Noriko Manabe
I am Professor of Music Theory at Indiana University, Jacobs School of Music. I was previously standing faculty at Temple University and Princeton University; I have also taught at the University of Pennsylvania and CUNY. I hold a Ph.D. with a double concentration in ethnomusicology and music theory (CUNY Graduate Center, 2009). My methods blend musical analysis with ethnography, and I draw from theories of the social sciences, literary studies, and linguistics.
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My work centers on 1) music and social movements; 2) interactions of text, language, music, and meaning; 3) global popular music; and 4) technology and the music industry. I was previously an Institutional Investor-ranked analyst of Japanese technology and media, and this experience informs my research on the music business.
My monograph, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima (Oxford University Press), addresses the role of musicians in (self-)censored environments and the ways they convey their political messages through music in four different performance spaces—cyberspace, demonstrations, festivals, and recordings. It won the 2018 BFE Book Prize from the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, the 2017 John Whitney Hall Book Prize for best book on Japan from the Association for Asian Studies, Honorable Mention for the 2016 Alan Merriam Award for best book in ethnomusicology from the Society for Ethnomusicology, and the Book Subvention Award from the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Diversity Committee in 2013. My second monograph, Revolution Remixed: Intertextuality in Protest Music (under contract with Oxford, forthcoming), constructs a classification of intertextuality as it pertains to protest songs and analyzes cases drawn from global movements as well as the Japanese antinuclear movement. Other ongoing projects include one on the development of Japanese children’s songs from the Meiji Era to the Allied Occupation, and another on Japanese club musics (hip hop, reggae, techno) in transnational perspective, including production and reception in Japan, Jamaica, Brazil, and Europe.
I am co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Protest Music (with Eric Drott, under contract), and Nuclear Music: Sonic Responses to War, Disaster, and Power (with Jessica Schwartz, under contract).
My article, "We Gon’ Be Alright? The Ambiguities of Kendrick Lamar’s Protest Anthem," on Music Theory Online 25.1, won the Outstanding Publications Award from the Society for Music Theory (SMT) and the Outstanding Publication Award from the Popular Music Interest Group of SMT. Other published articles and book chapters address music and the Japanese antinuclear movement; music reflecting the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the impact of the Japanese language on rap; the aesthetics of hip-hop DJs; the differences in the online radio markets in the United States and Japan; propaganda in Japanese children’s songs; and the interaction of text and music in the songs of Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez. My articles have appeared in Ethnomusicology, Popular Music, Music Theory Online, Twentieth Century Music, Music and Politics, Asian Music, Latin American Music Review, Transcultural Music Review, two Oxford Handbooks, and several edited volumes.
My research has been funded by the NEH Fellowship for Advanced Social Science Research on Japan, Kluge Fellowship, the Japan Foundation Fellowship, the SSRC/JSPS Fellowship, Temple, Princeton, and CUNY.
I am Series Editor for 33-1/3 Japan, a book series on Japanese popular music and an extension of the popular 33-1/3 series from Bloomsbury Publishing. I have served on the editorial or advisory boards of the journals, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Twentieth-Century Music, Music Analysis, and Music and Politics, and the book series, SOAS Musicology (Routledge) and Music and Politics (Routledge). I am a contributing editor for the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. I have served as Treasurer, Council Member, and Chair of the Investment Committee for the Society for Ethnomusicology; as Chair of the Publication Awards Committee and as a member of the Program, Investment, and Race and Ethnicity Committees for the Society for Music Theory; the Finance Committee for the Association for Asian Studies; and Board of Trustees for the Society for Japanese Studies.
Address: Dept. of Music Theory
Jacobs School of Music
Indiana University
200 S Eagleson Ave
Bloomington, IN 47405
.
My work centers on 1) music and social movements; 2) interactions of text, language, music, and meaning; 3) global popular music; and 4) technology and the music industry. I was previously an Institutional Investor-ranked analyst of Japanese technology and media, and this experience informs my research on the music business.
My monograph, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima (Oxford University Press), addresses the role of musicians in (self-)censored environments and the ways they convey their political messages through music in four different performance spaces—cyberspace, demonstrations, festivals, and recordings. It won the 2018 BFE Book Prize from the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, the 2017 John Whitney Hall Book Prize for best book on Japan from the Association for Asian Studies, Honorable Mention for the 2016 Alan Merriam Award for best book in ethnomusicology from the Society for Ethnomusicology, and the Book Subvention Award from the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Diversity Committee in 2013. My second monograph, Revolution Remixed: Intertextuality in Protest Music (under contract with Oxford, forthcoming), constructs a classification of intertextuality as it pertains to protest songs and analyzes cases drawn from global movements as well as the Japanese antinuclear movement. Other ongoing projects include one on the development of Japanese children’s songs from the Meiji Era to the Allied Occupation, and another on Japanese club musics (hip hop, reggae, techno) in transnational perspective, including production and reception in Japan, Jamaica, Brazil, and Europe.
