Soulful Folk: The Rhythm and Blues of Japan and Sites of Authenticity

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2012
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Bi-College (Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges). Department of East Asian Studies
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eng
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Dark Archive until 2018-01-01, afterwards Haverford users only.
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Abstract
Music has become a collaborative effort of culture, sound and a strong sense of identity marking. In this case, where in particular do those that are not of the original race or culture, find spaces to create an authentic version of a said genre. Authors Ian Condry, and Marvin Sterling make a case for Japanese Hip-Hop and Reggae cultures in their books: Hip Hop Japan, and Babylon East. Perhaps the most interesting part of their debates on whether or not Japanese people that partake in these cultures and consume them, calling for a flexibility of race, and from there marking a location, genba in which Japanese can create sites of these genres. In some ways, having a frusato, Japanese motherland, invokes sense of doubleness. On one hand, artists take it upon themselves to go back to New York or Jamaica as places to evoke a sense of "realness" based on the original location of the said genre. From these locations, the said person returns to Japan in order to educate others in what the isolated, culture in which Japan has create can learn from the original source. Others utilize the Japanese location in order to further their careers or in order to evoke a sense that in fact, the Japanese can create and/or recreate these sounds, emotions, these cultural codes within their own communities, while at the same time emoting gratefulness to the original people source. One thing that has struck a chord with the project as of now is the power of the new generation as they attempt to create spaces for themselves. Now this is not particularly a phenomenon limited to Japan per se; however, similarly to the use of young persons in social movements--the music industry works in such a manner. We (consumers) see a number of musical shifts through the way in which the newer and typically, younger, musicians take the old systems of music and change them in order to create a sound identity. Many of the artists for this particular project have in some ways have crossed, recreated or in some cases transcended the racial lines of music in terms of Rhythm and Blues. Although at most Condry allows for the genba to be spaces of racial discord and reconciliation and Sterling traces back to imaginative spaces of the Jamaican genba as a source of similar themes, perhaps the change in the way that lyrics and sound mesh into one product and the change in how music is becoming consumed (in particular, the extremely large digital market in Japan), marks a site of an authentic source of similar genres, and in particular Japanese Rhythm and Blues. Ultimately, finding a site that is different from the dance-hall raves that Sterling introduces to his readers to and the underground rap battles which utilize Japanese which Condry gives as an example of the Japanese Hip-Hop genba is one way to look at this project. In terms of the individual artists themselves, I am utilizing aspects of their writing (all of the selected artists are singer-songwriters), information about their lives from their official biographies and interviews (radio and written) and music videos as a source to find something interesting. In the end, these artists represent different aspects of the same coin. Some issues are gendered, others are based on subject matter--but after proving Japanese Rhythm and Blues as an authentic and multiple genre, in the end, I would like to create similar to the two main authors that I am utilizing as the basis to my work, a place to locate these two ideas.
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