Across the Static

features

Jul 11

it’s no wonder that music from Japan is simultaneously as greatly popular and alien as it currently is for western audiences. i wanted to talk about exactly why there is a magic and a mystery to the medium. why some people bounce off it and why others gravitate to it. what that means for writing for a site like this.

i sometimes think of the wide gap between both cultures of music in need of a kind of mental “code switch.” a mental barrier crossed when moving from one world to another. from English to Japanese language. from American music to Japanese music. it’s not just music from a different country, it’s music from a vastly different culture and place. finding a footing in that change can be exquisitely seamless, or quite abrupt.

even as i listen to music now, there’s a sort of mental shift needed between selecting an American music playlist to a Japanese one. what about listening to Third Eye Blind then jumping to ZUTOMAYO. or listening to Norah Jones then changing over to Ichiko Aoba. there isn’t just a genre change happening but a distinct change in cultural sensibilities. sure shoegaze, or pop, or hip-hip, or house are all (individually) one unified genre, but within these genres are a wide range of efforts and style and sub-genres alone. the reason i find Japanese music so wonderful is that i can visit the same genre across America and Japan, yet listen to a song so very different. in composition, in lyrics, in sentiment, in chord progression. of course, i’m no music professor. i couldn’t tell you a B from a C, a riff from a solo. yet one thing is readily apparent, music from two different cultures, from two different sides of the planet can come up with two different style of music, even within the same genre. the results can be astonishingly broad and just as wonderful.

with that established, i find there is even a necessity to develop an ear for new cultural music. there is a mental shift and familiarity needed to move from one expectation to the other. it takes a subtle mental effort to switch between American and Japanese music. my life and my memories and my connections to this music are segmented. in one part of my brain are my feelings of growing up with “The Sound of Music” and “Bee Gees” and “George Strait,“ and in another are my memories of growing up with “L’Arc en Ciel” and “Anri“ and “Shiro Sagisu.” switching from one part of my brain to the other takes work. and it’s something i’ve been familiar with most of my life. this site is basically founded on the ear for music i’ve come to greatly appreciate after all this time. good or bad taste aside! i’ve spent great amount of my life at this point raised on Japanese music, and American music! even now, i still find the cultural and music transition to be an abrupt aspect of enjoying the medium.

i say all of this because coming to this site, in a western audience, readers might find themselves at odds with opinions made on the site. “This album sounds shrill” or “There is too much going on in that song” or “i don’t understand the lyrics, i don’t like it,” are all opinions i’ve heard shared over the years. at this point, frankly, i’m unsure if Japanese music is as accessible to others as it is to me. how large that barrier is, if it’s even there. if it’s easily surmounted by today’s more agreeable and closely connected world, in the arts. still, somehow, the world gets smaller every year. one day music might become more universal and inter-connected than ever before, becoming a truly homogeneous and worldwide passion. American pop inspired Japanese pop, which in turn inspires American pop again, which also inspires the world’s pop music. well that’s a bit idealistic… for now, i think a barrier between cultural music is very real and, for some, difficult to understand. within myself the barrier exists, as i’m sure it does to a larger audience.

when i review an album here at The Sagasu Review, even i have difficulty understanding some works. i do not have a rooted history with j-pop exactly like others do. i don’t know the lyrical expressions, i might be new to some chord progressions, i might not enjoy a new trend over-taking the industry. currently, i do not like the artist Ado, even half as much as many of my friends and Americans seem to. i find her style too abrasive and wild, even though she is a top performer in the country, and even world wide. she is a top performer in Japan, yet still sits firmly in my blind spot. i have difficulty engaging with certain forms of music. even from Japan. i assume, like i do with some others, perhaps newer to the scene, will also have difficulty coming to level with the medium.

so there comes to exist a lot of noise in the translation process, from Japanese culture and sensibilities and popularity, to American listeners and their own history and culture. from a Japanese band, to me and my reception, to a review i write, to the reader, to their listening experience.