I am co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Protest Music (with Eric Drott, under contract), and Nuclear Music: Sonic Responses to War, Disaster, and Power (with Jessica Schwartz, under contract).
My article, "We Gon’ Be Alright? The Ambiguities of Kendrick Lamar’s Protest Anthem," on Music Theory Online 25.1, won the Outstanding Publications Award from the Society for Music Theory (SMT) and the Outstanding Publication Award from the Popular Music Interest Group of SMT. Other published articles and book chapters address music and the Japanese antinuclear movement; music reflecting the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the impact of the Japanese language on rap; the aesthetics of hip-hop DJs; the differences in the online radio markets in the United States and Japan; propaganda in Japanese children’s songs; and the interaction of text and music in the songs of Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez. My articles have appeared in Ethnomusicology, Popular Music, Music Theory Online, Twentieth Century Music, Music and Politics, Asian Music, Latin American Music Review, Transcultural Music Review, two Oxford Handbooks, and several edited volumes.
My research has been funded by the NEH Fellowship for Advanced Social Science Research on Japan, Kluge Fellowship, the Japan Foundation Fellowship, the SSRC/JSPS Fellowship, Temple, Princeton, and CUNY.
I am Series Editor for 33-1/3 Japan, a book series on Japanese popular music and an extension of the popular 33-1/3 series from Bloomsbury Publishing. I have served on the editorial or advisory boards of the journals, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Twentieth-Century Music, Music Analysis, and Music and Politics, and the book series, SOAS Musicology (Routledge) and Music and Politics (Routledge). I am a contributing editor for the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. I have served as Treasurer, Council Member, and Chair of the Investment Committee for the Society for Ethnomusicology; as Chair of the Publication Awards Committee and as a member of the Program, Investment, and Race and Ethnicity Committees for the Society for Music Theory; the Finance Committee for the Association for Asian Studies; and Board of Trustees for the Society for Japanese Studies.
Address: Dept. of Music Theory
Jacobs School of Music
Indiana University
200 S Eagleson Ave
Bloomington, IN 47405
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Amazon webpage: http://amzn.to/1LJF8rz
2017 John Whitney Hall Book Prize, Association for Asian Studies
Honorable Mention, 2016 Alan Merriam Prize, Society for Ethnomusicology
Despite widespread apprehension of nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster, Japan remains a difficult place to express antinuclear views: the media largely avoids presenting antinuclear positions, and the culture discourages people from voicing controversial opinions. In such an environment, music emerged quickly as a mode of oppositional expression, encapsulating the people’s anxieties.
Drawing from the author’s ethnography of the movement since 2011, musical analysis, and concepts from the social sciences, this book examines the ways in which music of social movements is shaped by the stature of the musician and the performance space. In contrast to American or British musicians who typically attract attention to causes, Japanese musicians are highly discouraged from engaging in politics, particularly the antinuclear movement. They adjust their political behavior depending on their position in the music industry, the space in which they are playing, and political conditions at the time. According to these parameters, they change the type of audience participation, political frame of the message, and technique of communicating the message.
Extending Lefebvre’s conception of space as perceived, conceived, and lived in, the book analyzes the interactions of music and musicians with citizens under the constraints and opportunities of the four spaces of political music performance—cyberspace, demonstrations, festivals, and recordings. Anonymity in cyberspace—more prevalent in Japan than many other countries—initially helped citizens to overcome fear and participate in the movement. The “sound demonstration,” featuring musicians on top of trucks rolling along ahead of protesters, has evolved in intent and in performance style according to political circumstances. Rappers changed from performing prepared songs to improvising calls and responses with protesters as the movement shifted from raising awareness to mobilizing citizens. The urban landscape and soundscape change the performance and reception of protests; activists plan, and musicians perform, accordingly. Political music festivals range between two types of communication approaches: informational, where arguments are presented, or experiential, where an immersive environment opens one’s mind to different points of view. On commercial recordings, which are industry-censored, major-label musicians rely on allegories, metaphors (both textual and musical), and metonyms; they purposefully mis-set and mispronounce words to express their antinuclear sentiments. These patterns of protest have been retained in subsequent movements in Japan, such as the movement against the Secrecy Law and Prime Minister Abe’s reinterpretation of the Peace Constitution.
