Jim Sykes is a drummer, anthropologist, and critical social theorist whose work explores the borders between South and Southeast Asia, and between the disciplines of music and sound studies.
Some of his interests include music/sound and: religion (Sinhala Buddhism and Tamil Hinduism), ethnicity, violence, global histories of capitalism and secularism, plantation labor, shared shrine cultures, and Indian Ocean musical connections. To date, he has conducted most of his fieldwork in Sri Lanka, and secondarily in Singapore, Malaysia, India, and Berlin, Germany. He is currently exploring linguistic anthropology, political anthropology, legal anthropology, and media studies, with growing interests in the anthropology of Europe. He has a background as a drummer who has recorded and toured with noise, post-punk, and indie rock groups, and he currently attempts to record electronic music. Some courses he has recently taught include an undergrad class called “Weird Music” and a grad class called “Music and Political Anthropology.”
His first book, The Musical Gift: Sonic Generosity in Post-War Sri Lanka (OUP, 2018), brings anthropology’s longstanding discourse on the gift into music studies and engages with anthropology’s ontological turn and writings on war, ethnonationalism, and reconciliation. The book won the Bruno Nettl Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2019.
Other publications include: Sounding the Indian Ocean: Musical Circulations in the Afro-Asiatic Seascape (California, 2023; co-edited with Julia Byl), which won the inaugural Monsoon Prize in Indian Ocean Studies (Anthropology and Archaeology Section) and received honorable mention for the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Koskoff Prize in 2024; and Remapping Sound Studies (Duke; co-edited with Gavin Steingo), which reimagines sound studies from the global South.
His papers can be found here: https://upenn.academia.edu/JimSykes.
He is currently working on two books. The first is about the idea of music as ‘not a real job.’ Intended for an academic and popular audience, it is a global history of musical labor in relation to stages of capital, a discussion of how musicians relate to those who do and don’t pay them, and an ethnography of the revitalization of music’s functional value in the modern world—including fieldwork with climate protest drummers in Berlin. The second book is about Tamil Hindu drummers in Singapore, urban development, and their relations with South Indian and Malaysian Tamils, and with other Singaporeans (particularly Chinese Taoists).
As a musician, in the 2000s, he was in the Brooklyn noise rock band Parts & Labor, and later in Grooms (part of Brooklyn’s Death by Audio collective), and more recently Invisible Things (with U.S. Maple’s Mark Shippy). He toured with Marnie Stern right after she won “Best New Music” on Pitchfork and was named to Spin’s top 100 guitarists list, and with Martin Bisi (producer of Sonic Youth, John Zorn). He has recorded with Mike Watt (Minutemen, Stooges) and Norman Westberg (Swans), among others. One highlight was playing in Boredoms’ 77 Boadrum project, which was the subject of a documentary film. Indie musicians he has shared bills with include St. Vincent, Real Estate, Kurt Vile, War on Drugs, Quasi, Titus Andronicus, Tune-Yards, Beach Fossils, and many others. His new recording, which he hopes will come out before he is even more old and grey, is with Department of Justice, a band out of Berlin featuring two drum sets and electronics.
https://invisiblethings.bandcamp.com/
https://invisiblethings.bandcamp.com/album/home-is-the-sun
https://hiddenrifles.tumblr.com/
https://www.npr.org/2015/06/02/411252998/invisible-things-f
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vjk01Wo-aEs