that’s a tough static to cut through for some band or artist from Japan. especially for me to write about.

as a reviewer, here, i wanted to talk about this phenomenon. there is an information lost when writing about and sharing works made in Japan. in some ways this is a curse, in some ways a blessing. I’ve seen artists like Perfume die on arrival in America. in the same breath i’ve seen extreme fascinations happen over the enigmatic cutesy trio BABYMETAL, resulting in massive fandoms across heavy metal enthusiasts. it’s a truly cool thing to see happen.

so when i review Ado, at some point, readers must accept that perhaps i haven’t the ear to properly assess her work. not like a Japanese music reviewer might. so then, perhaps, i score her latest work as a 5.0 or 6.0, now fans get upset, and other readers decide she’s not worth the time to listen. an unfortunate fallout. i can only review another’s work to the best of my ability. even as someone primarily raised on music from Japan, my taste only ranges so far. here, again, the static exists.

its one culture, a collection of history and sentiments and ideals and struggles, that creates an art, specifically music from Japan. it’s another culture entirely receiving the work. one with drastically different history and sentiments and ideals. on a rather extreme scale. (in this difference lies the growing fascination and mystery around Japan for westerners.) how is a person raised of western ideals supposed to understand the lyrics, the drive, the emotion, the intention of the work of someone shaped by a vastly different cultural history?

i think the beauty of music seems to gloss over all of that static in a strange way.

somehow music unifies. it clears the gap. it overcomes with ease.

somehow people go nuts for 80’s City Pop even though they’ve never lived in the time or place of its origin. somehow i’ve seen a room full of American people with zero Japanese language skills sing every Asian Kung-Fu Generation song at full tilt, right back to the performing band. (wonderfully, to their astonishment.) somehow i’ve seen a person’s eyes light up at the discovery of a new and unfamiliar sound found only in Japanese music. somehow music bridges that gap, that static.

The Killers and Asian Kung-Fu Generation both make pop-rock under the same genre, yet both their styles are completely estranged. two completely different bands, one genre. so how is there lack of connection between both fandoms?

perhaps, among all the static, there really is no static after all. that enjoyers of metal genre can enjoy both BABYMETAL and Megadeth. lovers of 80’s pop can love Miki Matsuraba and Cindy Lauper. fans of pop-rock can be fans of both The Killers and Asian Kung-Fu Generation. perhaps its an exposure problem. if only these Killers fans could find Asian Kung-Fu Generation, they would love both bands just as well. music seems to so willingly cross these hurdles that maybe these two different worlds, of histories and cultures, are really not that different at all. a compelling thought.

if i could, in a tertiary way, prove any one thing from this site, it would be: music worth discovering, can come from anywhere. music you enjoy, can come from anywhere. from Africa, from Sweden, from Phoenix, Arizona. there is so much more out there than what our local companies prefer to sell to us. go try some Ichiko Aoba, or Suneohair, or m-flo, or Tatsuro Yamashita. i guarantee there will be something you become fascinated with. suddenly, the static begins to steady out.

i intended to only talk about how it might be difficult to approach reviewing Japanese-made music. how it will be difficult to touch on any one piece of work properly, without knowing the conditions it was made under. hoe being deaf to a culture might inhibit reviews made on this site. however, i suppose that is all of art itself, in a short summary. the receiver never will understand the producer’s intentions. thus we must take it in good faith and do our best to understand. and if we don’t, if we bounce off, or we did our best to understand and couldn’t, that’s also just fine. after all, there’s plenty of American made works i don’t appreciate. and definitely i do not need to be a universal and empirical ear to all music. i will simply review and recommend music as i enjoy it.

listening to Japanese music can be a strange or wonderful experience. a fresh exploration into well established genres, or an odd foray into some bizarre pop trend. yet, somehow, good music is good music, no matter the gap.

The Sagasu Review exists to help bridge that gap across the static. it’ll only take a bit of time.