This performance was highly unusual: Japanese recording artists rarely engage in politics. The recording and broadcast industries disallow lyrics on controversial topics, and management discourages artists from engaging in politics. Kuwata staged his rebellious gesture as a “mishearing” of a well-known album.
Kuwata transformed Abbey Road into political parody through linguistic sleight of hand. Kuwata chose Japanese lyrics with similar vowels and consonants (as demonstrated by their proximities on the International Phonetic Alphabet) to make them sound like the original English lyrics. By presenting his acrid commentary as a parody of this much-loved album and thus framing it as humorous entertainment, Kuwata was able to publicly criticize Japanese politicians.
The best-known track on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, “Alright” has come to be regarded as a protest anthem, fueled by Lamar’s charged performances of the song at the BET Awards and the Grammys, and by accolades from the press that cite its political importance. This article argues that the actual musical track is ambiguous and open to several interpretations. To support this idea, I first explore the process through which the track came into being and how this process may have contributed to the song’s ambiguity. I then examine the message of “Alright,” contextualizing its place in the concept album and in the music video. I closely examine the musical track, analyzing its accent patterns using the metrical preference rules of Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983) and David Temperley (2001). This analysis of the track implies a 3+5 or 3+2+3 beat reading of the meter in addition to a straight 44. Using the linguistic tool Praat, I analyze the ways in which rappers Fabolous (who originally recorded on the track) and Lamar respond to this meter in their stresses, rhythms, and rhymes. I examine the well-known hook, which Pharrell Williams raps with a striking rise in pitch. This rise lends itself to several possible interpretations, due to differences in intonation between African American English and standard American English, coupled with Williams’s fluency in both. Finally, I analyze the ways that protesters have performed and interpreted the hook differently from the recording, as an illustration of the multivalent nature of the work.
Winner of Waterman Prize, Society for Ethnomusicology, Popular Music Section
Winner of Waterman Prize, Society for Ethnomusicology, Popular Music Section
A conference paper based on this article won the Hewitt Panteleoni Prize from the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology.
A Spanish translation of the article can be found here:
http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/a161/amantes-y-gobernantes-lo-real-y-lo-surrealista-metaforas-armonicas-en-las-canciones-de-silvio-rodriguez"
Palabras claves - Silvio Rodríguez, nueva trova, análisis -- música popular, análisis - Schenker, etnomusicología, Cuba
Resumen:
Esta ponencia examina las reinterpretaciones del son cubano por los poemas de Motivos de son de Nicolás Guillén y las canciones basadas en ellos por Eliseo y Emilio Grenet, Alejandro García Caturla y Amadeo Roldán. Sus interpretaciones distintas reflejan sus conceptos diversos de lo que era el afrocubanismo. Para Grenet, el afrocubanismo fue un estilo que se incorporó en las canciones populares para el teatro y el salón; sus melodías pegadizas en los ritmos cubanos camuflan la amargura del texto de Guillén. Para Caturla, el afrocubanismo era una mezcla del respeto por el folklore afrocubano y el modernismo; él dio a "Bito Manué" una melodía más en el estilo de la música de santería que del son, puesto al contrario a las convenciones de la armonía y de la declamación. Roldán mezcló los ritmos y armonías modernos con la forma, la instrumentación y los ritmos complejos del son, para hacer un homenaje a este género."
Amazon webpage: http://amzn.to/1LJF8rz
2017 John Whitney Hall Book Prize, Association for Asian Studies
Honorable Mention, 2016 Alan Merriam Prize, Society for Ethnomusicology
Despite widespread apprehension of nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster, Japan remains a difficult place to express antinuclear views: the media largely avoids presenting antinuclear positions, and the culture discourages people from voicing controversial opinions. In such an environment, music emerged quickly as a mode of oppositional expression, encapsulating the people’s anxieties.
Drawing from the author’s ethnography of the movement since 2011, musical analysis, and concepts from the social sciences, this book examines the ways in which music of social movements is shaped by the stature of the musician and the performance space. In contrast to American or British musicians who typically attract attention to causes, Japanese musicians are highly discouraged from engaging in politics, particularly the antinuclear movement. They adjust their political behavior depending on their position in the music industry, the space in which they are playing, and political conditions at the time. According to these parameters, they change the type of audience participation, political frame of the message, and technique of communicating the message.
