of imagined communities, it is posited that the emerging “Steppe music tradition” constructs a mythic continuity with nomadic ancestors, thereby responding to what András Máthé-Tóth conceptualises as a wounded collective identity. Furthermore, this invented musical tradition functions not only as an expressive vernacular form but also as an endeavour to heal collective trauma, facilitate political myth-making, and institutionalise a reinterpretation of history.

On Taiwan’s alpine hiking trails, mountain shelters and designated camping areas are set up to provide hikers with safe places to rest at night. These shelters vary in capacity, size, location, and management methods, and most require hikers to apply for a bed and a Mountain Entry Permit online in advance. Hikers aim to reach shelters before dark to avoid accidents, typically sleeping around 8 PM and starting their hike between 3 and 5 AM. Most high-altitude shelters in Taiwan are communal and offer little or no privacy. Early-morning jarring sounds, such as packing and talking, can disturb others, especially when hikers bring their everyday habits into this shared space. This disruption not only creates fraction but also lead to insufficient rest, increasing the risk of altitude sickness or hiking-related accidents and ultimately raising serious safety concerns for alpine activities.

In this case, drawing on the conceptual tools of listening positionality by Dylan Robinson and Jennifer Hsieh’s sono-sociality, I argue that jarring interactions as forming the shelter etiquette and along trails are not merely acoustic disturbances, but serve as moments of attunement—negotiated experiences shaped by hikers’ auditory orientations, cultural assumptions, and differing perceptions of risk. These sound practices show how urban hikers’ listening is registered by embedded ideas of shelter etiquette, care, and bodily vulnerability in alpine environments. Through jarring as a form of attunement, hikers recalibrate their bodily rhythms and perceptual modes, a process of acculturation into a survival-oriented praxis that regulates acceptable sonic events within these liminal, risk-sensitive spaces.