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The article explores Christian missionary radio broadcasting as part of a wider sonic colonization of the Philippines under US colonial rule. Specifically, I explore how some post-Second World War faith-based broadcasters shaped the listening practices of Filipino audiences through programming tactics such as blocktiming. Furthermore, I consider how missionary broadcasters cultivated direct relationships with listeners through the imagined 'shared experiences' of aural space. As a case study, I explore the activities of the US-based Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC), which began its operations in the Philippines in 1948. Since then, the organization has used the country as a hub for its expanding domestic and international radio network, which now includes broadcasts to South East Asia, China and other parts of the world. In addition to exploring how FEBC's localized approach to programming has cultivated specific listening audiences, I explore how programmes have been received by listeners in the Philippines, many of whom continue to tune in via terrestrial radio.

The inverted cross as a symbol in black metal music has long associated the genre with the mysterious and transgressive aura of the occult. Although the inverted cross can be construed as simultaneously sinister and frivolous, the idea of social inversion carries broader implications. Drawing from interpretations of social and symbolic inversion from multiple disciplines, this article examines how social order is contested and negotiated in Indonesia through the musical idiom of black metal. Indonesia currently has the world’s largest Muslim population and is one of Asia’s fastest growing economies; its transition to democracy since 1998 has been touted as an example of how Islam, capitalism and democracy can successfully coexist. And yet democratization and the expanded influence of capitalism have had uneven (or deleterious) results in halting the country’s increasing wealth gap. Using the Indonesian black metal act Bvrtan as a case study, I describe how their song lyrics, sampled sounds and visual artwork convey the exigencies of the Indonesian agrarian class in a shifting political landscape. Furthermore, I argue that Bvrtan use black metal as a space of social inversion in a way that simultaneously upholds the virtues and values of agricultural workers while depicting a dystopian world where they are further marginalized in the ongoing project of constructing a modern Indonesia.

Control over geographic and sonic space was integral to the United States' imperial project in the Philippines. This article explores how the creation of the hill station of Baguio was achieved both spatially and sonically through the work of US urban designers such as Daniel H. Burnham. In the early twentieth century, Burnham's plans for Baguio (and Manila) inspired a model of auditory and spatial planning that colonial administrators hoped to replicate across the archipelago. In this context, I explore how the design and control of Baguio's auditory environment was part of a wider process to transforming the rural military outpost into a comfortable resort city for U.S. expatriates, members of the Filipino elite, and others to escape the noise, heat, disease and insurgency of Manila and the lowland areas. Furthermore, the article explores Baguio as an "auditory contact zone" where sound configured and framed the interactive dimensions of the imperial encounter between Filipinos and US expatriates. As I argue, the reengineering of urban spaces, such as Baguio, under the US colonial administration was integral in establishing sound as a material symbol of imperial power.

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