Extending Lefebvre’s conception of space as perceived, conceived, and lived in, the book analyzes the interactions of music and musicians with citizens under the constraints and opportunities of the four spaces of political music performance—cyberspace, demonstrations, festivals, and recordings. Anonymity in cyberspace—more prevalent in Japan than many other countries—initially helped citizens to overcome fear and participate in the movement. The “sound demonstration,” featuring musicians on top of trucks rolling along ahead of protesters, has evolved in intent and in performance style according to political circumstances. Rappers changed from performing prepared songs to improvising calls and responses with protesters as the movement shifted from raising awareness to mobilizing citizens. The urban landscape and soundscape change the performance and reception of protests; activists plan, and musicians perform, accordingly. Political music festivals range between two types of communication approaches: informational, where arguments are presented, or experiential, where an immersive environment opens one’s mind to different points of view. On commercial recordings, which are industry-censored, major-label musicians rely on allegories, metaphors (both textual and musical), and metonyms; they purposefully mis-set and mispronounce words to express their antinuclear sentiments. These patterns of protest have been retained in subsequent movements in Japan, such as the movement against the Secrecy Law and Prime Minister Abe’s reinterpretation of the Peace Constitution.
This performance was highly unusual: Japanese recording artists rarely engage in politics. The recording and broadcast industries disallow lyrics on controversial topics, and management discourages artists from engaging in politics. Kuwata staged his rebellious gesture as a “mishearing” of a well-known album.
Kuwata transformed Abbey Road into political parody through linguistic sleight of hand. Kuwata chose Japanese lyrics with similar vowels and consonants (as demonstrated by their proximities on the International Phonetic Alphabet) to make them sound like the original English lyrics. By presenting his acrid commentary as a parody of this much-loved album and thus framing it as humorous entertainment, Kuwata was able to publicly criticize Japanese politicians.
The best-known track on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, “Alright” has come to be regarded as a protest anthem, fueled by Lamar’s charged performances of the song at the BET Awards and the Grammys, and by accolades from the press that cite its political importance. This article argues that the actual musical track is ambiguous and open to several interpretations. To support this idea, I first explore the process through which the track came into being and how this process may have contributed to the song’s ambiguity. I then examine the message of “Alright,” contextualizing its place in the concept album and in the music video. I closely examine the musical track, analyzing its accent patterns using the metrical preference rules of Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983) and David Temperley (2001). This analysis of the track implies a 3+5 or 3+2+3 beat reading of the meter in addition to a straight 44. Using the linguistic tool Praat, I analyze the ways in which rappers Fabolous (who originally recorded on the track) and Lamar respond to this meter in their stresses, rhythms, and rhymes. I examine the well-known hook, which Pharrell Williams raps with a striking rise in pitch. This rise lends itself to several possible interpretations, due to differences in intonation between African American English and standard American English, coupled with Williams’s fluency in both. Finally, I analyze the ways that protesters have performed and interpreted the hook differently from the recording, as an illustration of the multivalent nature of the work.
Winner of Waterman Prize, Society for Ethnomusicology, Popular Music Section
Winner of Waterman Prize, Society for Ethnomusicology, Popular Music Section
A conference paper based on this article won the Hewitt Panteleoni Prize from the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology.
A Spanish translation of the article can be found here:
http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/a161/amantes-y-gobernantes-lo-real-y-lo-surrealista-metaforas-armonicas-en-las-canciones-de-silvio-rodriguez"
Palabras claves - Silvio Rodríguez, nueva trova, análisis -- música popular, análisis - Schenker, etnomusicología, Cuba
Resumen:
Esta ponencia examina las reinterpretaciones del son cubano por los poemas de Motivos de son de Nicolás Guillén y las canciones basadas en ellos por Eliseo y Emilio Grenet, Alejandro García Caturla y Amadeo Roldán. Sus interpretaciones distintas reflejan sus conceptos diversos de lo que era el afrocubanismo. Para Grenet, el afrocubanismo fue un estilo que se incorporó en las canciones populares para el teatro y el salón; sus melodías pegadizas en los ritmos cubanos camuflan la amargura del texto de Guillén. Para Caturla, el afrocubanismo era una mezcla del respeto por el folklore afrocubano y el modernismo; él dio a "Bito Manué" una melodía más en el estilo de la música de santería que del son, puesto al contrario a las convenciones de la armonía y de la declamación. Roldán mezcló los ritmos y armonías modernos con la forma, la instrumentación y los ritmos complejos del son, para hacer un homenaje a este género."
This article discusses the sights and sounds of this movement, as performed in street demonstrations, music festivals, and recordings, and the emergent engagement of youth in politics through music. As Charles Tilly would predict, these contentious performances show continuity with pre-established networks and performance practices, notably from the antinuclear movement post-Chernobyl and post-3.11. Musicians adjust their messages and behavior depending on the censorial environment and risks inherent in these spaces. Through a mixture of continuity with past practice, homage to political and cultural forbears, and innovation, they are giving voice to deep anxieties at this turning point in Japanese history.
