When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and Germany reunified, the territory of the German Democratic Republic was absorbed into the capitalist West. People felt the West had won. But what if things had gone the other way? What if reunified Germany had been communist?

That is just what happened in Vietnam in 1975. As the war ended, the colonial, capitalist South joined the communist North — and it remains communist today. Yet the Cold War still impacts how people live, feel, and listen, both in Germany and in Vietnam.

Why do South Vietnamese immigrants feel more “German” than North Vietnamese ones? Why do people still listen to the sentimental “yellow music” of South Vietnam, although they have forgotten the patriotic “red music” of the North? In this episode I talk with Vienamese culture worker and ethnographer Nhi Duong about her research on the Cold War histories of Vietnamese in Berlin and the traces those histories have left in Berlin’s archives and soundscapes.

Because this episode was recorded on Zoom while Sydney had a cold, it sounds a bit different than the other episodes.

In Playing the Archive, ethnomusicologist Sydney Hutchinson dives into experimental archival research with interviews, radio plays, & more. This podcast is a part of the Second World Music project. To learn more, visit http://secondworldmusic.wordpress.com.

Playing the Archive © 2025 by Sydney Hutchinson/Second World Music is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International