On Sound Study, Xandão will follow unexpected resonances, feedback, and musical migration around the world. Tune in for situated listening, original field recordings, and occasional interviews with guest DJs, artists, and scholars.

On this very special episode, Xandão is joined by Nate Hun and Dave Novak to talk about the Cambodian Vintage Music Archive. We recorded the conversations during a whirlwind trip to Long Beach to dig for pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodian records and lost media where we fortuitously met one of the few living Cambodian actresses.

Nate Hun is a Cambodian music/film enthusiast and collector. He worked with director John Pirozzi as an associate producer on the acclaimed documentary film Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll (2014), and co-founded the Cambodian Vintage Music Archive, which aims to locate collectors to preserve digital copies of Cambodian popular music recordings.

David Novak is an associate professor and director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation (2013) and co-editor of Keywords in Sound (2015). His current book project, Diggers: A Media Archaeology of Global Popular Music, theorizes musical globalization through networks of record and cassette collectors, labels, archives, and digital preservation projects.