[The published article can be accessed for free here:
https://www.luminosoa.org/site/chapters/10.1525/luminos.40.n/ ]
des militants et des musiciens datant de 2011. Il décrit les relations de pouvoir permettant à l’énergie nucléaire de rester en place au Japon. Il montre comment les musiciens adaptent leur expression politique en fonction des relations de pouvoir qui gouvernent les différents espaces que nous avons définis. Parce qu’ils risquent d’être mis sur liste noire ou harcelés, les musiciens qui politisent leur musique adaptent leurs performances
à l’espace où ils évoluent. Les membres du public, eux aussi,
risquent d’être ostracisés et harcelés s’ils expriment ouvertement
leurs opinions politiques. Ils adaptent donc eux aussi leur façon de participer aux différents espaces. Dans la mesure où le cyberespace et les enregistrements fonctionnent comme des espaces de conservation pour la musique, nous nous concentrerons davantage sur l’analyse musicale dans les sections qui leur seront consacrées, tandis que nous mettrons l’accent sur les pratiques participatives quand nous aborderons les espaces vécus des festivals et des manifestations.
"
A short conference paper that summarizes the findings and updates them can be seen at https://www.academia.edu/6879626/Online_Radio_How_Markets_in_Japan_and_the_US_Hear_Things_Differently .
The surge in anti-Asian violence since the start of the pandemic has spurred a rise in Asian American activism. This activity recalls the history of Asian American resistance and the ways in which music and sound have channeled Asian American stories. One challenge for the Asian American movement is that as education on Asian American history has been limited, particularly at secondary levels, the movement has been left without broadly recognized iconic figures, events, and ideologies to which activists can turn and be readily understood. Many activists see telling the history of Asian America as a key goal of activism. As Fernandes explains, movements often call on individual stories to personalize the message, and these stories are often shaped into movement narratives over time. This panel observes that process through four case studies in Asian America, demonstrating the role of sonic storytelling in Asian American social justice movements. The first paper discusses the recent Stop Asian Hate movement, focusing on how hip hop has reflected the ideologies and fissures within the Asian American community and educated listeners of past anti-Asian American discrimination. The second paper considers the 1970s Asian American songwriting circle called Yokohama, California, which served as a site for processing political knowledge and expanded the Asian American repertoire of protest music. The third paper considers the international consciousness that is inherent in the Asian American movement through the performative speech acts of elderly Cambodian women who fled the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s and their efforts to support Afghan refugees. The fourth paper presents oral histories of taiko practitioners in North America during the pandemic, considering how taiko and taiko players have engaged with Asian American community in a time of racism, violence, and artistic precarity. Together, these papers demonstrate how music serves as a site of discourse and experimentation for Asian American activism, as well as the power of sonic storytelling in communicating the history of immigration, violence, and resistance that has characterized the Asian American experience.
Presentations of the Symposium
"Telling my story": Asian American rap in a time of anti-Asian racism
Noriko Manabe (Temple University)
While Asian American hip-hop artists have been successful as DJs or dancers, they have been less visible as rappers. As Wang, Hisama, Wong, Kajikawa, and others have reflected, many Asian American rappers have historically been excluded from the mainstream music industry, while hip hop has remained a site for playing out interracial fascination and tension. Nonetheless, rap’s ethos of personal authenticity, coupled with its appeal to a wide swath of Asian Americans representing diverse ethnicities and social classes, has made Asian American rap an intriguing window into the discourse on anti-Asian American discimination and violence.
This paper explores the ways in which Asian American rap reflects and complicates the discourses inherent in movements against anti-Asian hate. I explore case studies of Asian American rap addressing two events: Japanese American incarceration during World War II and #StopAsianHate, the movement against anti-Asian violence in the wake of the pandemic.
Applying theories of storytelling (Jackson, Fernandes), I analyze tracks on wartime incarceration by Japanese American rappers Key Kool and Mike Shinoda, who each recount their grandfathers’ experiences as internees and bear witness to an often-neglected aspect of US history. Recorded in 1995 and 2005 respectively, they demonstrate the routinization (Alexander, Hung) over time of the narrative on internment and redress. I then analyze the lyrics, music, and visuals of a corpus of 40 songs that reference #StopAsianHate, using ethnographic interviews combined with discourse analysis, Peircean semiotics, and intertextual methods. Combined with the musicians’ activities at rallies, performances, interviews, and social media, this music serves what many activists forward as movement goals: to teach the history of anti-Asian discrimination in the US, debunk Asian American stereotypes, and promote interracial unity. Some tracks also present fissures and diversities of opinion, such as visions of violent revenge. A soundtrack to the discourse, these tracks provide an outlet for the expression of “minor feelings” (Hong), a tool for political mobilization, and evidence of dissensus among Asian Americans.
