Date: 04/14/2025
Time: 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Location
Special Collections Seminar Room, E-2340
Description
From the 1930s to the 1950s, jazz pianist Maurice Rocco was a mainstay in Hollywood and American nightlife scenes. As rock and roll surpassed jazz as America’s most popular music in the 1950s, the queer Black pianist’s fortunes faded and he was forced to go abroad for new opportunities. In 1964 Rocco settled in Bangkok, where he thrived and enjoyed a relatively privileged life until he was murdered by two young male sex workers in 1976. This talk, based on Benjamin Tausig’s new book Bangkok after Dark, uses Rocco’s intriguing story to trace the history of transnational nightlife encounters between Thais and Americans during the long American war in Vietnam.
Benjamin Tausig is associate professor of critical music studies at SUNY-Stony Brook University in New York. His work centers on sound and politics, with a focus on Southeast Asia/Thailand. His first monograph, Bangkok Is Ringing (Oxford University Press, 2019), is an ethnography of the sound environment of the Red Shirt antigovernment protest movement in 2010-11. His second monograph, Bangkok After Dark: Maurice Rocco, Transnational Nightlife, and the Making of Cold War Intimacies (Duke, 2025), is a history of Thai-American nightlife relationships during the Cold War.
Janet Clarke
Latest posts by Janet Clarke (see all)
- Melville Library Galleria Glow-Up: More Seats, More Outlets, More Vibes! - February 5, 2025
- Library Galleria: Makeover Edition - December 3, 2024
- SBU Libraries Host Summit on Strengthening High School Research Skills - March 11, 2024
