March 30, 2008
News | Interview with Sound Collector Jason Kopec | China
If most backpackers are mainly sightseers, Jason Kopec is a soundhearer. Instead of a camera, his primary method of capturing memories is a microphone and field recorder, and he releases his sonic catches from Burma and China in his Ground Up series of discs. (That said, Kopec does also carry a camera and his pictures are beautiful--you can check out both sounds and images on the website of his label, noise|order.)
Kopec calls himself an audio ethnographer, a fact that might draw the ire of cultural anthropologists and ethnomusicologists--not necessarily because he lacks a particular degree, but because his discs lack ethnographic detail. Release the Cheerfulness China: Ground Up 2 contains lovely music and fascinating sounds, but even less contextualizing information than you'll find on your average Sublime Frequencies disc. This lack of context is not surprising, given the producer's fascination with the ways that the familiar sounds of one culture take on new meanings for a visitor from another: Kopec's works are less ethnographies than the audio travel diaries of a self-confessed "sound junkie." I recently asked him about his travels and favorite timbres.
We could start by me asking you what your background is and how you came to travel around China with a microphone and a field recorder...
Well, I'm at heart a sound junkie. I've never been that interested in taking photographs as a way of artistically capturing a feeling, place or person, so my interest in field recording and phonography was in a way inevitable. I began seriously recording in the field in 2000 when I was in South Africa. I had been bouncing around the globe for a spell, and had heard so many amazing sounds that I became more and more interested in the idea of capturing them for future use. After hearing a Kurdish folk group in Van, Turkey give their first public performance after a seven year government crackdown on the PKK and all Kurdish activity, I knew I HAD to get something to start recording such moments. My next major destination happened to be South Africa, so while there I bought a mini-disc recorder and a cheap Sony stereo microphone. I started turning it on at various times when something of interest was happening around me, be it music or an engaging sound.
I then ventured to Burma and became much more focused on my effort. I no longer approached travel as a predominantly visual adventure, but more a sonic one. While there I had so many incredible experiences recording that I managed to amass enough material to put together an album ("Burma 1 - Ground Up 1" on my label noise|order). Burma was the first time I literally spent days walking around a town looking for music and musicians. Since the interactions and situations that resulted from that effort were so enjoyable, it prompted a whole new style of travel and documentation for me. Now I always search incessantly for music and interesting sounds wherever I go, and my previous experiences have allowed me to get much more bold in my approach.
I've now traveled extensively in over 40 countries and have been recording material everywhere I've been since 2000.
READ FULL ENTRY...March 12, 2008
News | Marvin Sterling Speaks On the Japanese Reggae Boom |
Marvin Sterling, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Indiana
University and author of the forthcoming "Babylon East: Performing Dancehall, Roots Reggae and Rastafari in Japan" will speak at IU on Monday, March 17 from 4:00-5:30 p.m. Location: Student Building 159.
It looks to be a fascinating talk. Check the abstract:
"Race and ethnicity in the Jamaican response to the Japanese reggae boom"
In the early 1990s, roots reggae music flourished in Japan. Later in
the decade, a more recent style of reggae, dancehall, began its own
ascent towards achieving "boom" status in the country. In many ways
dancehall has come to eclipse the success of roots reggae only a few
years before. As a measure of this success, in 2006, Yokohama Reggae
Festival attracted about 30,000 Japanese reggae fans, filling Yokohama
Stadium and making it very likely the largest one-day reggae event in
the world. Much of the success of dancehall in the country can be
attributed to excitement surrounding recent Japanese victories in
international competition otherwise dominated by Jamaican reggae
artists. As such, more and more Jamaicans have become aware of the
intense Japanese interest in dancehall and roots reggae. In this paper
I argue that Japanese engagement with reggae and the Jamaican response
to this engagement might be productively read in ethnic and racial
terms. I argue that Japanese engagement with reggae affords
perspective on the Japanese construction of ethnoracial identity and
difference in the two countries, in ways that might be seen as
ultimately speaking to ethnoracial identity in Japan. I also argue,
focally, that the Jamaican response to this engagement represents a
perspective from which to view the Jamaican imagination of its status
as a postcolonial nation in a rapidly neoliberalizing globe.
By "international competitions," I wonder if Sterling is referring to things such as the International Dance Hall Queen competetion held in Montego Bay, which was won by Japanese dancer Junko in 2002. When a white Canadian woman known as Moo Moo won the competiton in 2007, some Jamaicans responded by "throwing bottles and other objects on stage."
Online responses to Moo Moo's win, written in rasta patois, also reveal identity concerns and an anger that extends to Japanese dancers:
How a white oooman win this sh*t are they trying to take over dance hall queen now it gone to the wolves SHAMBLES FOR LIFE
yes same wit japanese dem cant dance all dem can do is jump and spin on deh head and dats not dancing,di white ooman has no ryhthm at all,i was deh and ah pity dem try comercialize dancehall so dem give it to white ooman,she cant dance at all shes terrible,real bad u see her dance at last years,it was the worst
Of course, these kind of tensions often emerge when a the "cultural expression" of a local group becomes a "cultural product." The pride of seeing one's culture gain the world stage is often made bittersweet by the fear of losing it as one's own. It should be interesting to get the perspective from the Japanese side of the coin (as Sterling presents it).
March 07, 2008
News | Liminal States: Life as an Indie Musician on Taiwan |
I have a new article online in Folklore Forum, a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to “the free exchange of ideas on the cutting edge of folklore, folklife and ethnomusicology.” “Liminal States: Life as an Indie Musician on Taiwan,” centers on the life and music of Huang Wan-ting, a founding member of grrl punkers Ladybug who I profiled a few years back on this site.
In the article, I use the concept of liminality (coined by the great anthropologist Victor Turner) to examine ways Wan-ting exists in between some of the recognizable identities people use to identify one another. On the level of national identity, for example, she considers herself Taiwanese and is frustrated by the fact that the world refuses to recognize Taiwan as an independent nation. She feels trapped between the identities of “Chinese” and “Taiwanese,” disempowered. On a level of musical identity, however, Wan-ting maintains a liminal state on purpose, as it empowers her creatively. As an indie musician, she stays on the edge of the music mainstream, making styles of popular music that are not yet popular (and may never be). This status on the edge of popular music identities gives her the freedom and power to play with new ways of sounding and being.
I’m particularly pleased that this article came out in a special issue that honors recently retired Indiana University professor Roger Janelli, a great scholar of Korean folklore and folklife. In fact, it was in a class of Professor Janelli’s that I first started developing these ideas. I haven’t met a better teacher or a nicer guy.