Crafting Empathy, Speaking Solidarity
Brian Sengdala (Cornell University)
How do Asian Americans practice interethnic solidarities through our activism? What do we learn about strategies of solidarity through minor stories told under the umbrella of Asian American?
When news broke of the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, many stories sprang up both publicly in articles and intimately in conversation from Khmer refugees who fled the Khmer Rouge coup on 12 April 1975. The Cambodian American journalist Putatsa Reang published an article on August 2021 which opens, “My mother called on Monday to ask if I was watching the news. ‘It’s so scary… All the Afghan people fleeing, running this way and that way. Everyone so desperate to escape. That was us.’” Cambodia and Afghanistan share parallel histories in that both experienced US military forces leaving the country, followed swiftly by a fear-inducing regime change. Listening to the recollection and call to action of Reang’s mother and the other yeays—the Khmer honorific and kinship term for elderly women—like her, this paper attends to the reported conversations within crafting circles made up of elderly Khmer women from the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants (CERI) in Oakland, California. Through a Khmer performativity wherein to speak of something calls it into being, I argue that these yeays show how Asian American activism must always be—as it has always been conceived (Maeda)—interethnic.
These women are a part of a specific refugee class of Asian Americans who were made a part of the United States. With newer modes of agency, they reassert the formation of a transnationally attuned Asian American identity whose conditions of resettlement continue to be the result of multiple Usonian strategies (imperialism, militarism, pollution). Among discourses of Asian American studies, the foundling, but growing field of critical refugee studies is rewriting our understandings of racialized and collectivized activisms in its transnational approach. This paper, through an even smaller subset of Cambodian critical refugee studies as it is met with the potentials of sound studies and performance studies, furthers our understanding of how we speak into being and practice an activism to make our place in the world.
The Project of Asian America: Conversations about Taiko drumming with North American Taiko Practitioners
Lei Ouyang (Swarthmore College)
How has the escalation of anti-Asian violence and anti-Asian racism during the ongoing global pandemic impacted North American taiko practitioners? How can ethnomusicologists engage with the project of Asian America (Yellow Horse & Nakagawa 2020) to bring visibility to the invisible and complicate the hypervisibility of Asian American artists and Asian American performing arts?
This paper centers oral histories of taiko practitioners across the United States and Canada to present nuanced and critical engagement with Asian American artists, their work, and their lived experiences amidst a context that includes racial reckonings, acts of violence, and the global pandemic. Supervised by a faculty advisor, the oral histories are undergraduate student projects developed as part of an engaged pedagogical process. Students and faculty work together in discussion and collaboration with a local Asian American Arts organization off campus (located in a Chinatown of a nearby major US city).
Taiko scholar Deborah Wong writes, “performance is never only about performing” (2019: 207) and that “taiko tells a story about immigration, violence, resistance, and politicization. Taiko teaches skills that have urgent new relevance” (206). What then might we learn from collaborative engagement across Asian American communities on the topics of taiko, violence, racism, inequality, care, and artist life during the global pandemic? As Karín Aguilar-San Juan writes, “Asian America is Dead, Long Live Asian America!” (2021: 289). Conversations about Taiko drumming with taiko practitioners across North America provide an opportunity to explore with care and intention the ongoing tensions within Asian American communities and Asian American Studies. This paper aims to provide one example of how the interdisciplinary work of Ethnomusicology might intersect with the interdisciplinary work of Asian American Studies. Moreover, the collaborative project combining the work of students, faculty, artists, and community partners showcases the humanities as a site for civic engagement and innovative pedagogy to address race and inequality in Asian American communities today.
The link to an archived webcast of the live presentation is at http://www.indiana.edu/~video/stream/launchflash.html?folder=video&filename=SEM_2014_Annual_Meeting_AM_20141114.mp4. This paper runs from about 81:00 to 111:00. The papers in the panel are:
1. Michael Frishkopf, "Technological factors conditioning the socio-political power of music in cyberspace"
2. Adriana Helbig, "Cyber-mobilization, Informational Intimacy, and Musical Frames in Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Protests"
3. Noriko Manabe, "Countering spirals of silence: Protest music and the anonymity of cyberspace in the Japanese antinuclear movement"
4. Farzaneh Hemmasi, "Living (and Dying) the Rock and Roll Dream: Alternative Media and the Politics of 'Making It' as an Iranian Underground Musician"
https://www.academia.edu/6698600/A_Tale_of_Two_Countries_Online_Radio_in_the_United_States_and_Japan
Protest songs, by their very nature, are highly intertextual; they refer to current issues either directly (e.g., through lyrics that quote officials) or obliquely through metaphors. In addition, they often refer to historical movements, thereby accessing the listener’s feelings about that movement and compounding the songs’ power through semantic snowballing (cf. Turino). Classifying types of intertextuality would be useful for analyzing how musicians choose to convey their messages, and how they are received.
