Music in Japan

Description

Music in Japan is one of several case-study volumes that can be used along with Thinking Musically, the core book in the Global Music Series. Thinking Musically incorporates music from many diverse cultures and establishes the framework for exploring the practice of music around the world. It sets the stage for an array of case-study volumes, each of which focuses on a single area of the world. Each case study uses the contemporary musical situation as a point of departure, covering historical information and traditions as they relate to the present. Visit www.oup.com/us/globalmusic for a list of case studies in the Global Music Series. The website also includes instructional materials to accompany each study.
Music in Japan offers a vivid introduction to the music of contemporary Japan, a nation in which traditional, Western, and popular music thrive side by side. Drawing on more than forty years of experience, author Bonnie C. Wade focuses on three themes throughout the book and in the musical selections on the accompanying CD. She begins by exploring how music in Japan has been profoundly affected by interface with both the Western (Europe and the Americas) and Asian (continental and island) cultural spheres. Wade then shows how Japan's thriving popular music industry is also a modern form of a historically important facet of Japanese musical culture: the process of gradual popularization, in which a local or a group's music eventually becomes accessible to a broader range of people. She goes on to consider the intertextuality of Japanese music: how familiar themes, musical sounds, and structures have been maintained and transformed across the various traditions of Japanese performing arts over time.
Music in Japan is enhanced by eyewitness accounts of performances, interviews with key performers, and vivid illustrations. Packaged with an 80-minute CD containing examples of the music discussed in the book, it features guided listening and hands-on activities that encourage readers to engage actively and critically with the music.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface
CD Track List
1. International Interface: Looking Westward
Setting the Scene
"The West" Goes to Japan
Meiji-Period Modernization
World War I and Immediately Following
2. International Interface: Looking Eastward
Tradition in a Time of Change
Interface in the First Millennium
The Gagaku Ensemble as We Hear It
Aerophones
Chordophones
Membranophones and an Idiophone
Percussion Parts in Gagaku Music
Strokes and Stroke Sequences
Coordinated Percussion Patterns
Gagaku through Time
3. Focusing Inward and Across Boundaries
Beyond Classical Music Training
Beyond the Palace
Beyond the Temple
Fuzzing of Folk and Popular
Tsugaru syamisen
The Syamisen
Drumming Ensembles
Matsuri bayashi
Within the World of Koto
Keiko Nosaka and the Twenty-stringed Koto
Tsukushi-goto
Yatsuhashi Ryu and "Rokudan"
Ikuta Kengyo and Yamada Kengyd=o
Michio Migyai and Shin nihon ongaku
Traditional Music for Koto
Contemporary Composition for Koto
From Theater to Film
4. Intertextuality in the Theatrical Arts
The No Drama and Ataka
The Staging
The Plays and Musical Setting
The Acting Forces
Movement
The Musicians and Instruments
The Kabuki Theater
From No to Kabuki
Kanjincho
The Musicians
The Music
The Film Men Who Step on the Tiger's Tail
5. Managing International Interface
Continuing Interface
Looking to the East
Niche Musics from Around the World
Jazz and the Authenticity Issue
Hip-hop in Japan
Continuing the Inward Look
National Cultural Policies
The Choral Phenomenon
Music and the Media
Film Music
Enka
J-pop
Theme Songs
The New York Nexus
Noise
6. From Japan Outward
Japanese Diasporas
Karaoke
Jazz and "Japaneseness"
Kurasiku ongaku
Sharing the concern about "Japaneseness"
Expressing "Japaneseness" Aesthetically
The Seasons in Japanese Music
Keiko Abe and the Marimba
Conclusion
Glossary
References
Resources
Index