Using Genette’s classification of transtextuality as a starting point (with references to Lacasse), I formulate a typology of intertextuality for protest songs. These types include hypertextual covers (with changed lyrics), remakes and reinterpretations, mash-ups, metaphors, and allegories; intertextual quotations; paratextual uses of promotional or concessionary materials; and architextual adaptations of style for strategic purposes. In order to analyze reception, I overlay Peircean models of how signs take on meaning and are interpreted. My analytical process considers signifying parameters (e.g., texts, music, performance, visuals), referred events, and dynamic responses.
I apply this process to analyze the music of the Japanese antinuclear movement post-Fukushima, overlaying findings from interviews with artists and protesters, to describe the methods by which musicians deliver their antinuclear messages. Through writing new lyrics to existing songs, quoting hip-hop classics by Gil Scott-Heron and Public Enemy, performing satirically as electric-power officials, adapting light-hearted matsuri (festival) styles, or using metaphors (e.g., Godzilla), musicians comment on nuclear policy and draw parallels between this movement and World War II, antiwar protests, and African American struggles.
[Abstract pages from conference are attached]
Make sure to check out the companion website, which includes lots of multi-media materials that articulate with the chapters of the book!
--Carla Nappi
With Elsa Grassy (ed.).
Selected proceedings of the Strasbourg conference.
"Conference organizers
Alenka Barber-Kersovan, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Arbeitskreis Studium Populärer Musik, Germany
Elsa Grassy, Université de Strasbourg, International Association for the Study of Popular Music-branche francophone d’Europe, France
Jedediah Sklower, Université Catholique de Lille, Éditions Mélanie Seteun / Volume! the French journal of popular music studies, France
Keynote speakers
Martin Cloonan, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
Dietrich Helms, University of Osnabrück, Germany
Provisional scientific committee
Ralph von Appen, University of Giessen, Germany
Esteban Buch, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France
Hugh Dauncey, University of Newcastle, United Kingdom
André Doehring, University of Giessen, Germany
Gérôme Guibert, University of Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle, France
Patricia Hall, University of Michigan, United States
Olivier Julien, University of Paris IV, Sorbonne, France
Dave Laing, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom
David Looseley, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Rajko Muršič, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Rosa Reitsamer, University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, Austria
Deena Weinstein, DePaul University, United States
Sheila Whiteley, University of Salford, United Kingdom
The Conference
Popular Music scholars have devoted considerable attention to the relationship between music and power. The symbolic practices through which subcultures state and reinforce identities have been widely documented (mainly in the field of Cultural, Gender and Postcolonial Studies), as has the increasingly political and revolutionary dimensions of popular music. Most studies have focused on the genres and movements that developed with and in the aftermath of the 1960’s counterculture. Yet little has been written about how the politics of popular music has reflected the social, geopolitical and technological changes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, after the fall of Communism. Still, the music of the Arab Spring or of the Occupy and Indignados movements have been scarcely commented upon while they attest to significant changes in the way music is used by activists and revolutionaries today.
This international conference therefore aims to explore the new political meanings and practices of music and to provide an impetus for their study. Broadly the themes of the conference are divided into five main streams:
1. Music as a Political Weapon
The history of popular music cannot be divorced from that of social, cultural and political movements, and yet the question remains: if music is politically efficient, how can we measure its impact? It is not clear what role music plays in the struggle for political, ideological and social change. While musical practices and the writing of songs can strengthen existing activist groups, can it also truly change minds or upset the established order and destabilize it? If there are such things as soundtracks for rebellions and revolutions, do they merely accompany fights or can they quicken the pace and bring about change themselves?
Of course it would be naïve to think of the political impact of music only in progressive terms; participants are encouraged to pinpoint the ambiguities and contradictions at work in the relationship between music and power. Popular music artists and whole genres can refuse to meddle in politics – and the non-referentiality of music makes it an ill-suited medium for the diffusion of clean-cut messages. It would therefore be ill-advised to consider popular music genres and artists as falling either into the political or apolitical categories. Music can also be violent in less political ways, and even carry nihilistic undertones – it can ignore or even mock its own alleged political power. This should lead us to a re-evaluation of subcultural politics.
2. Political Change, Musical Revolution? The Question of Artistic Legacy
The musical styles that accompany social and political change are part of a musical continuum. This prompts the question of originality and relation to tradition. Has the new historical context shaken up the old codes for protest music? What are the new politically conscious forms and genres of today, and how do they relate to older protest movements? The covering of songs from the Civil Rights era and the Great Depression in the aftermath of Katrina and the participation of singers from the 1960s counterculture in the Occupy Wall Street movement raises the issue of correspondences between groups of artists and activists. We will also look at how contemporary movements connect with one another. Can it be said that protest music is globalized today? How does the music of the Arab Spring compare to the songs of the Occupy Wall Street movement or of the Maple Spring protesters?
3. Music, Identity and Nationalism
Popular music has a hand in the building and solidification of (sub)cultural communities. Songs have expressed the emergence of new group identities in fall of Communism, the breakup of Yugoslavia and during other political schisms in Latin American countries more recently. People sing and play the old regimes away, or they use music to connect with fellow migrants or refugees in an upset political landscape. Songs serve as a bridge between past and present by pairing traditional patterns to new instruments, new technology, and new media – by associating nostalgia with the wish for change. They can also smooth out the transition to a new life and a new identity as individuals and groups assimilate into another culture. Reversely, they can reflect new cultural antagonisms and class conflicts and follow the radicalization of group identities. In the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Russia, nationalist movements have their own anthems, too.
4. Aesthetics, digital practices and political significations
The increased use of computing technology in musical practices as well as the advent of social networks has opened new aesthetic vistas (with the increasing use of sampling, mashups, or shreds), as well as changed the way music is shared, advertised and composed. How do those technical changes affect the political uses of music and its weight? Of course while these changes have led to a wave of increased artistic creativity, they might also obliterate symbolic legacies and political meanings. When do reference and reverence turn into betrayal? New technologies might have opened a new battleground where political awareness competes with cultural emancipation.
5. Marching to a Different Beat? Censorship, Propaganda and Torture
The political weight and the mobilizing capacities of popular music can be gauged by how authorities react to them. Some states consider them a threat to their stability and to an established order in which the voice of the people is seldom heard – and never listened to. In the 21st century, popular music is still censored and repressed all over the world. From the ban of irreverent songs after 9/11 to the violence directed against emos in Iraq and the trial against Pussy Riot more recently, the regimes contested by deviants and/or protesters can take musical criticism and anticonformist artists very seriously.
Political and moral authorities with a sense of how powerful music can be may also use it for their benefit, as propaganda. Soldiers’ moral and psychological states can also be altered by listening to aggressive playlists during military operations. Music is never further away from its role in political struggles than when it is meant to numb the will of individuals, subdue or even torture. This might constitute the most extreme way in which its emancipatory power can be subverted."
Schedule
Friday 7 June 2013
12:00: Lunch
13:00-13:30: Conference opening, MISHA conference hall: Alenka Barber-Kersovan, Elsa Grassy, Jedediah Sklower
13:30-14:15: Dietrich Helms intervention
14:15 -14:30: Coffee break
14:30-16:00: Panels I
1. The democratic agency of protest music I: music, society & political change
2. Scenes I: the politics of indie music
3. Hijacking popular music I: persuasion & propaganda
16:00-16:15: Coffee break
16:15-17:45: Panels II
4. The democratic agency of protest music II: performing activist soundscapes
5. Scenes II – racial and postcolonial issues in glocal popular music
6. Hijacking popular music II: Star politics, influence & the masses
18:00-20:00: Visit of Strasbourg’s historical center
19:00-20:00: Visit of Strasbourg by “bateau mouche”
20:30: Dinner at the Maison Kammerzell
Saturday 8 June 2013
9:30-11:00: Panels III
7. The democratic agency of protest music III: struggling with commitment
8. Scenes III: glocal hip-hop & the politics of authenticity
9. Identity polemics I: assessing the political past
11:00-11:15: Coffee break
11:15-12:45: Panels IV
10. The democratic agency of protest music IV: political movements & strikes
11. Hijacking popular music III: State policies & propaganda
12. Identity polemics II: the polysemic recycling of popular music
12:45-14:30: “Buffet” at the MISHA conference hall, and short concert within the Jazzdor Strasbourg-Berlin festival
14:30-15:15: Martin Cloonan presentation
15:15-15:30: Coffee break
15h30-17:00: Panels V
13. The democratic agency of protest music V: revolutionary soundtracks?
14. Scenes IV: politics, ethics & aesthetics
15. Identity polemics III: tributes & national myths in the United States
17:00-17:15: Coffee break
17:15-18:00: Conference conclusion & debate
Abstracts
Talk for Temple Library series, "Beyond the Notes," for a general audience.